Here's a few things I do to make my life easier on the car side:

1. If your like me I can never remember the size of the windshield wipers on my cars. So I mark the windshield wipers sizes on the black plastic lower windshield bezel in the engine compartment using a premanent marker... I use a silver permanent marker I got from Staples... a couple of bucks. Now when I need wipers I open the hood and get the sizes. Azera 24" driver, 20" passenger.

2. The wipers themselves, always fail when it's raining. So for less than $4 a wiper I keep spares in the trunk for each car. Wipers can be purchased at Wal-Mart for the less than $4 and I never have to worry about wiper failure.

3. Since I already have the silver permanent marker I mark the size of the oil drain plug. You can mark it anywhere ON TOP of the motor. I can never remember what wrench size I needed for this car... helps a lot if you have more than one car and a lot of senior moments.

4. On the roll with the marker, I write the part number for the oil and air filter I use. Write it somewhere inside the engine compartment that's easy for you.

5. With the same permanent markers, I mark fasteners and their location on frequent maintenance areas. The color I use is dependent on the color of the surface. I used dots, dashing and symbols like < or > to match up the fastener and to its location. Saves a lot of time when re-assembling multi-fastener project with different length same diameter fasteners.
I use this mostly on my motorcyle but works anywhere... even in the house. An example for any fastener, I put 1 dot on the fastener and one dot next to the threaded hole to match it up.

How about your tips of the day.

This post has been edited by raw6464: May 20 2008, 11:23 AM

raw6464;

Thanks for those helpful hints! :clap:

I use RainX on the windshield, side and rear glass plus the side mirrors. I find that it really helps in heavy downpours. It helps prevent snow from sticking as quickly too. The rain mostly rolls away at about 45mph. and up. It helps visibility greatly when stuck behind or near a large truck which is kicking up lots of road spray during or after rain showers. It is a great safety advantage.

Where we live we get lots of stones hitting the windshield causing either cone shaped chips or star shaped cracks. I found out that if one of the window chip repair kits is used soon after the damage that often the repair is so good that you would be hard put to find the damage. If you wait until after washing the car or getting caught in rain etc. the degree of success is reduced. Anyway, the kits are so inexpensive that they are certainly worth a try before having a windshield replaced. Using a hair drier during the application sometimes helps thin the polymer material so that it fills cracks more completely.

We carry a flashlight, battery cable and paper towels along in case of problems on the road. :thumbsup:

Joe

All of the above tips are great. I have learned a couple of new things.

Here are 3 additional things I do.

1. Leatherman style Multi-Tool in console.
Great for those minor little fixes while you are away from home.

2. Box of wet towlettes in glove box.
Been shopping all day and want to freshen up before going into a restaurant.

3. Local Yellow Pages phone book in trunk or floor in back.
Sure beats having to find a public book, which is always missing a few pages.


David <><

This post has been edited by david-paul-1: May 20 2008, 06:07 PM