I ride a scooter around my city for fun and often find people having car struggles. I'm skilled with automotive work, so I figured I'd fill a "go bag" with stuff to bring anytime I'm riding for pleasure and have extra space. My goal is to cover as many common issues as possible while fitting everything inside a 30 liter top box.
My current list is:
- Jumper cables or small jump back (interesting edit at bottom)
- Common wrenches (10, 12, 14, 17mm)
- Common screw drivers
- Maybe common fluids (5w-30 oil, distilled water or coolant, etc.)
- Tire plug kit
- zipties
- duct tape
Suggestions from this thread I will add:
- OBD-II Diag tool
- Telescoping magnet
- cig lighter charged air compressor
- Pliers
- wire stripper/crimper combo tool
- crimp terminals/splices
- multimeter
- fuses
- SNACKS!!!!!!!!
- gloves
- air-freshener/momento type of thing :)
Are there other super useful things I might have left out, or niche stuff small enough that it'd cost nothing to bring on the off chance it helps? Common spec bolts/o-ring sizes, or something like that?
I want to make sure when I stop to help someone I can actually help, and not narrowly miss an opportunity because of an oversight.
Thanks for the help with this :)
Edits:
- formatting list
- adding "?" to title
- added zipties and duct tape to list, added o-ring example
- added suggestions from thread list
Interesting edit at bottom: TL;DR is supercapacitors. Main story: My concern was the longevity and cost associated with jump packs; lithium batteries don't like to be stored at high charge and also don't do great in varying temperatures. Enter the TIL: supercapacitor jump packs, which seems absolutely perfect for my use-case. They're designed to be stored with no charge, and are super happy with offloading all their charge at once. The intended use is to be charged off of the dead battery just enough to breath life into the starter long enough to get it running, but they can usually be charged quickly by other methods like an outlet (plentiful in the city) or a working vehicle.
Excellent point, I think I'll try to get my hands on one of them. My concern is they're only good for so many starts and are quite pricey (or you gamble on quality which is spooky with lithium)
Telescoping magnet added for sure OBD Scanner added; your hesitation is legit but IME the people with frequent car troubles often don't think about stuff like that haha
I've got one that isn't manufactured anymore so I'm not a big help there, Costco has several, and told me that some even have an air compressor.
This is a long way of saying an air compressor might be small enough to carry around and be potentially useful
I have the perfect compressor for this; walmart makes one that looks like a drill and takes batteries. Might be a better option in case they don't have a 12v outlet (I have a 12v one I was going to bring until I thought of this)
They make smaller lithium jump packs that are the perfect size, but again price is an issue. Having said that, I belong to an org that might be able to toss some money at this on trust alone to help. For a high quality one, it looks like it'll be $5-$10 per jump based on lifespan numbers, which I think they'll be okay with.