What to pack in my tool box? (EFI fixes)

[petew]

So with the car running again, I'm trying to tie up loose ends. One of them was putting my tool box back in the car. I've got the usually assortment of spanners, zipties, tape, rags, gloves, poncho, LED torch, emergency light, screw drivers, etc. I used to carry sparkplugs and points, but with EFI, I'm wondering what to carry instead.

What do you guys have in your toolboxes?

[Chip Birks]

Umm, i have a cell phone. Probably should carry a few more tools with me. Though at this point, if I have a failure, its not gonna be something of the basic tune-up nature, there isn't a whole lot to do outside of valve adjusts and oil changes. If its much beyond that, it would be considered a catastrophic failure. A tool bag won't fix that on the side of the road.

[Clonebug]

On my 3500 mile trip I took a Voltmeter, some mini fuses for the relay board, regular fuses for the other fuse boxes, a screwdriver that fit the relay board screws, some wire, connectors, a few sockets and wrenches and made sure my AAA towing was active in my insurance policy.
If long distance make sure you can access your ECU with a phone or laptop to change a tune if needed.

Otherwise.....make sure you built it well and you will have no more problems than a regular car.

[Piledriver]

I'd be more concerned about the std mechanicals and electrics if the EMS is installed right.

...Current AAA Premium+ RV, a set of jumper cables and a towstrap.
(The latter two I have yet to use on my own vehicles, knock wood)

If I was going to drive to Chicago tomorrow...

Open element sensors can break due to vibration, I lost one at ~60K miles that was installed stuck in the air cleaner.
(some are not made well, and you cant tell how they died unless you dissect them... they should be epoxy filled past the solder joints on the legs of the actual sensor IMHO for strain relief)

If you can run TS you can limit a bad sensors effect, other than the crank sensor.
I use the same open element sensor for MAT and CLT.

One tuning option is make sure -40F is set to somewhere in the midrange for CLT and MAT, in case it fails open, it will fall back to a sanish value. Same might help for the max value bin.
That way you can temp fix a bad sensor by simply unplugging it.

If running MS3 you can even set up "limp" modes for fallback to alpha-N if the MAP sensor craps out etc.

If fully paranoid, depending on your setup, a full set of spare essential sensors (MAP/MAT/CLT and whatever you are using for timing) are probably under $50 (shop hard or junkyard) and tiny, although the replacement of a MAP sensor argues for an external GM sensor.
The car will likely run fine with a borken TPS, but your idle logic may not.

[petew]

Or you could use all your spares to put MS on another car too.

[Clonebug]

It will run pretty good without an IAT sensor........I did it for a couple weeks when mine decided to get ingested by the engine.

[petew]

It will run pretty good without an IAT sensor........I did it for a couple weeks when mine decided to get ingested by the engine.

Reading that made me feel a little sick.

[Clonebug]

It never hurt anything that I can see.
It was the open element sensor and the tiny wire inside went for a ride.

[petew]

That's a relief.