Mechanical Tips For a Self Drive Trip in Rwanda

Every car rental client’s dream is hiring a reliable car. But preparing for unforeseen circumstances is essential for having a memorable trip. Sometimes due to negligence or the age of the vehicle; both minor and major breakdowns tend to happen. But if some little mechanical tips, you can fix a few things by yourself without need to call a mechanic. Here are some of the basic mechanical tips for a Self Drive Trip in Rwanda.

Ask For Jumper Cables

It is very possible for a car rental agency to deliver you a car with a working battery and even when you check for the battery expiry date, you would find that the battery is barely a year old. Unfortunately, sometimes a battery can still break down even before its expected tenure. It is at this point that jumper cables can come to your rescue. In case the battery gets flat in a strange location, if you have jumper cables, someone car easily help out.

Check Battery Terminals In case the car cannot Start

Driving offroad sometimes gets the battery terminals to loosen up. Sometimes you could be driving and the car out of the blue loses power and all the electronic go off. At first glance, it might seem like a serious mechanical issue but most of the times, it is merely loose battery terminals.

Tightening up the battery terminals would get everything up running again. It is important to note that for most of the cars, the battery is under the bonnet. You will have to open the bonnet to access the battery.

However you will need some tools to ensure that you tighten up the battery terminals and this brings us to our next point. Asking for battery fasteners.

Carry Pliers and Battery Spanners

Batteries are often fixed using 10, 12, 13 or 14mm nuts. Therefore you should ask the carry rental agency to deliver the car with 10mm, 12mm, 13mm, and 14mm spanners to ensure that you can tighten the battery terminals in case they get lose during your trip.

Pliers come in handy in case you wish to fasten something that you lack a fitting spanner to work on.

Take  A “Fix a flat spray”

It is not common to get any serious punctures on a self drive trip in Rwanda. Most of the punctures are minor. They can be fixed with a fix a flat spray. Instead of getting dirty trying to change to a spare tyre more so on a rainy morning, you can simply use a fix a flat spray and have the tire fixed in just a couple of minutes.

Car rental agencies do  not often offer their cars with a fix a flat spray. Therefore it would be wise to buy one in your home country and come with it on your self drive trip in Rwanda.

You cannot Check Engine Oil Levels When The Engine Is Hot

It is very easy to intentionally or unintentionally get scammed when someone offers to sell you engine oil for topping up. Sometimes when you drive to a gas station, someone can offer to check whether the engine levels are fine, unfortunately, the reading is always wrong if you check the oil levels while the engine is still hot.

Therefore someone out of ignorance would be right to ask to top up your engine oil. It is therefore wise to check the service tags once the car is delivered to you to ensure that all fluids were checked before the car started the trip.

With the above few Mechanical Tips For a Self Drive Trip in Rwanda, you will have a safe and smooth Rwanda self drive holiday.