Automotive Items Every Prepper Needs When Things Go Down

Preparation is key to making things easier for yourself in the future. When it comes to prepping your home for emergencies, it means you have plenty of shelf-stable food, outdoor cooking gear, water filters, emergency radios, solar-powered or hand-crank flashlights, and the like. If you are a car enthusiast, there are other things you’re going to need in or for your Chevy in order to survive off the grid.

Vehicle Recovery Tools

If you have a Chevrolet truck or SUV, you should invest in some recovery gear to help yourself or others get out of sticky situations. This includes tow straps, a bottle or floor jack, some jack stands, traction boards, and a winch that you can attach to your vehicle, whether a manual or electric model. You can get good, cost-effective options from Harbor Freight, Walmart, Amazon, or Northern Tool. Remember, always buy more than you need now, because you never know what you may end up needing.

Extra Vehicle Supplies

Other things to think about include a portable tire inflator that’s either rechargeable or plugs into a 12V power supply in your car, along with a portable battery jumper that can easily kickstart a dead battery. Have extra materials for your vehicle, like a tire repair kit, extra belts and hoses, spark plugs, coolant, oil, lightbulbs, etc.

Specific Tools

More items specifically for your Chevy: mechanic hand and power tools (e.g., a portable tool set from Kobalt, Craftsman, Quinn, etc.), a diagnostic OBD2 scanner/reader, extra fuel storage, and a radio of some sort that will be in your vehicle. This way, you can work on your car or someone else’s if something happens, and you can use your Chevy for long-range communication with large antennas attached to your car, truck, SUV, or van.

Emergency Kit

Another thing everyone absolutely needs, whether you travel or not, is a good emergency kit with a fire extinguisher, a large first aid kit, thermal blankets, and emergency lights and/or flares. This way, no matter where you are, you will have lighting to warn others if you’re broken down, things to patch yourself or someone else when injured, and a way to put out a fire.

Portable Power Station

If at any point you’re going off the grid for fun or for real, a portable power station and a quality solar panel setup will let you charge not just a phone or GPS device, but also potentially car batteries and your power station. You can buy power stations that offer 12V sockets, USB ports, as well as both AC and DC plugs. Really do your due diligence here. There are plenty of YouTube creators who have done extensive testing.

Tool Battery Powered Power Station

If you have lots of batteries from power tool brands, such as DeWalt, Milwaukee, Ryobi, and the like, you can also buy different types of power supplies and power inverters that use tool company batteries.

Camper or Pop-Up Tent

If you have a truck or SUV, maybe look into a pop-up camper you can tow, or a rooftop tent you can fold up and store on top of the roof when you’re driving.

These are just a few things you want to look into to prepare yourself for living off the grid for fun or if things actually go wrong.

Let McFarland Chevrolet Help You Prepare for the Future

McFarland Chevrolet has a number of vehicles that fit the lifestyle of a prepping enthusiast, such as the Silverado, Colorado, Tahoe, and more, with an expert staff of salespeople who can help you not only find the perfect vehicle but also get you the best price possible.

Why Choose McFarland Chevrolet

At McFarland Chevrolet, we take pride in offering our customers the best prices on new and used cars and services of any Chevrolet dealer around. We take pride in knowing that our customers are treated best by our wonderful sales staff and finance department from the start of their car-buying process to the end. And once it’s time to come in for service, our second-to-none service department will take care of your vehicle as if it were one of their own.

Thank you for letting us earn your business.