Having a jack and a spare tire in your trunk are really handy when you get a flat. Not having a tire iron to remove the bolts, however, reduces the other items to rather useless bits of metal.
This would be a really good time to check and make sure that in your trunk(s) you’ve got:
- a jack
- a tire iron
- the handle thingie to raise the jack if it’s not the tire iron
- flares or reflective triangles
- a fully inflated spare tire (sure you’ve got a spare—but is there sufficient AIR in it?)
Luckily when I hit some large, low, metal object in the road and blew out my tire, I was less than a mile away from my sister-in-law’s house and could jog there to get some assistance from my awesome brother-in-law.
Of course, it had to be the one night I didn’t have my phone on me—which made me wonder… Can’t you now get some little cheapie pay-as-you-go cellphones for not too much? And wouldn’t they be a good thing to have tucked into your emergency car kit?
And while we’re in public service announcement mode: Don’t forget to back up your data!
There are lots of possibilities on the market for pay-as-you-go wireless. But I just keep my regular cell in my shirt pocket when I go out, just in case. Also, an auto club membership is a good investment. They will come out just to change a tire for you. Usually one service call per year will recover the cost of the membership.
And always remember:
PV = nRT
(Tire pressure varies directly with air Temperature, in other words. When it gets colder, you need to refill your tires.)
(I use a prepay cell myself – for everything. But then, I’m cheap, don’t talk much on the phone, ever.)
It’s also a good idea to keep jumper cables and a can of fix-a-flat. So long as there is not a gaping hole in the tire fix a flat can get you to service station rather than stranded on the side of the road.