Who besides myself, carries their tools in their car?

for normal city driving I don't even have a spare in my Trans Am anymore. I have to remove the nitrous bottle. (seriously.) If I was to go on a long road trip I'd probably put the spare back tho. :)

Ray

I realize now it is just nuts to endeavor to carry a service station full of equipment around in a vehicle, UNLESS you are moving through some REMOTE part of the planet. Or unless you're driving a Repair Truck for the tollway authority.

If something goes wrong with the ignition, computer, power steering, transmission, brakes, any number of things I can think of that would leave the vehicle undrivable and not field-repairable, the cell phone and my gps receiver are going to bring rescue...unless again, I'm in a cell phone dead zone.

Usually New Parts are going to be required for a repair. I can't carry 1 each of all the parts that might be needed, or more likely, Never Needed.

No guarantees in Life, I guess. You do what you think is best, and go with that. Right now, I'm planning on just a minimal kit for the vehicle, and leaving all the heavy duty and heavy weight stuff in the house to be used and taken out as needed.

Lg

Moe : Go Get The Tools!

Larry : What Tools? ( Moe slaps Larry )

Moe: The Tools We've Been Using For The Last 10 years.

Larry : Oh.....Those Tools.

I've carried a tool box in the trunk of the Bonneville for 15 years. The car never broke down on a road trip - but have helped others out.

When I changed the serpentine belt & radiator & heater hoses the originals were fitted in around the spare tire well. They were there if I needed them, Never needed them though.

Also carried a bottle of Prestone in a five gallon bucket that was tied to the Jack box that stood upright in the RR Quarter panel. Also had two quarts of Oil, one quart of trans oil & a small bottle of power steering fluid. 3 Castrol GTX oil bottles fit snuggly in those white Rubbermaid ice cube tray bins you put ice cubes in.

The tradition continues with the Park Avenue.

harryface

05 Park Avenue 49,889 91 Bonneville 307,334

Good story. I remember the times I have had a serious problem on the road, and it was tire/wheel trouble every time. One time, a broken stub axle, right front wheel, almost killed me.

Now, where do you get a *spare* stub axle on the Queen's highway between Detroit and Buffalo New York? Answer is...you don't. I abandoned the car and hitchhiked back to Rochester, N.Y. A few days later the London Ontario Police call me on my phone and they say my car is repaired and ready for pick up at this shop !

I take a bus to London Ontario, and pay $145 and drive away.

Amazing story.

You don't forget things like this. But there is no way I could have prepared for a wheel bearing failure. Impossible to predict. How often does that happen? Never. Except to me.

Just before it snapped off, it started making a grinding noise and the steering wheel was pulling to one side. I am doing 70 miles/hour. When I lost the wheel, it went up at an angle into the tire well. Then I had to fight to keep the car from going out of control.

So, I will keep the engine and all else serviced, and hope nothing breaks. Everything is a million times easier to repair at home than on the side of a highway.

I have *most* of my wheel/tire tools in the trunk now, with a spare serpentine belt. That's enough, I think. Unless I am going cross-country. Then my camping equipment goes along with me as well as a big load of tools and some spare fluids and bulbs.

Lg

that's cool. You have to decide how much stuff you might need and plan for the likely to happen stuff (serpentine belt, flat tire, dead battery) and consider carrying tools and parts for that, and not worry about the unlikely stuff or impossible to fix by the side of the road stuff - timing belt, bent valve, broken ball joint, etc.

In my Jimmy I used to carry a roughtote with oil, coolant, booster cables, a blanket and candles, a flashlight, one of those tire inflaters, and a tow chain. In 5 years, all I ever used was the tow chain to pull other people out of the ditch. After the Jimmy rusted away it's been sitting in my garage and I realized that I really didn't need to carry that much crap driving around in the city most of the time, and now that I have kids, I need all the trunk space I can get.

But... if I was to travel 1000 miles in the winter I'd probably put it back in the trunk and carry other stuff too. My co-worker basically carries his entire toolset in the trunk of his caprice because he drives

100 miles out into the country on a regular basis... but even then, he now has a Neon and doesn't carry nearly the same tools...

Ray

I carry a small eclectic selection that I know from experience will get me through the sorts of predicaments that I could realistically expect to fix at the side of the road. Some generically useful tools and some that solve annoyances peculiar to that car. I stash the old belts that I've replaced, and in addition to tools and parts, I carry some supplies useful for MacGyvering my way home or at least to the next town. I figure the deluxe kind of AAA membership will get the hulk back home from my usual trips, and I also have various options for having people bring me things or even grumping to the rescue with a tow dolly.

On long trips, I've occasionally bought tools where I bought the parts.

With the beaters, frankly, I'm also ready with a last-ditch option in the event of catastrophic failure of something important and expensive: sack up everything I really want out of the car, have it towed to its eternal rest, and make my way home.

(I've always thought it rather poignant how some of the cars in junkyards were plainly in the midst of a long trip -- often a move, judging from the contents; and perhaps involving owners who didn't have a whole lot of resources. Always makes me wonder if they got where they were going, or went back home, or reinvented themselves in the town where the car died, or what.)

I used to do some off-roading; the tool selection, the spares, the vehicle capacity, and the range of troubles I figured on having to fix by myself were all proportionately larger.

--Joe

THAT's not paranoia nor poverty talking, nor is it reserved for people who can and will fix their own car. It's just sensible preparedness for getting smacked upside the head by Mother Nature and living to tell. Also good to carry some energy bars, and a flashlight, and road flares. Amazing how cold you can get by the time the people who noticed your absence and the people who noticed the skidmarks put their heads together...

Even if help is on the way, civilization is not far, and nobody's badly hurt, a little preparedness can make life's minor predicaments a lot more comfortable.

As an ex Californian, I also got used to thinking of the car as an earthquake-preparedness cache (food, water, some old clothes, blanket...) Not everybody gets earthquakes, but pretty much everybody could get hit by *something*, and a surprisingly modest weight and volume of well-chosen items can make you a lot safer or at least more comfortable when it hits the fan. This is especially true if either you're not at home when it happens (most of us spend 1/3 of the day, plus commute time, away from home but in or near the car) or you're at home but you have to leave in a hurry. Good to know that no matter how hurried your exit or how chaotic the circumstances, a nucleus of stuff is already in the car...

.357 magnum + spare tire. CCW

I use a 3-tray fishing tackle box by Plano to hold the tools I always carry in the trunk of my ride. I have done this, or similar this, with every car I owned, more so with college [when I bought a ride to get around there]. Since the weight is only around 20 lbs., no mpg to weight issue there.

I agree with most of the others in one instance, I have a hydraulic scissors jack and a solid wood board in there. I'll trade the jack's weight off the mpg anyday. At least I know, over the board, the car will go up. :) . Along with that goes a 4-way lug wrench and cheater pipe. The board also fits well over snow, mud, water, other less than pleasant environments. And it keeps assorted tools and nuts away from that stuff. As well as my knee.

My box is influenced by 4x4 time, so I won't include the ancilliary items for 4x'ing. Elec. tape, duct tape, screwdrivers, Torx bit set, fuses, light bulbs, screw clamps, set metric and SAE sockets. A Vise-Grip, pliers of different sorts, hammer, knife, some general flotsam [extras from packages, wires, plugs, that sort of thing]. I added a cardboard box with various fluids for the ride, some gloves, rags, sprays and a mean Crescent Wrench:lol: .

I believe in having tools in the ride for those "times", :smokin: , but I also feel that working on a ride begins at home. My own philosophy is "what can I reasonably do if I have a problem on the road". My ancilliary is "what can I do at home to reduce problems on the road". Part of what I carry in the trunk is mostly used at home, just looking around the ride, and doing what I feel should be done, with the "stuff" I use for regular look-overs.

Cheers

I agree that the jacking tools are of utmost importance, Blade. I remember struggling with an OEM POS one summer on the side of a highway, and have cursed the OEM stuff ever since. The OEM lug wrench was a POS, and the OEM jack was equally a POS.

I now have a combination of electric -and- hydraulic, letting the electric do the dirty work of the heavy lifting, and using the hydraulic as a jackstand ( it has a safety pin, that I have proved inadvertly, over and over, will easily support one end of my vehicle ;-\

The thing of it is, I have a broken left ulna/wrist, and physically cannot use a manual hand-operated scissor jack. So it is hydraulic and electric these days. The weight they take up is the price I have to pay for having rolling rubber under my vehicle.

The only maintenance *due* before this winter as I see by my schedule is a cooling system flush and refill, and...an annual oil change. Yep...=yearly=, now that I'm running Mobil 1. I realize that is going to send some people through the ceiling, but that is their problem, not mine. It's been 9 months since my last oil and filter change. In that time, I've not even put 5,000 miles on the vehicle. I'm also running a Mobil 1 oil filter.

Lg