A wise friend of mine once said
A couple days ago we were delivering candles up in the mountain. It wasn't a far drive away, in a really pretty estate as you can see from the image above and the lady seemed happy with her purchase. On the way back down something weird happened.
What had previously been known as my gearbox seemed to turn into a bowl of soup and the gear shifting shaft became my ladle. Not knowing exactly what had caused it, I found third gear and coasted down the mountain pass, fourth gear - fine. Come to a crossing and have to stop. First gear - nope. Soup. Second? Nope. Still soup. I managed to pull away from the stop in third gear. Luckily my clutch control is pretty good and my car still has enough engine power to do that without stalling.
I managed to get it back to the cabin and knowing that I wouldn't have reverse gear, didn't try to pull it into the yard. The mechanic who came round to have a look at it could tell immediately that my gear linkage strut needed to be replaced.
Yesterday I called Midas who stocks a large range of car parts and was told for the first time "I'm looking at our system nationwide and there's no stock in any of our branches, with the backlog in shipping, we aren't getting any car parts into the country".
This didn't really come as a surprise because I've been waiting for this to hit here for a while. I managed to get the correct part from a supplier further afield and got my car fixed up, but it did make me start to think about "how prepared is prepared enough?"
There is no way that I can get spares for my car for absolutely everything and this seemingly simple piece of plastic was literally the weakest link and the difference between independent vehicle mobility and having to rely on either public transport, taxi services or foot power.
With the fuel issues that are now raging, it's bound to have a huge impact on the transport industry as a whole, not just our own personal vehicles. It just shows us how vast the scope of preparedness is. It is all encompassing.
It's a scary prospect for people like my neighbour who simply won't even entertain hearing about anything of the sort. She calls it "choosing to be optimistic". She's an awesome person and I have no doubt that she can take someone down if necessary, but I was quite surprised that on this particular topic, she is quite happy to simply be blissfully ignorant....for the time being.
So while having a vast food supply is obviously first priority, looking at getting basic spares for your vehicle would be a good way to go if you have the means to do so. An extra spare tyre or a whole additional set of rims perhaps. Fuel filter, oil filter, air filter, extra engine and gearbox oil!!! Antifreeze, an extra fuel cap, spare fuses and headlamp/tail-light bulbs are probably where I would start, but I never would have thought of putting a gear linkage strut or gear linkage assembly on the list and yet, without this simple, non-articulated part (that didn't even cost very much to replace), my car was dead in the water.
What would you add to the list as the absolute bare minimum? Let me know in the comments.
Images are my own
