Vehicle Maintenance

Skills

Overlanding

Vehicle Maintenance

Maintaining your vehicle on the road is crucial on an overland expedition.

Following are a few overland vehicle maintenance and repair skills that you may want to develop before you embark your first overland expedition: changing a flat tire, cleaning your fresh and grey water tanks, changing your filters and fluids, and managing your battery and electrical system.

Maintaining Your Overland Expedition Vehicle

Changing a Flat Tire
Practice replacing one of your tires with your spare tire at least once before your trip. Consider buying a cordless impact wrench to get the torque right. And if someone else is changing your tire, tighten the lug nuts yourself to prevent the lug nuts from being over tightened. Don’t forget to use a star pattern when tightening the lug nuts.

Cleaning Your Fresh and Grey Water Tanks
To keep our fresh water tank clean, we add a bit of bleach to our fresh water tank. To keep our gray water tank clean, we pour some baking soda down the drain and then drive around for a while before emptying it.

Changing Your Filters and Fluids
Make sure you figure out what kind of filters and fluids your rig needs and how often they need to be changed. Although it is possible to find air, fuel and oil filters when you are on the road, especially if you have a vehicle that’s common in the countries that you are overlanding through, we’d nevertheless recommend bringing these with you if you have the space. Make sure you get your fuel filter and oil changed by reputable mechanics.

Managing Your Battery and Electrical System
We’d recommend that you spend sufficient time learning how your battery system, including your battery monitor, works. The following articles are good resources on battery management:

Managing Your Electrical System
It’s also important to learn as much as possible about your rig’s electrical system. Here are a few good general articles on overland expedition vehicle electrical systems:

Airing Up and Down Your Tires
We’d recommend that you learn how to air up and down your tires if you are going to be doing off-road driving. This is a good article on airing down and up tires. One of the things that we’d recommend buying and learning how to use before you hit the road are Staun Automatic Tire Deflators.

A Personal Story

While driving through Western Bolivia from Salar de Uyuni toward the Lagunas Route, we determined that we had lost all of the power in our vehicle.

As a result, we didn’t have heat, lights or water. Fortunately, the inverter that powers our lift mechanism was still working so we could get our camper up and down. Unable to diagnose the issue, we drove past the start of the famous Lagunas Route and, after a few very cold nights camped on the altiplano, arrived in San Pedro de Atacama. There, we spent days trying to determine what the root cause of the issue was. Finally, when we were in Salta, Argentina we determined with some remote help from an electrician (who is also an overlander) that there must be something interrupting the current between one of the positive battery nodes and our inverter (which delivers power to all of the electrical components inside our rig). We turned the power off and removed everything that was attached to that node and discovered that there was a fracture in the back of an L bracket fuse that was hidden behind several other wires connected to the node. Later, we concluded that the fuse really wasn’t necessary (all it does is protect the battery from a short in the starter battery, which is pretty unlikely). So we removed it and were back in business.

Skills

Overlanding