Jump starting a car

[calexanian]

You can get an old style automatic transmission car running by pulling it. Depending on the torque converter anyways. use a tow strap and begin pulling the car. Most will fire at around 20 to 30 MPH, but make sure you have along tow strap cause when the car starts its going to be all out of whack and you don't know what gear its going to try and put itself in. I would not try it an any vehicle with an ECU or electronic controlled anything. You will probably fry everything. Obviously if you have another running vehicle you could just go get another battery anyways. Only experienced rednecks and hillbillies need apply.   

[Artlav]

Only experienced rednecks and hillbillies need apply.

Or someone stuck 20km away from anywhere with a broken drive pinion on the starter motor.

[VK5RC]

Only experienced rednecks and hillbillies need apply.

That makes me one, dang, or whatever I am supposed to say. HiHi
Reminds me of an excellent Australian series about Australian Aborigines who are legendary for being able to get a pile of rust moving, 
As a uni student I spent 3 months with the Warlpiri people, they are a pretty interesting lot. Lajamanu is one of the major settlements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajamanu,_Northern_Territory"Bush Mechanics"
 

[richard.cs]

Two things that haven't been covered much:

1) Cheap jump leads, those nice fat looking cables are not a good deal when they're a couple of stands of copper up the middle of a mass of plastic. They might be described as "20 mm cable" in the hope you think it means "20 mm^2" but it's really the diameter of the insulation. Those with an actual cable size specified are often aluminium so aren't quite as good as you first think either. Even those with real cable often have poor terminations with the core folded back over the jacket and the whole lot crimped. Any of those are probably best considered "charging cables", given time you can dump enough energy into a flat battery to start a car but if you try to crank it with the donor battery they just get very hot.

2) All the "connect the negative last to the engine block" stuff assumes both cars are negative earth. Positive earth cars are pretty rare now but they do still exist so if starting or jumping from an unfamiliar car it's probably worth a sanity check,  you're working next to the battery anyway so it should be pretty obvious. We're mostly talking cars from the early '70s or before but some military vehicles were positive earth later than that (and some are floating chassis).

[Rerouter]

There is also the reverse situation, if your using a fancy car to jump start another, and pulls the voltage low enough while its running can corrupt something... e.g. you short out, or the battery in the fancy is tiny (which is common),

if you have ever seen an audi showing ------, its either because some idiot tried to change the mileage, or someone kept on trying to turn over with a near open circuit battery and cheap thin jumper leads, the inductive spikes screw with the clusters more than it should... ford AU falcon is a similar case but not for jump starting, it seems to be more of a problem with European, than US or asia region, which is the reverse of what most might think...

I myself follow the rule of negative to chassis rather than terminal, as at the power levels would like some limitation, let it trickle across until it starts drawing decent current, wait another 2 minutes, then try and crack the dead car with the donor still connected, as i mainly drive a work ute i have a clamp ammeter and a good set of leads on me at all times, but most might not have this luxury,

[calexanian]

When I take by truck into the bush or desert I always take along a topped up deep cycle battery and some jumper cables I made from end cuts of 2/0 welding cable and some arc welding ground clamps. The cables are only about 6 feet long or so and I have never had any trouble getting a car going with that setup. You have to be careful with some modern setups. Primarily Mercedes and BMW because the battery is in the trunk and hard to get to in some vehicles. There is typically a couple of jump start lugs under the hood but some have proprietary connectors. that tow companies sometimes have. Some of the hidden battery compartments require special tools as well. I have (And do not recommend because you can fry the cars brains) connected jumpers right to the terminal on the back of the starting solenoid because there was no other spot to get at a guaranteed positive low impedance terminal that did not go through some other sort of part of the system. That was out in the desert and I was nervous as hell that I was going to fry the cars electrics. It worked like a champ though. Everybody should make a set of those cables. They make it so easy. No waiting to charge. Just clamp her on and go.