What Should Be in Your RV Tool Kit?

Every RV owner is gonna have their own personalized toolkit. We thought we'd take the opportunity today to go through just a basic kit of what you can get started with and some of the tools and some kind of unique things that have changed over the years. So Steve, let's start off tool bag. I like this tool bag here because it's long enough to put some longer wrenches in, one of the things you gotta keep in mind, as you start to build this toolbox that you don't get it so heavy you can't take it out to someplace. Good point.

So you might wanna grab a second bag, like this for some stuff that you probably don't use as often and this will be a little more accessible. So let's start with the screwdrivers. And we kind of went with the craftsman has a nice kit that you can buy and there's various other brands but you can buy a complete set of the flats and the Phillips. What would you take for Phillips? And what's the sizes?

Well, for a Phillips you're gonna need, this actually happens to be a number two Phillips bit. And that's normally what most of the fastener the Phillips head fasteners would be, would be Phillips. Once in a while though you'll get to something like a large plate or something, or I know the dinette tables that are mounted to the floor of that pedestal base. You'll go to use this number two Phillips and notice that it's extremely loose, but it'll catch. And if you use it enough times pretty quick what you're gonna find is you're gonna round the tip of that number two Phillips off, 'cause you should have been using a number three, which is the next size up.

So I would definitely have a number two, always. I would have a number one, which is good for the smaller screws. And then once in a while, this is a jeweler screwdriver but it's small enough where if you need to take the back off of a say a remote control or a watch or camera. You see a lot of small little covers on stuff have real small slots that you have to get into. That's your door opener.

That would be, you should always test that fit when you put it in there. If it's sloppy, it's probably the wrong size. If it feels nice and tight, that's probably the right screwdriver. So these are Phillips. Yeah, and it's good idea to periodically just kind of check that tip just to make sure.

Yep, it's pretty easy to do and in some of those so then we'd take these three plus our number three and I'm just gonna put it in the side bag. How about for slotted? What would you use it for? For slotted it's getting less and less common. What most people are using these things for now is pry bars.

And these have been not used as pry bars because they're straight but this is a nice size to have very handy. There's still some slotted screws out there especially if you're out doing old picture frames or old door hardware stuff that usually is slotted but definitely I would take. Yeah, and sometimes you find they use the slotted. If it's a flush Mount. Right.

If it gets, you've got a little indentation and the screw head goes flush instead of that sharp. Right, like there is this clip, the refrigerator opening as a slot, a little plastic disease clip this a nice little size, the bigger one you can open paint cans with staying in camp but on a slotted, I would probably carry all three of these or all four of them. The stubby. Sometimes you're trying to get into a tight spot, but okay. And I would maybe have one more possibly a little bit larger one just A longer one Longer and a little bit bigger but that's a good starter set right there.

Okay, so then we'd want to add this on the filter short Stubby Phillips. Okay, all right. How about then we see these become fairly common picks And pick, say you dropped something behind in a little gap or something and you can't quite get in there. You're gonna use a little pick to pop it out. These could be used.

You don't have a lot of O-rings in an RV but you could use it for just snag and stuff. Trying to pick stuff out. I know you used that when you did the refrigerator repair get the orifice out, Right With that. You could also use that to get the washer out of a garden hose. Yes.

Okay. Not a lot of use of them, but not a bad idea to have at least one, maybe just this angled one. Sure. In there, sometimes I like to take one of these, if I'm trying to line up a hole Sure, to be centered Center and a little bit use it more as a pick or something. So we'd probably get rid of this one down our hustle.

So let's talk about then pliers what's the variety of pliers would bring a standard set like this. Yeah, that's just a regular pair of slip, joint pliers. You can go notice that the gap doesn't close here but it would handle a larger diameter nut or bolt or shaft drop it down. And now that you can see that the ends close together usually they have a cutter right in the center. So you've got a little wire cutter there that you could snip some wire with.

And I noticed this one's a little different than your traditional one because it's got a gap between the teeth versus the flat. That'd be for like a smaller rod say some small threaded rod. You were trying to get ahold of. If you're trying to tighten something or loosen something that's round you've got more surface area that's grabbing as opposed to the flat pair of pliers that are just flat. You only are hitting a couple, two spots, yep.

Okay, so what other pliers then I definitely have a pair of channel locks or slip joint pliers. You can get on a pretty large piece of pipe. This probably get over something that's about 1¼" diameter all the way down to almost zero but nice handy pair of pliers. You've got plenty of leverage there long as opposed to trying to use something shorter where you're up in that area, trying to weld. So that they're a good pair of pliers.

Okay, and you can get a bigger pair. Yeah. If you wanna go with the little larger nuts and stuff like that. What else for pliers and side cutters? Well, you've got these are called alignments supplier and they're good for cutting wire something a little heavier.

Say you're doing a wire ties or twisting up wire great little pair of pliers they've got a little bit wider flange on them. So if you're trying to straighten a little bit of sheet metal, flatten something out doing some hobby work that would be a nice pair of pliers to have for that. Okay, side cutters. These just little diagonal cuts. They're good for doing a flush cut.

Say you've gotta a wire tie. And I know everybody loves working around wire ties when somebody cuts it long and then he leaves a nice sharp edge on it that you can cut yourself. I'm being sarcastic, but with a pair of diagonal cuts they've got a flat side here and then hauled out. You can take that flat side, get right up against it. And now you don't have that sharp edge.

It's gonna cut you. Yeah it'll still hold, But it'll hold, correct. So that's a good pair of pliers to have. Okay, and you wouldn't need different sizes. They come into the smaller ones like this.

Yeah, depending on what kind of work if you're into crafts and stuff But for a basic one then and again you're gonna customize your toolbox to how you have hobbies and how far you want And your ability. Yeah, exactly. Your expertise in it. Now, Steve, you've been doing this for 30 years RV master RV certified master mechanic RVA and you were in wire prep for years. So you're gonna have a few more tools.

This might not be a basic but this is something that depending on their ability Right So if you're doing any kind of wiring and everybody you'll, you'll go to a rally or to an RV supply place. And you'll see a little gadget that you can throw on. And most of those gadgets are 12 volts. Or if they're 12 volts everybody likes to hook their stuff up. So you've got a nice just a basic pair of wire strippers they're marked.

So they show the gauge of the wire on this side that corresponds with the gauge of the wire. So you can do your, your strip and we've done some extensive Videos on Videos on that but do a nice strip. I would take, always have a little bit of wire. You've got a stripper and you've got a crimper. Now there's many different types of crimpers.

This crimper here actually is for non-insulated and insulated terminals. So if you're using a insulated terminal, such as this you would be using the insulated portion of the crimper to make your crimp. If you're using an uninsulated you would use the piercing point which actually cuts through. If you use the piercing point on an insulated you might as well not use an insulated terminal because you just created a bare spot on it. So kind of know the kind of tools you've got how to use them correctly, maintain them, keep them clean.

If you keep your handles clean, your hands usually stay clean. If you wipe them down, when you're done using your tools. And then this is just a basic set of terminals. You could have some wire nuts in there, ACOR connectors fast on connectors, but just a basic set. That's kind of a must that everybody should have.

Okay, how about these? This is just a pair of tin snips. Say you needed to cut some metal banding. You bought a package, came in for your RV or something, or trailer. Just wanna take cut some, a strapping.

You need to cut a piece of metal. You need to cut some plastic. They're just a nice handy tool to have you have a blowout. You've got a fender that goes to I'm gonna say we worked on one of the fifth wheels that we're working on before had a blowout going down the road. And he had to get out and cut some of the fender out that had ripped apart and was tearing up rather tight.

Yeah, so you wanna pair that in case you got to cut some, do kind of an emergency. You need to cut your seatbelt a nice handy pair. Okay. This is a great tool. It's a called a vice grip or a vice grip or a locking plier a slight, like a nice third hand.

You can clamp something down, clamp it with a seat clamp. And it would hold that. Say you needed to do a little filing just a great tool, super tool And Not just another pair of needle nose. And these, I think are they were like an electrician for crimping. You could pinch the little metal islets with it.

And then it's just a nice small pair of needle nose for getting into a little tighter spot. Okay. Crescent wrenches. You should carry at least two, maybe three sizes. This happens to be, I believe a 6".

You could have a fourish. Now this an 8", you could have a 4" and then maybe a 12 or a 10". It gives you a little more leverage but these are handy tools but they don't take the place of a combination wrench. Like we see here. Yep, well, one of the things you will find out too is as you kind of start doing some of your own work on these is that there are metric and there are SAE sizes.

And, but I I've seen some of them that seem to be in between. Yes. You know, the soccer doesn't quite fit or the wrench doesn't quite fit on this one but it's a little sloppy on this one too. It just seems that they're, the way some of this stuff is being made anymore, it's just, so it's always nice to have a backup. Right.

Okay. All right. Have a few crushing wrenches. So let's get back, I forgot these. When we were talking about the Phillips and the flatheads it's a good idea to carry a good cordless drill Cordless drill, screw gun.

Now this is a great set here. It has both Allen insert bits in it. It has Torx bits in it, right through here. It has tamper-proof torx, which a lot of your home appliances, coffee makers, blenders and stuff say you've got a cord that goes bad. If you're handy enough, you've got a tamper-proof bit.

You can usually take the bottom of that off, fix your cord put it back together. And you've saved yourself about 30, 40 bucks. So that makes it not a temper . Right Okay. Yeah, you've got tri tips, which, oh a lot of handicap hardware uses the tray screw.

He it'll tighten one way. And the other way if you don't have that bit, you can't unscrew it. There's both extra or internal Torx bits. That's these guys here, they're very rare. But once in a while, you'll come across we've got a set of flats.

Square bits is something that in the trailer and RV industry or in the RV industry, they use a lot of square bits. They're fast for production. They line up they're tapered. So you can kind of hold the bit, but that's a nice complete set of a little bit of everything and they're all marked. And then you get Phillips on the top here And on the Phillips.

It's kind of deceiving. I don't know if you can see this, but on this what looks like a Phillips bit right in the middle. There's a little line. Well, that's not a Phillips. That's called pozi drive which there are certain screws called pozi drive.

And they usually have, they have little lines between the slots to tell you that it's a pozi drive screw tip. If you try to use a Phillips on it you're gonna end up spinning it out. And it doesn't hold. They're supposed to hold a little bit better than the Phillips. You've got a magnetic shank here.

You've got a 1/4" square to a 1/4" hex adapter. It's got a smaller quarter to quarter adapter. And then you've got a little wing nut tool for tightening small wing nuts but this is a nice handy set. Have you got everything you need for a screw gun And I got this at Harbor freight, so very, very easy to find something like this. All right, good.

Okay, let's go move into the, well, you got the drill bits and I've got another set here. Here's a set of just a small set of drill bits that would have to go into a they would fit into a 1/4" drill but just a nice little set of twist bits. Okay. And then this is some 1/4" sockets and other tips. I've got some extended square Philips and straightened Phillips.

And then I've got basically another set of Phillips and straight bits, torx bits and the foremost common sockets 1/4" ,5/16, 3/8 and 7/16. So that's a really nice those are pretty common fasteners for some like And those are nice to be able to put onto a screw gun Right And be able to take nuts off without having to get a socket or wrench and do it really fast. Okay, nice to have a set of both metric and SAL enriches. Most bicycles that you buy will have metric adjustments for the handlebars, for the seats, for the breaks. So that's a nice set to have for bicycles.

And we start to see some of these from mirrors too now I know velvet in the front has the Allen wrench to be able to adjust the mirror or loosen it up and adjust the mirror, okay. So we've got to set a metric and a set of SAEs. We'll get rid of this wire here. The other thing, while we're talking about electrical it's nice to have a multimeter. This will measure 10 amps AC, and it'll go up to 600 volts AC it'll measure, DC continuity and down check.

And one thing I like to do is I've got a couple of little Allen or alligator clips and I just take my crimper and pinch them down a little bit. Sometimes you have to stretch your leads apart and you wanna be able to read the gauge. Well, if you neck that down a little you can kind of work that over your end of your lead clamp that on one side and then go with your other side. So you can see your display Its actually extra set of hands. How many times you're trying to touch something on positive and negative or ohms.

And you're trying to see the Right. You have no place to set the meter this way. You can clamp it on. It's also an idea of a little bit of a this just some plastic wire. You can hang your meter onto something so that you can see that sometimes you don't have a place to sit or it's down to lower.

Your cables are too short so it's nice to have some little gadgets like that. Okay. Some good electrical tape. That's also good for the electrical flashlight. It's great to have flashlights, whether it's this this flashlight with a mirror telescoping, Okay, I'm gonna give them a little secret here.

You always hide this one. So show them your flashlight. He is pretty protective of his, his stools. I've used this flashlight a lot. I probably had it 6-7 years.

But you notice I've got some foam tape around the end of it. And there's times where I've been climbing in compartments or looking overhead and you need both hands with that foam tape, I hold my mouth and just go around. My hands are free. I can't talk very good, but That's a good thing. It's very, very handy.

I've seen guys with them on their hats that clip on their hats while I've got those too. I've had them on the sides of my glasses and it just seemed like having it right there. You can kind of position around right where you need it, right where you're focusing. Yep, well, and everybody has their choice. So if you know, you've got a lot of variety that you can put it on the hat, you can put it on the glasses, they have the bands, but that's kind of a unique little thing I've seen you use that.

I use that almost daily, that little razor knife. So that will take care of the flashlights. Tape measures and I seem to have say you got a new unit or you've got to use unit and you're going through it. You wanna see if you might have some furniture piece of furniture that you want to put in there, check it out make sure it'll fit. Have a notepad with you.

You've got a non-contact voltage tester. So you would just touch if you touch a live circuit and it's insulated, this will give you an indicator that it lit up and it'll glow so that you know, that circuit's live say you're doing some wiring and you'd not sure the breakers off you can verify that it is a dead circuit before Even a receptacle, a receptacle. Right You've got some of these that are hooked to GFC on the inside. Right. And you can just come here.

Tell that, that live. Sure. You know, if we trip this. Yup. Yup, so we can Just a nice, quick way to safely check a circuit without opening it up.

Leak detector solution. If you're doing any kind of appliance removal or inspecting you just wanna always check those connections. Anytime you move them. Or if you smell propane, just use the correct product. Don't use just soap and water.

You use like detector, okay. This is one of the handiest tools for 12 volt. It's a 12 volt test light. You can clip your lead to ground or you can click it to positive or clip it to positive and then find either your ground or your positive, depending on where this at. It will tell you a lot.

And it's a handy tool. You don't need to read it dial. It's not, it's durable. It's on or off, But this or invaluable. Yup, okay.

We got that. We'll get this out of the way. Couple of hammers this just happens to be a claw hammer. Say, you need a pry again, your fender off because it's rubbing on the tire. You've got a piece of loose metal from hitting a guardrail while you might have to do a little demo work.

And this is kind of a nice tool to have. So got a dead blow or sand hammer. None of them, nice thing about the dead blow too, is not just in your toolbox, but if you wanna put stakes down Oh sure In the ground, you're gonna hammer something in tent stakes, dog run those types of things. This is a nice hammer to, you're not gonna bend stuff up real bad. It's just sand or blow hammer inside and very inexpensive.

Okay, good, good. Now, a lot of people what they like to do is just take a regular leather man. This happens to be a craftsman version of it for the actual cutter. But I also like to take a good cutter like one of these, That's just a little raise knife that you can change out. Takes utility knife, blade, just like this or utility knife is a handy tool.

You wanna cut some cardboard up. Yep. Anything The reason I like this one here is it's, a lot easier to throw it in your pocket versus that if you're just going out and do a little bit of something and the clip here typically would just go right up on the top. Okay. And then this is just a little I don't know how many in one it is It's a puck wrench.

I got that at Harbor freight and I've seen him at O'Reilly auto parts. And I brought that all over the country with my cool tools. And it's got the SAN metric because it's got the rounded points to it. And you're gonna talk about that here in just a minute. Yep.

$2 and 94 cents. It's nice to have all of them in one place just to do a quick, handy little. Yep, it's not anything real heavy duty but you get a pretty good force on that. And you can also put, you know, if you want you stick a screwdriver through it and use it pry a little more force out of it. All right, let's talk about wrenches Well, we've got a battery cleaner, a little wire brush.

Now wrenches, there's a couple of different styles right here. This would be considered a 12 point wrench. Correct These are also 12 point wrenches. They're a combination, combination means they have an open end and a box end box end's going to give you more strength, more leverage. And the six point, and I don't, we don't have a six point socket here, but we do have a wrench but we do have a six point socket.

The trouble with six point wrenches is sometimes you're trying to get over a nut. That's maybe you only have 15 degrees to get on that nut. Well, with a 12 point, you might be able to go 10 degrees and you can't get that six point to go because Something on the way Yep, especially if you start getting underneath cabinets, sinks that The advantage of a six point, however is you're hitting all six sides of the fastener whether it be a bolt or a nut and years ago a company called Snap-on came out with a patent and trademark called flank drive. That patent has expired now. So everybody's using that technology.

But if you notice on this socket up in the corners, there's a slight radius. What that allows that socket to do on the six point or 12 point is rolled down a little bit and now it's pushing or pulling against the flat of the nut or the bolt and not right on the tip where people had a tendency of rounding off nuts and bolts. So flank drive, most tools have them nowadays. This is an older set of wrenches. It doesn't have them.

These are sharp corners pull up on these. I don't know if you can notice that but in the corners they're fairly sharp. And on the newer style, they've even gone to flank drive a little hard to see, but you can notice in those corners how they're kind of radius stout just a little bit again, so that it pulls. So they've done testing on that. I know Snap-on years ago would have demonstrations where they'd have a large nut lock tied down and you'd take a pipe on that wrench and start yanking.

And you would see where the non flank drive would strip out that bolt and the flank drive would actually break it loose. Okay. So that's the difference between wrenches and the same thing with your sockets, this a 1/2" set and depending on what kind of work you're gonna do if you're gonna be doing some heavy mechanical work you're probably gonna need a 1/2" drive set for the normal routine maintenance, of 3/8 set and a 1/4" drive set would probably be ample but these are the same. They would have a flank drive. 3/8 would be the typical quarter with the smaller ones.

Like we see here with this set, which is cut the smaller. And I guess one of the things that I would do also is check and see what type what size lug nut you have on the windows. Definitely. And this one here happens to this brave is on a workhorse chassis, I believe. And it has a one and 13/16s.

This one right here, I believe is. Yep, one and 13/16s, a tested. This is not an impact drive. So I wouldn't, use this but you would definitely wanna go and get one of these. Even if you don't change your own tires if you've got roadside assistance or you're going to call somebody to come and do it I would still carry the size.

I would find out what you got for your truck and your trailer, your motor home tow vehicle. Just make sure you have that handy with a breaker bar Right. Or, or some kind of a lug nut wrench and just make sure you have that available in case of emergency. And that's what you're gonna find out too is you start working on some of this stuff a little bit. You'll you'll see that, okay.

This wrench set may only go up to 1". I may need an inch and a 16th. In fact, if you have Atwood and Suburban are the two different water heaters one of them has a 7/8s, which I believe is Atwood. The other one has a one and 1/16th, which is the brass. So you would definitely wanna get a bigger socket probably not a wrench for the water heater, but just identifying what components you're gonna work on.

And what you know is this big enough. Yep, and another good size to have would be if you've got a like a blue ox type hitch or research any of those larger fasteners the ball joint on your tow vehicle you wanna make sure you've got a wrench, that fit that 'cause over time, those things can loosen up and it's, if that ball joint comes loose or your tow hitch comes loose. Yep. You're in trouble. Yep, one other thing I think is kind of important to have in here is a torque wrench too.

You can get those very inexpensive Harbor freight. I see that they've got different sizes for different, you know, the torque settings. But if I change a tire on a trailer, I go in and I tightened up and it's certain torque setting to start with but then 50 miles down the road, I'm supposed to retorque that or retest it same way with aluminum. If I have a tire blowout on a car and those aluminum rims, magnesium rims all of those, they recommend certain torque setting but then check them recheck certain miles down the road. So that's a good thing to have.

Just you can do that. This would be our 3/8 drive set and 1/4". So that's a nice, and any more, these sets are getting so inexpensive. It's kind of nice to have everything in one place. And you'll find that you, might have to might wanna have a small bag.

That's just got all your electrical stuff in it. Another bag that's got your socket wrench sets in it another bag that might have your screwdrivers and pliers in it just to make it handy so that when you're out there under the unit and you want some help from the misses, you say, honey, I need my bag, right? Yeah. But it makes it You make them different colors. You've got black, we've got red Tendency to stay married longer one Better communication.

You bet and that's what it's about. This is one last tool here. This magnetizer D magnetizer and sometimes you're trying to do something when you don't want the tip to be magnetic. And sometimes you might want to have it be magnetized. So on the magnetizer D magnetizer I'm gonna magnetize this and all that does is puts the light The molecules in line and the metals Gets them all linear Instead of paid attention to that in school.

And that one's might be an aluminum one. Let's see if we get, No Okay. We've magnetized that? And so if you had a small slotted screw that you were trying to get into resets, that would be a good point to do that times when you wouldn't want it magnetizes. I don't know when Well, if you, if you bring it down into a real tight place where you've got a lot of metal around and you want you want it to get just to that screw, Right.

And it's gonna go to the other sides of it, throw it in your toolbox. You don't wanna it to stick to all the other stuff. Right And That's pretty, there's not much to it just, you're just changing the molecular structure of the molecules inside the screwdriver Yep, and that I got that one at O'Reilly auto parts and I've used it quite a bit. So Now their handy thing would be to have assortment of zip ties just for tying stuff down. Okay, and then the last thing, this one I think more, if your truck and trailer this happens to be an infrared thermometer and all it does is hit the back here.

We can kinda see We're at a, we'll get down to 77 degrees. And what I use this for is when we're going down the road and we stopped in the middle of the day to get fuel go out and just tech test the hub test the brake drum, test the tire, on a let's say it's 70 degrees out. It's not uncommon for that hub to be running about 90 degrees. But if it shoots up in the 130, 140 I know those bearings are starting to get hot and probably need to be repacked. And they're a lot cheaper to repack them.

Right? When you're in the shop then you're on the side of the road. And very inexpensive. You can get it at just about any home improvement stores but anytime you need to test what temperature is somewhere Right? That's a great piece to have.

The last few things I think are very important would be to have some paper towels. These are some wet wipes GOJO and gloves, both gloves will protect your hands from heat gloves to protect your hands from chemicals, and Yeah, and in fact, you'll find the seasoned rver we'll have about four or five different types of gloves. He's got the neoprene ones, seven mil five mil or seven mil. So they don't rip real well, but they'll also have a real good, heavy duty rubber ice set from dumping. I've seen him with leather gloves for the hot like hot mitts for taking care of the fireplace if you're cooking outside.

Yup, yup. So a good setup, good set of gloves. These are kind of nice they're rubberized. So you don't get the moisture and stuff in but you do get a good grip. So again, this is a, probably a little more than just your basic, but it gives you some good ideas.

So you can even go through and decide, yes, I do need these. And these will help do these different projects, Right. Customize your own. And then once you start getting into a little more, more, a little more electrical there's some other things that we can get into but a good basic kit is very important to have in case you have issues or just wanna work on something or use it as a hobby, Right.