10 Things I Won't Go Off-Road Without (Offroad Tools & Recovery Gear)

[Music] what's up everybody today our lifestyle we're gonna talk about the top 10 items that I bring with me when I go off-road believe it or not this is kind of requested video I get asked a lot to do videos like this different things that I bring off-road or different things that I bring for spares tools whatever stuff like that for people who are just starting to get into this hobby or sport whatever you want to call it so I started to take some time today and go through all the basics and all the most important things that I think you need before you go off-road the first item we're gonna talk about today is the power probe if you don't know what a power probe is is a little device so you hook up to your battery and then go around your rig and you can add power or you can add a ground in order to troubleshoot issues you're going to have to troubleshoot wiring at some point whether it's why doesn't this headlight work why doesn't my winch work well I don't my lockers work these are all questions that are solvable with the right tool and to me this is a tool that is not only great in the shop it's greater than the trail because it can make it or you can see whenever you're on your way home because you can get your headlights working but it could also make it to where you can start after going through that waterhole and figure out what you blew up we've got our power probe hooked up to our battery and as you can see I can just go around the engine bay and I can tap things and it will tell me what kind of charge it has obviously anything that's grounded to the chassis is gonna be a ground and if we go through here and we take a look at our fuses we can very quickly test out our fuses we've got positive there's positive there's even a little sound actually like the sound because it just makes it easy to know how things are gonna work here so we got positive positive and since I know I have positive on both sides of each one of these fuses that means that there is current going to fuse this tool is great for this kind of stuff but also having the ability to give it positive charge or a negative charge makes it to where you can troubleshoot simple things to a tool like this will not just save you time and money but this could save a wheeling trip because the faster you could get this rig back up and running the faster you get back on the trail something that might be easy to troubleshoot with a tool like this could keep you from finishing a trip you know I travel across three if I went down to Moab and I had some weird electrical issue it would be really heartbreaking to have all that planning all that money wrapped up in a trip like that and then have to go home early this next one is painfully obvious but even after 17 years of Whelan some people still make this mistake and that is a top off your tank before you go off-road I was recently part of something called trail of SEMA put on by a power stop break and they brought a whole bunch of us youtubers together we wheeled through like three or four states it was amazing now I decided to wheel three days without topping off the tank and my my Jeep I was planning off to the third a wheel and to top it off in my defense this little diesel engine that's in here gets awesome mileage and I did have a quarter tank of fuel left but the pickup is on the driver's side I was leaned over and stuck on an obstacle for a little while on the passenger side and it ran it out of fuel so when you have low fuel rail pressure caused by a big air bubble the engine thinks it's something catastrophic is about to happen and it goes into the safety protocol that makes it Tory it will not run it's only like a 10-minute fix if you have the computer the computer always lives in my Jeep but we were staying in all these different hotels and so I took it out of my Jeep I put it in my hotel room and so that means since I was broke down in the middle of nowhere and couldn't get my engine to work I had to get a ride all the way back to town to get my computer to come all the way back even after 17 years of wheeling and knowing better I still made this mistake so don't do what I did don't put all your friends in jeopardy and make them have to pull your Jeep off the trail like they did mine and even if you think it's just gonna be a short day just top off that tank for a good peace of mind and knowing that even if your day goes a little bit long you're gonna be good to go do not go off-road without recovery gear I cannot tell you how many times I've recovered complete strangers who are off-road and then only have a strap or a shackle or anything and they're just standing there by the side of the road or by the side of the trail just open a stranger comes up and helps him out one time I went to help out a guy and he was up building a fire on the side of the trail because he thought he was gonna stay the night there because he didn't have a way to air up his tire there's a certain things need to have when you go off-road and to me recovery gear is is way way up there you've got to be able to get yourself unstuck if you get yourself stuck [Music] to me this is the bare-bones equipment you need to go off-road in terms of recovery need some sort of a short strap you can use as a tree saber with your winch you need a winch I choose Warren because Warren is really reliable I've had five different brands and Warren is my favorite so far and then this is a new company that I just started working with they're called yankem ropes so far I've been extremely pleased I got to use this a whole bunch today and pull a bunch of different people out [Music] so what's the advantage of using a kinetic energy rope instead of a strap well there's a few and the big one is that it stretches 30% longer than its length just sitting there on the ground that makes it tore it's kind of like a bungee action and it'll give you the ability to soften the blow and you can basically just haul ass in your rig and yank somebody out as the name implies and come ropes this is the only rope I've seen with a protective sleeve which is definitely nice because sometimes you're not always in a situation where you're gonna be able to pull somebody out and it's not gonna rub it into a stump or a rock or something like that I have been contacted by a number of companies that makes rope that make ropes like this and they make recovery gear and I don't even email them back because it's usually some cheap Chinese knockoff the reason that I decided to go with this company is because clearly they have a high quality standard and they're made right here in the USA these are made in Idaho so it's something that I knew I could put my word behind and then I could recommend to you guys and if you're interested in something like this take a look at the description of this video and you're gonna see a link that'll take you to their website and you can see pricing and you can see the different stuff that they make they've got a whole bunch of stuff on their website so make sure you check it out these are soft shackles this is something that's kind of new on the market and it's pretty sweet they're really lightweight these ones are you know rubber-coated so you can't rip them or anything and it's just a really nice easy way to connect it if you want to pull somebody by their frame or if you wanted to pull somebody by this link back here or if you want to pull somebody by their actual whatever you can wrap this around and it gives you a nice recovery point you can't talk about recovery equipment without talking about testing it don't just let this winch sit on your front bumper for years and never check if it's gonna be usable until you're out on the trail and you really need it every few months or so you know especially if you will as much as me you need to get out there and your garage and just hook your controller up and make sure it works sometimes a very simple problem can be fixable easily at home but once you get out in the middle of nowhere it's not so easy whether it's a co2 tank a 12-volt system or something that's belt driven you need onboard air it makes life so much easier I believe there's a correct tool for every job and when it comes to the job of filling for 40 inch tall tires like on my TJ over there I think that that job is perfectly done by the power tank if you don't know much about co2 tanks I have a video all about it and I will put that in the description if it's something you're interested in but the long and short of it is you can turn these up super high and it makes it or you can fill a big tire really quickly so I can turn this up to 250 psi and that is way outside of the range of what a 12-volt compressor can do making it to where you can fill in many cases you know a quarter or even a tenth of the time depending on what compressor you're comparing it against that doesn't mean is the perfect tool for every job like in the case of this Land Rover when I build the onboard air system for this it is definitely gonna be getting a 12 volt system 12 volt systems are great because you don't have to go pay to get them refilled or anything like that you just click it on it fills itself and then you can fill your tires the tires on this are gonna end up being smaller than the 40 inch tall tires on my TJ so I'm not worried about how long it's gonna take to fill because I think it's gonna fill these little tires just fine the third system out of talk about today is belt driven belt driven systems are really not utilized enough I think probably because a lot of people don't have a place to put them on their engine drive assembly in a future video you're gonna see me convert this factory AC compressor into an onboard air system and I've already started as you can see because I just wanted to make sure that my my ideas would work so I did already tap and thread this to make it to where I can adapt it to the rest of the system that I want to build but these systems are lightning fast they're really quick I don't know if they're as quick as a co2 tank I don't think they're gonna be but they're faster than any 12-volt system that I've seen any time I've seen someone filling up tires with a belt driven system like this you will see it filling tires up super fast and another nice thing about this versus the co2 tank is that you never run out as long as the engine works you've got onboard air believe it or not running a full sized spare tire off-road is a controversial idea I know there's just lots of things they're controversial ideas these days and for some reason this is one of them I am in the pro run a full size spare camp there's a few reasons for this and we'll get into those a lot of the reasons that people are anti full-size spares because they will carry a tire repair kit and in a lot of instances a tire repair kit will work but there are some or they don't which is why I am in the pro full size spare camp I have personally broken rims and I have personally been trims off-road in a way that there is no tire repair kit on the planet that is gonna help you out raishin so it's one of those things where each of those times that that has happened to me I had a full-size spare and I'm very thankful that I did because it's 15 minutes to change it out and it didn't ruin the whole trip for everybody because they're all trying to figure out a way to get me theirs traded buddy off the trail other situations that I have seen is people put huge holes in the sides of the tire in a mud hole and this is like a worst-case scenario if you're gonna try to repair a tire because as they're trying to get out with this flat tire they're just gonna pack tons of mud into that hole and now you've got a dismount this tire you've got to figure out a way to clean all the mud out you know there's no water access out where we usually go I mean sometimes there's a Creek or something but even then trying to wash the inside of a tire out in a creek just sounds like a really bad day so in those situations can be really hard to get the inside of the tire clean enough to apply a patch and these are all the reasons why I just bit the bullet and I move this thing inside the cab running a 40 inch tall spare tire sucks I had it on the back of the deep and it really it hinders performance in a lot of ways so I decided to get rid of the rear seat deflate this thing and shoehorn it in the back of my little Jeep because it's that important to me to always have a full-size spare these plastic bags contain the parts that I think are the most common failures that you will see off-road and that is you joints and bearings now clearly there's lots of other stuff that fails offroad but I see you joints fail constantly so I have an extra 13 10 this is just from when I used to run 13 10 so this is basically a spare for a buddy 13 50s or what I run now so I have a spare 1350 joint these are rear axle bearings these are what the Ford nine-inch takes I have a spare for each side this is something I can't repair on the trail but if I'm in the middle of nowhere and I need to get Parts I already have the parts so all I need to do is find any automotive shop in America and they all have a press and then they could press these bearings on for me if need be these are the bearings for my front hubs these are already pre-greased as you can see I greased them all up and I've got the seals and everything so if I have it front bearing go bad on the trail I've got everything ready to go that's where I can just you know hopefully do it inside of like 20 minutes or so get the new bearings on and get back to have some fun one thing that I always carry a spare but for whatever reason is missing for my bag of goodies is a serpentine belt did you see my serpentine belt in there it's starting to get squeaky so it's time to replace it and for whatever reason I don't have my serpentine belt in this bag I'm gonna have to look around and find it but that is something else that I definitely recommend carrying because it is an important thing to have whenever you're on the trail this greasy little guy is the bottlenose Jack that I keep in my TJ I keep a jacket this small for weight I still have the ability to change a tire with it even though it's really small and it even does things that a normal high lift doesn't do I can fit this in between the axle in my steering and I can bend it back which I have done before believe it or not it works pretty good for that this is what you normally see in a 4x4 and this is what's gonna go on my Land Rover my Land Rover is gonna be heavy no matter what I do it is an Overland er it's something is gonna be full of people in gear and everything else so adding the extra weight of a high lift is not as big of a deal and it's not nearly as performance-based is what my pj is there's a little bit of stuff you could do with this you can't do with this and one of those things would be using it as a come-along it's pretty slick I've done it before for you anchor something up high ignore something right here and you can use it as a come-along to pull something out of a ditch or whatever I use it a lot more before I had a winch and I've had a winch for a long time now I've had multiple winches so I haven't used this as a come-along for a long time but it is nice if you need it in a specific situation where you would need to come along and you can't get to your win no matter what kind of jack you use I definitely recommend you bring a jack it doesn't matter you just need some way to change tires and do different things that these tools can help you out with you definitely can't do without the next thing I don't go off-road about would be basic fluids and when I say basic I mean real basic there are three fluids that I do not go off-road without having in my vehicle the first one is automatic transmission fluid this is pretty much a universal fluid you can use this for a whole bunch of stuff besides automatic transmissions a lot of manual transmissions take it a lot of transfer cases take it you can use this in place of engine oil and a pinch and if you have a diesel engine like I do you can actually use this as fuel so I keep about three quarts of this on me at all times but if you roll over and you need something in a pinch you've got to top off your engine oil you got to top off your transfer case stuff like that ATF works great to get you back off the trail the second fluid I want to talk about is brake clean break clean is really valuable off-road because it does more than just take the squeak idea breaks you can use it to clean a surface if you need to put a gasket on or clean a surface if you need to put some sort of like you know RTV silicone on something like that you can also use it to start a stalled vehicle so there's a few different purposes for this and honestly if you're lost through the middle know where you need to start a fire you can use this and a set of jumper cables and you can start a fire really easily with brake clean it's not super safe I'm not saying go out and start all your fires a brake cleaner but I am saying this is a combustible fluid and there is more than one purpose for a combustible fluid the third fluid that I'll go off-road about is distilled water I know don't have any distilled water up here but distilled water is something that is really important for me to carry offroad because it's what I would put in the radiator if I was low on coolant you know you can put coolant in there I could carry coolant but coolant is only good for coolant distilled water can be used to you know rinse off your windshield if you know you got completely covered in bud you can't see or you can drink it you're supposed to drink drinking water distilled water it doesn't have any minerals and stuff so to drink a lot of it's actually not that good for you but in a pinch you do have some water onboard you know to wash out wounds things like that you can't do that with coolant so I carry distilled water for that purpose if I was in a situation where I lost a ton of coolant and I filled it with distilled water whenever I got back home I would just do a flush and I'd put some fresh coolant and distilled water mix in it the final and probably most overlooked items that I want to talk about today is fire suppression this is something that can save your life it can save a vehicle it could even save a forest having something on board that will suppress a fire is a game changer and I do see a lot of folks carrying these but not enough I also I see a ton of people that don't carry these and this is just as important as a first aid kit or anything else this is one of those just basic things you could get probably even before you get a winch it's not a bad thing to carry something like this in all your vehicles I personally am trying to get better about carrying fire suppression I'm also learning a lot about the different types of fire extinguishers I'm reading online the different debates that go on between the different types and which ones you should carry but for now I just have some basic ones to make sure that I have some way to suppress a fire or at least make an attempt at it these are relatively small I would say the biggest fire extinguisher that you can fit is the one that you want because it it does make a difference being able to put out the entire fire instead of just being able put out part of it but anything is better than nothing I bought these little guys to test out they're really inexpensive it's relatively new product kind of kind of cool I like the way these are packaged so I plan on mounting these under the hood one underneath the hood of the Land Rover wonder Neath the hood of my TJ and then one of these goes in the cab of the Land Rover and one of these goes in the cab of my TJ so if you don't have a way to suppress fire in your vehicle yet I definitely recommend that you pick something out all right guys I'm fully aware that this is an incomplete list there's a whole bunch of other stuff you should bring with you tools you know a blanket would be a good idea some extra food there's a whole bunch of other things my original list was over 25 items that you should bring with you off-road but I decided to distill it down to ten the ten most important ones that that I could come up with is kind of some basic inspiration for people who are just starting to get into this I get questions constantly from people who are brand new to wheelin and they will ask me a lot of basic questions like this you know when to use for low when should I be using my lockers there's there's a lot of stuff that we need to share with people who are brand new in this community and this video is a way for me to reach out to some of those guys and hopefully give them some basic ideas and it maybe change their priorities you know out of one camp and into another or vice versa at least start the conversation if you have some other things that you would suggest go ahead and put them in the comments I'm sure a lot of newer guys are gonna read through the comments and they might be able to get something from any of you you know you guys that have been out there wheeling for a long time like I have I'm sure you have some really good stuff to add to this list I'm also gonna be putting a bunch of extra stuff in my Amazon shopping list that I couldn't fit into the video but I do think is important or might be something that you might be interested in bringing off-road and there you go if you enjoyed the video and you wanna see more stuff like it make sure you give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't already I've got a whole bunch of how-to content on here I've got some smaller videos like this got build series all kinds of stuff if you're into that kind of thing if you don't follow me on social media I have actor lifestyle mate we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Dirt Lifestyle

Views: 384,371

Rating: 4.9348369 out of 5

Keywords: offroad tools, offroad recovery gear, kinetic energy rope, tow strap, jeep recovery, offroad recovery, jeep tools, overlanding tools, overlanding gear, overland recovery, snow recovery, offroad tool bag, trail tool storage guide, jeep wrangler every day carry, off road tools, off road recovery, 4x4 recovery gear, recovery gear for 4x4, trail tools, off road recovery gear, overland recovery gear, overland tool kit, yankum ropes, recovery gear off road, 4x4 recovery kit

Id: MXH4-n_bMvE

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 03 2020