As the topic says, can you safely jump start an ATV with a truck? I wouldn't start the truck I would basically just hook up the jumper cables and start her up.

I currently do not have a battery on the ATV due to the battery box on my Honda Recon falling out. The old battery no longer is good as it has been sitting. I tried pull starting but since it hasn't been started in a while its being a pain...

 

Neal i don't think it will hurt it as lond as the engine isn't running on your truck , the reason i say this is because i know a guy that made a home made battery box and put a small car battery in it ; i haven't seen or rode with him in a couple of year's but he told me the first time i rode with him and some of his kid's that he had been using the battery over a year and didn't have any trouble with it and his atv was a honda trx 250 2x4 !

 

When I went to get my Warrior earlier this year, the battery was dead and the people that i bought it off of tried to jumpstart it off of their truck, but it would't start it unless the engine was running, and it didn't hurt it.

 

Here's lesson # 1 regarding electrictiy. Amperage is drawn from electrical devices, not pushed to electrical devices. This means that you can run a dash light bulb from a semi truck battery without any problems because the bulb only draws a very small amount of electricity. However if you tried to operate a large diesel engine starter from a small automotive size battery, you would be attempting to draw more than the small battery and small cables could possibly provide, therfore you would probably melt cables and connections and would not operate the starter. If the system voltages are the same, then everything will work. A small 12 volt battery may have 200 amps available, a large 12 volt battery may have 1,500 amps available. You shouldn't attempt to connect a 24 volt system to a 12 volt system, or a 12 volt system to a 6 volt system etc.