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About Cars More Things to Carry in Your Car If your spare is worn beyond belief, most garages will sell you a not-too-hideous secondhand tire at a low price. Make sure that it's the right size. ? Lug wrench: A lug wrench is sometimes provided, along with a ja new cars (see Figure 2-20). You use it to remove the wheel or lug n when you change your tires. If you buy a lug wrench, get the cross kind, which gives you more leverage. ? Jumper cables: One of the most common automotive malfunctions the loss of power to start it, either from an old or faulty battery or leaving the headlights on by mistake. If you're in this situation, you either wait for the AAA or a nearby garage to come and bail you ou if you're in a safe, well-populated area, you can stop a passing car, out your jumper cables (shown in Figure 2-21), attach them in seco and "jump a start" from the Good Samaritan's car to your own. Mos people are willing to lend their cars to this sort of operation becau they lose nothing but a few minutes of their time, but it's up to you decide whether you want to risk getting car-jacked if the Good Sam turns out to be a devil in disguise. Chapter 21 has instructions for t proper way to jump a start. You can buy a set of jumper cables for much less than you'd have t a garage to send someone to start your car. Good cables cost more because they have more strands of better-conducting wire, which 1 more "juice" flow between the vehicles with less loss of voltage. Sometimes the success or failure of an attempt to jump a start depends on the quality of the jumper cables and their grips. If you get a cheap set, here's an easy way to make them work better: Go under the plastic sheath that covers the place where the cables meet the grips and squeeze the connection tight with a pair of pliers. Doing so improves the connection, and sometimes the cheap set of cables works beautifully - at least for the first few times. The best way to stay out of trouble is to pay a little extra for a quality set of cables. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17

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