Lambert
Once you’ve planned an epic road trip, booked your hotels, organized your activities, and taken care of any long-term maintenance items on your vehicle, there are still a number of details to check in the weeks, days, and hours before you hit the road. Read on for a handy list of the most important items you should handle before you head out on the open road.
Check Your Tire Pressure
A long trip at highway speeds can put a lot of heat into your tires, especially in the summer—so make sure your tires are properly inflated. And don’t just go with the standard settings. If you’re taking family and plenty of belongings, see if your owner’s manual recommends higher pressures for a heavily loaded vehicle.
Check On Your Spare
Flat tires aren’t terribly common these days, but they’re no fun, so make sure you’re prepared. Check your spare’s air pressure and perhaps even inflate it a few psi above the recommendation so it will be ready even after a long trip. Make sure that your jack, lug wrench, and other tools are in their proper place. If your car has tire sealant instead of a spare, make sure that your can is full of the magic goo and that the air compressor works.
Tighten Your Lug Nuts
It’s neither practical nor necessary to try to tighten every nut and bolt on your car, but the lug nuts or bolts that attach your wheels to your car often loosen because of tire rotation, recent tire changes, or the stresses and vibrations of driving. Your owner’s manual likely specifies the proper torque to use on these fasteners. Use a torque wrench to make sure they are properly tightened before you get rolling.
Battery Maintenance
Now’s also a good time to check the fluid in your battery, if that’s possible. If your battery terminals show corrosion (It often looks like dried toothpaste), pull off the cables and clean the terminals properly. And having a set of jumper cables is never a bad idea, particularly if your vehicle’s battery is older.
Check Your Fluid Levels
Check your key fluid levels—engine oil, engine coolant, transmission fluid, power-steering fluid, brake fluid, and windshield-washer fluid. (If you drive a late-model diesel vehicle, you might want to top off your exhaust-treatment fluid, too.) All of these are important and some require a special procedure to check, such as checking the transmission fluid when the engine is running and warm with the transmission in park; look in your owner’s manual for instructions. Some cars use non-standard fluids for coolant and power steering, and while they’re not necessarily expensive, but you might have trouble finding them in Cody, Wyoming. Top them up at home where you can easily find supplies.
Lights and Wiper Blades
Grab a friend and verify that all of your lights are working. Getting unusual bulbs might be difficult on the road, and changing taillight bulbs when your trunk is full is annoying. Also make sure the windshield wipers are in decent shape. This is the time to install a new set if you need them.
Electronics and Tunes
A family of four can easily travel with six or more electronic devices. Make sure that you have all of the devices you want to take with you, along with the necessary cables to charge them and connect them to the car. A power splitter might be nice to have if your car doesn’t have many power outlets. And don’t forget to transfer music, audiobooks, or podcasts to make long freeway stretches more interesting.
Tools
With luck, nothing will go wrong on your trip, but having a few screwdrivers and wrenches can’t hurt. A flashlight is nice in case, say, a flat happens at night; make it a head-mounted lamp if you’re traveling solo. If your trip includes remote areas, a siphon hose can ease gas infusions from another vehicle (with permission, of course).
Maps and GPS
You have your route planned, but you still have to follow it. It’s worth having both paper maps and a GPS system. The GPS is great for navigating strange cities, but a large paper map is much better for providing a big-picture view of your route. Make sure you load the appropriate databases into your GPS, too. If you plan to use your phone’s GPS—often a very good option—bring along some sort of dashboard mount.
Odds and Ends
Whether you’re going solo or with your family, you always want sunglasses, Kleenex, a bottle or two of water, and a garbage bag. If you’ve offloaded your owner’s manual—they can take up most of a glove box these days—you might want to repack it, as a long trip might finally motivate you to learn how to reprogram one of your car’s annoying features. And don’t forget a first-aid kit, a blanket, some cash, and any medicine you take regularly.
Vehicle Papers
One should always have their vehicle registration and proof of insurance handy, but these documents are particularly useful if you have to speak with law enforcement far from home. If you have some sort of roadside assistance available to you through your insurer or another agency, make sure you have the key information and contact information.
- Planning an Epic Road Trip: 8 Tips You Need to Follow
- Golden Brown: Four Days in a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9
- John Phillips: The Perils of Cross-Country Trips
Last-Minute Route Check
Finally, do a last-minute check of your route before leaving—and perhaps every day while you’re traveling—to make sure that a major accident, natural disaster, or construction project hasn’t snarled traffic on the roads you’re planning to take. Most states maintain websites that offer up-to-the-minute details on construction projects and road closures. After all, nothing kills the excitement and fun of a road trip more quickly than bumper-to-bumper traffic.
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