So how do we all prepare for long distance trips?
My parents live in Florida and its about a 1100 mile trip to visit them. When ever my family has traveled in the past it has not been without problems. Now when I drive alone I like to keep it as uneventful as possible. My last voyage down I was able to only stop for gas, and stop for food only once. I can make it in a little over 17 hours. But i'm sure I can do it faster.
Now how do you prepare for long trips? What do you do to the car? What spare parts do you take for your 18+ year old car? What things to check before you go?
Now I'm not one to stop and sleep and I like to stay up the entire 1100 miles and drive strait through. What food/drink do you like to take along with you that keeps you awake? How do you prepare sleep wise the days before?
you'd want to ask baxo on that. Since that's what he did coming to cat jam 06!!
What to take... another car... just kidding :D
What to do to the car...
check fluids, hoses, belts and brakes, change oil if you feel it's necessary. Make sure you have a spare tire... with air!.. a jack and lug wrench... just the basic stuff.
Stuff to pack extra...
electrical tape
duct tape
zip ties
tools- basic metric and standard set with various ratchets, screwdrivers, pliars etc.
flashlight
It's also good to have some oil and antifreeze with you.
food and drink...
I'm a pen 15e-aholic so some bottled pen 15e maybe some tastykakes and a big bag of m&m's .... great diet, I know... it's good to much though and easy to handle while driving. (But that's just me)Don't forget the grocery bag for trash...
sleep...
that's on you Claude. It depends on how you are. I drove from the Florida border to Maryland on 3 hours of sleep. But when I get in "the zone" I can drive quite a while before getting tired.
Get plenty of sleep and don't drink caffiene. Caffiene is a diuretic (sp?) and makes you pee a lot more often than you think. Who wants to stop at a rest area every two hours? I sure as hell don't.
Music has always been the best thing for me on long trips. The longest I've ever driven was 12 hours in one day. I went through more CDs than I can count, but it kept me awake and kept me from going stir-crazy.
yup, i'd take, (and always do) a good set of tools, plenty of music, and i usually drink gatorade or the like on long trips...not so much soda.
For something to eat, i usually just stop at a fast food place, but since i'm hypoglucemic, food comes often for me, and i have a high metabolism too...
Another good thing to take would be a cell phone, in case you break down, or God forbid, get in an accident.
Hmm, I don't have that problem with drinking caffiene.
Not unless I drink a lot of it. I'd probably only down 1 maybe 2 -20oz. bottles on a trip like that.
im not sure about the Caffiene thing, i drank 3 monster energy drinks on the 6 hr drive to ohio and didnt stop to pee once, or even have to, and im pretty sure they are all Caffiene. if you have a cb radio u may want to take that just for fun, or maybe even use it incase u get stuck somewhere, but i like to listen to all the trucker convo's lol.
[sarcasm]
How do I prepare my 21 year old car for long trips? I park it and disconnect the battery. Then I get into my Neon. I fear my t-bird will never be worthy of long trips.
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forgot the attatchment ;)
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Edit by Thunder Chicken: Forget the attachment. We've had complaints - go here (http://"http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/showthread.php?t=9592") for details
bring a TFI module and TFI tool, along with a timing light
Baxo DOESN'T prepare for long trips. He just leaves! LOL
hmm, I drink 1-2 liters of moutain dew for every 2 to 3 hours of driving and I only usually stop every 4 hours or so. Bring music, it will help. As far as staying awake, I have stayed more then 72 hours straight while driving to idaho and back acouple of times and I was fine. I dunno, maybe thats just me though. Bring a freind if you can. Road trips are fun.
Oh and if you smoke, I go through about a pack a day, but when I drive as much as 3-5. So I would buy a carton.
I've made my share of long hauls Claude and I've gathered some good tips from them. As far as sleep goes. Don't just worry about getting a good night's sleep the night before you leave on the trip. Make sure you get a good amount of sleep the night before that as well.
As you're going down the road, don't forget to take in the scenery. Don't stare straight down the road like a lot of people do when they drive. It's no big deal if you do it on a 1, or 2 hour trip. If your going on a long trip like your talking about though, doing so can tend to make you go kind of gagga, or get drowsy.
On a long trip like that. I like to time my departure, so that I'll arrive at my destination when it's still light out.
I like to take 2 gallons of antifreeze mix, 5 quarts of oil, electrical tape, spare (and the supporting cast of equipment that go with it) and a road atlas. Oh yea... I like to take a bunch of goodies to snack on. It tends to break up the monotony of a long trip.
Vic
I burn a few MP3 CD's and toss some clothes and the laptop in the car. I make sure the fluids are all OK and check the tire pressures. I fill the car and load up on junk food at the gas station (I hate stopping) and make sure I've got the cell phone. That's it. I know the T-Bird is up to any trip. I'd trust it before I'd trust that ed Volvo, that's for sure. It gets better fuel mielage too. I will be taking it on a 600 mile trip this weekend, as a matter of fact, while the Volvo holds the driveway down (call me paranoid, but it was while making this same trip last Christmas that the Volvo spit its engine out)...
I used to keep tools in the car, but that was back when I drove a carbureted Chevy. Honestly, on an EFI car, there ain't much to can fix on the side of the road with no parts, so I don't carry any tools (except a small trolley jack and an X-type lug wrench). The only tools I need are my cell phone and CAA card :D
BaXo sounds just like me. I just jump in the car and motor along. For CatJam (only 4 hours), we just threw in some clothes and car cleaning stuff (too bad it rained). Of course with kids, a little more thought has to go into it. I'd have to think of clothes for 6 plus diapers and port-a-crib. Oh yea, toys, snacks, drinks, earplugs....:D
I only did in the Cougar a little trip at night, first timer, when i was 19, but i carried enough tools to swap engines. I was scared, i guess. I remember....
10 liters of gas, i dont suggest to do this....
5 liters of water
another 5 liters of drinking water
5 liters of engine oil
3 liters of tranny oil
a bottle of brake fluid
spare pumped at 42 psi
two jacks with wrench
two big boxes with all my tools
homemade air pump
a complete tire repair kit, including those chits in a spray can
Auxilliary cables
A lot of wires
Another battery !
A lot of testing of the car, triple checking everything....
A bunch of CDS
A bunch of junk food...
Yep, i was driving alone, not funny at first, but when i feel the car was capable of do that trip without leave me stranded at night, was super fun!
Needless to say, the bounce at high speeds gone.....all that weight added to the car didnt let it jump a bit...
Now i only triple check everything, but i dont carry all the hardware store.....
(http://teaca.iespana.es/cougar/LS.jpg)
make sure you go poop before you leave cuz it stains the seat if you go in your pants
I dunno. I didn't prepare. Friday night at 6pm on the day Of Cat jam.. after the car got fixed in Wilpen 15s, AZ.. I hit the road right away. (Mind you I had already been up for 11 hours just waiting around in the shop waiting for the car to get fixed.) So I got in the car and started driving.. I told myself "Okay I have to get out of this God Forsaken Arizona because it's clearly a cursed state for me".. so when I got into New Mexico.. I thought i'd go till Albequerque and take a rest.. Well I got there and I didn't feel tired so I kept going.. i thought i'll go till Amarillo Texas and THEN i'll take a break.. Well Amarillo turned into Oklahoma City and so forth.. Then I started realising "Hey, I might still make it to the end of Cat Jam" and well it was pretty much Adrenaline helping me from then on.
Basically as far as nutrition goes, All i drank was bottles of water that I got every time I filled up.. Then in Rolla, Mossuri I decided to stop to check out David's Twin Turboed cougar. I was maybe there for 30 mins.. that was the only stop I did.
So yeah. No preparation necessary. Keep your mind on the destination and forget about anything else. Just worry about how you're gonna get to the destination and figure out the rest along the way.
wow, why was your car in az? Sorry, I missed out on something I think.
*Sigh*
If you've been on here at all, you'd notice that Alex bought a new car from Arizona.
ahem...for long journies
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