Thank you John!

(Now, if only you had finished that top of dash gauge project before leaving the fold! That's a torch I'm going to have to keep lit now)

Guys, I get the criticism of the comprehensiveness of the list. I get it.

At the same time, even if you disagree with the idea of carrying items along, I would still like to also hear your experience and observation on what components fail most often, and of those failures, which are the simplest to fix self reliantly on the side of the road.

 

I still have it sitting in my garage. I have friends with plenty of Ford's...

 

Reaching out to touch a Brother....

One thing not mentioned yet is a list of contact information for members of the Roadside Help Network... and each of you who is not yet a member should join. Even if it is only a telephone conversation to guide you through an issue without being able to be there... the buddy system is a great thing, but ONLY if you can reach out and make contact when necessary!

http://www.roadsidehelpnetwork.org/index.htm

 

HPOP hoses(I just have the originals from when I proactively replaced them).

 

Tugly, I tried to rep you for the very good points you made in your first post on this thread... ie, the coolant concentrate, the knife, and the ability to do a brake job on the road. I got burned on that one once. The front pad slipped out of the caliper on a Ford sedan while I was driving miles from home to a remote job. Had to limp into the nearest brake shop, leave the car for the entire week I would be gone, get a rental car on the spot, and continue the journey to the job. If I had the tools with me, I could have saved over $1,200.00 that week.

 

On a trip to Michigan, my starter stuck in the flywheel during cranking (and while running), at the 'World's Largest Truck Stop' on I-80 in Iowa, and I used the hammer I brought to whack it and disengage it. I later got reamed at a Ford dealer in Illinois on a new starter, and nursed the truck to our destination and changed the starter. I needed my breaker bar to bust loose the starter bolts, and the nut drivers and 1/4" ratchet to go after the wiring. I brought a mat to lie on, which was good, since the ground was soggy everywhere. I also brought 14 mil heavy duty latex gloves.

I didn't bring every tool under the sun, but a hammer, ratchet handles, 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2" drive sockets, and metric and SAE combination wrenches. My father would obsess about bringing too much weight along on a trip, but in a Super Duty, I think 75 lbs. of tools and fluids won't change the world much.

It was very nice to be fully stocked with tools to replace my starter on my own.

 

Your father was probably right about the older pickups with less net carrying capacity, but like you say, with the higher capacities of some Super Duties, 75 lbs won't change the world. It certainly won't change my world much, as far as weight, or space...

 

The only consistent failures I've had have been the autozone parts i put on.

A couple years ago I broke down about 4 hours away from home on my way up to WVa. Had the wife(who was conveniently PMSing), both kids, and both dogs, just pulled off the interstate for a quick stop to find my power steering fading and no power brakes. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and kid and wife stuff replaced all my tools. The hot side CAC tube rubbed through one of the power steering lines. If i had just some basic hand tools and my previously mentioned X-Treme Tape, it would have saved me 3 nights in a hotel, tow truck, and repair bills. Don't remember what the total damage was, but it was too much.

Thanksgiving at Golden Corral... That's one I won't soon forget.

 

I carry much more stuff than I could ever need and I think that is part of the point. After spending decades in the medical field, law enforcement, and seach and rescue teams, I have a tendency to carry not only what I need but what I may need to help others. Usually when I travel with my truck it is by myself and I have just about every space filled up with something.

 

Trust me, even if you did, somebody would remind you...

 

That's what I have the glow sticks for. I've got 3" 6" and 15". They last between 6-18 hours. Although they don't help much during the day. But they didn't cost me anything. 6 for the 3" and 18 for the 15"

 

Road flares keep indefinitely if kept dry.

They should not be ignited on or near spilled fuel. Typically they are deployed far enough away (several hundred feet) to avoid this as a factor.

I wouldn't trust any rechargeable battery for a critical use item. Glow sticks - the single use kind that are bent to break the glass chemical rod to activate - DO have a short shelf like - maybe a year or so.

 

Self reliance is great, and I always bring basic hand tools and supplies when traveling long distances. But there is always a potential failure that will leave you stranded, no matter how well prepared you are. That's where the joy of traveling begins, because recovering from an unexpected breakdown allows you to tell a story for years to come:

(This one is long and has nothing to do with a 7.3, so stop reading now if you're short on time )

<O</O
I was heading home to Philadelphia with my wife and two young sons on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, returning from a weekend visiting relatives in <ST1Lockport, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com</st1:State>New York. </ST1The trip clocks in at just under four hundred miles, and usually takes about seven hours, except when your alternator dies on I-81, in which case it takes slightly longer.
<O</O
Somewhere between <st1:City w:st="on">Binghamton</st1:City> and <st1:City w:st="on"><ST1Scranton</ST1</st1:City> the voltmeter began to loose steam and the headlights were dimming, so we pulled off the highway into a no-service gas station to weigh our options. There was a motel next door, so the easiest solution seemed like going to bed and forgetting about our dead battery. But that would have only delayed dealing with our problem and caused a lost day’s work on Monday, so I started thinking of a way home.
<O</O
After checking fuses and belts I confirmed that the alternator was shot, and tried to locate a replacement. I found a local phone book in the gas station, and after a few calls confirmed what I had feared. All of the local auto parts stores and service shops were closed, as might be expected on a Sunday evening. We were still at least two hours from home, so a tow truck would have been very expensive, even if one were available. And that would have only gotten the car home, not my family.
<O</O
While calling around for help I located a 24 hour service shop about ten minutes north of our exit. They couldn’t repair the car or get us home, but they did have one fully charged battery for sale. That got the wheels turning in my head. Could we make it home on a new battery? I did a ballpark current calculation for the fuel pump, ignition system, headlights, wipers (did I mention that it was raining?) and defroster. I then divided the amp-hour rating of the battery by the total estimated load and found out that a fully charged battery would run the car for about one hour with a dead alternator. That might work if we lived in <st1:City w:st="on">Allentown</st1:City>, but it would never get us home to<st1:City w:st="on"> Philadelphia</ST1</st1:City>.
<O</O
While I was scratching my head with amp-hour calculations, my wife noticed that several airplanes had flown over us at low altitude. She wondered whether we might we be close enough to reach an airport and perhaps rent a car to drive home. We called around some more and found out that the Wilkes-Barre Scranton airport was about twenty minutes north of us and that they did have a rental car available. We also found out that the 24 hour shop with the charged battery was on the way to the airport. Now I had a plan!
<O</O
We drove to the service shop on the small charge remaining in our battery, purchased the fully charged battery, and installed it in the car. Now that our headlights didn’t look like candles, we easily found our way to the airport and picked up a rental car. I loaded my wife and kids into the rental car and set the discharged battery from our car on the front seat next to my wife. I then very carefully ran my jumper cables from the rental car under the hood, through the passenger window, and connected them to my dead battery. The plan was to use the electrical system of the rental car to charge our old battery while my wife and kids drove home and I followed in our car with the dead alternator. When the new battery ran down in an hour or so we would pull over, swap batteries, and keep going.
<O</O
The plan worked flawlessly, except when I tried to conserve power by turning the headlights off. Who needs headlights anyway, I thought, especially when your wife is lighting the way ahead of you with a perfectly functioning rental car (and charging your dead battery at the same time). The state trooper who pulled me over thought otherwise. After spending quite some time explaining my story, he let me go with a warning, as long as I turned my headlights back on, which I did.
<O</O
My voltmeter was flirting with nine and a half volts when we reached the <st1:City w:st="on"><ST1Allentown </ST1</st1:City>service area, so we stopped to swap batteries and then and continued on. When we were a few blocks from home the car started to stall, and I wound up coasting into the driveway. Thinking the battery had simply run out, I ignored it, and, happy to have made it home, went to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that I was so focused on the voltmeter that I had run the car out of gas!

 

Wow Chris. That story reads like the Apollo 13 mission. Very clever current calculations... just like NASA did when the astronauts announced "Houston, we have a problem."

The only thing that bothered me was exposing your wife and children to clouds of hydrochloric acid in an enclosed passenger compartment from a liquid lead acid battery off gassing while charging at over 14 volts. You said it was raining, nighttime, and you were in the Northeast, where it is cold, so I assume the windows were not all wide open. And, if your wife hit an unseen pot hole in that rain that was severe enough to dislodge one of the charging clamps on the battery, the spark from the clamp's separation from the post could have ignited that trapped cloud of gas, causing an explosion of battery acid inside the car. That's what potentially could happen. I'm very happy it didn't happen to you.

I don't think I would have been able to calculate with such precision the amount of energy usage the car would consume, such that you predicted that you would arrive exactly in Allentown before needing a battery change. That part was very impressive.

 

I have told that story many times (it happened over 10 years ago) and you're the first person who mentioned the hazards of charging a lead-acid battery in the passenger compartment of a rented car. You're absolutely right, the sulfuric acid vapors along with hydrogen gas could have been disasterous.