Sterlin carries only basic recovery equipment. Any major accident or car failure is probably going to need assistance from the locals. The hope is that the locals are pretty damn good at towing vehicles out of ditches or back to the nearest town to be repaired. Even so, makes sense to carry the following:-
- Spare wheel mounted on the rear door with tires and rims matching those installed on the other four wheels. We are expecting a lot of tire damage but do not want the hassle of carrying two spare tires. We carry a tire puncture repair kit so we can make repairs along the way.
- Hydraulic bottle jack and wheel nut wrench originally supplied with the vehicle.
- 48 inch High Lift jack and wheel lifting attachment.
- Two tow ropes complete with hooks.
- 60 inch medium duty PSP aluminium sand ladders. The expectation is the sand ladders will be used mostly for crossing ditches and not for recovery from sand.
- Small shovel.
- Satellite Phone. Not entirely sure who we are going to ring, but might be useful to coordinate repairs when one person is with the car and the other is going off to get help.
- Regulatory breakdown equipment including two high visibility vests, a warning triangle and some roadside chemical lights. These items are useful in avoiding over-jealous police officers trying to exact money from us.
- Minimal toolkit and spare parts. Let’s face it, it is unlikely we will be able to carry out any significant roadside repair beyond changing a wheel or patching a radiator hose. A separate blog entry is dedicated to tools and spares carried and why we are taking them.
- Snow chains. Not sure if we will ever encounter snow, but just in case.
Excluded from the recovery equipment is a winch. We feel adding a winch is an overkill. And after reading many blogs by overland adventurers, it seems like people rarely use their winch. The high lift jack of course can act as a winch if it comes to that.
