12 Must-Have Tools For Your RV | Ep. 37

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Have you ever run into a problem and realize, you REALLY needed a particular tool to get out of that jam, but you’d never really considered buying one prior?

Today’s episode is focused on the underrated tools you may not know you need until you need them – and by giving you our top picks we’ll hopefully help you avoid the tears, alcohol consumption and relationship stress that crops up when things go awry.

If you think this sounds familiar, we did talk about some handy items on our Top 10 RV Essentials episode, but this one focuses specifically on the tools you need when you need them.

This may not be the sexiest episode we’ve ever done, but it might ave your relationship…and that’s kind of sexy, no?

12 Underrated RV Tools You Should Always Have Onboard

1. Small Adjustable Wrench
   • Compact, palm-sized wrench for tight spaces.
2. Socket for Power Jack
   • Essential for manually raising/lowering the trailer if the power jack fails.
3. Socket Set for Hitch Components
   • For tightening and adjusting hitch nuts and bolts.
4. Drill Attachment for Stabilizing Jacks
   • Speeds up raising and lowering stabilizing jacks.
5. WD-40
   • Multipurpose lubricant for squeaky parts, rusty bolts, and general maintenance.
6. Channel Lock Pliers (Two Sets)
   • Useful for gripping irregular shapes, tightening fittings, and avoiding leaks.
7. Spare Drain Caps
   • For low-point drains and water systems; prevents water loss and stress.
8. Wrench for Hot Water Tank Plug
   • Correct-sized wrench for safely draining the hot water tank.
9. Battery-Powered Headlamps (Multiple)
   • For nighttime fixes, roadside emergencies, or reading without disturbing others.
10. Booster Cables
    • Reliable cables to jump-start your battery or assist fellow RVers.
11. Ratchet Straps
    • Versatile for securing loads, quick repairs, or stabilizing in windy conditions.
12. Shop Towels
    • Durable and absorbent for cleaning and wiping in emergencies.

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Bonus Items

• Spare Trailer Keys
  • Store a set outside the trailer in a secure location.
• Reliable Roadside Assistance
  • Ensure coverage for your tow vehicle and RV (e.g., CAA RV Plus).

These tools are inexpensive but invaluable when things go wrong. Happy travels!

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Transcript

Tool you realized you needed when your are being tripped, went off the rails that you never would have considered otherwise on today’s show, we’re giving our list of the 12 most underrated, but really smart tools. You should have onboard your RV at all times. Hello everyone. And welcome to the RV connects podcast, where we deliver our best travel tips, planning, advice, and stories for traveling north America as weekend warriors in your RV. From the distinct point of view of a Canadian family on the go I’m Molina. And I am joined by my co-host and husband, Dan. Hello, and we of course, are the RV connects. This is episode 37. If you’re new to the show, be sure to follow us on Facebook or instagram@rvconnectsordropusalinebyemailathelloatrvconnects.com.

1

00:00:53

That’s RV C a N U C K s.com. We love connecting with you and your adventures and always welcome show ideas or listener feedback. If you’ve been listening for a while, you may be thinking, wait haven’t they talked about this before, and the answer would be no. And a little bit. Yes. So way back in episode seven, we gave you our top 10 RV essentials, which covered a few tools, but also touched on must have cooking organizational and maintenance items that make your life easier to date. It is by far and large, our most popular episode. So if you haven’t found it yet, you’ll definitely want to go back and give that one a listen. But today on episode 37, we are focusing more on those wallflower items.

1

00:01:36

So those underrated tools, you may not know you need until you need them. And by giving you our top picks will hopefully help you avoid the tears, alcohol consumption and relationship stress that crops up when things go awry. So Dan, who knows a thing or two about marital stress at the camp site is going to take it away.

2

00:01:58

Marital stress at the camp site, we’ve had our good friend to Oliver pull up his lawn chair to, to watch us get set up with a, with a drink in hand, just cause he thinks it’s that much fun. You mean watch us duke it out, duke it out. So my number one tool on the list, and this is the tool that started my idea for this podcast. And it’s the most exciting wrench ever. It’s a small adjustable wrench. And I don’t mean small in the sense that the size of nut that it can handle. I mean, small in the handle. So most of your adjustable wrenches are probably 12 inch handle. And on this one, I’d say you want something that’s probably three and a half, four inches long that fits in the Palm of your hand. And of course with the trailer, it’s not that everything breaks where it’s easy to get at.

2

00:02:38

And so this wrench makes it really easy to get into tight spots and turn nuts and bolts and all those kinds of things when something breaks. And so it’s the fact that it’s really small your hand that lets you get into tight spots

1

00:02:50

As a parent measure your children’s hands. Because usually unfortunately the smallest child in our family gets put into tight situations sometimes with tools because they have the smallest hand to get in whatever cramped spot we have, but it teaches them, you know, like lefty Lucy, righty, tidy and, and teaches them how to use tools at a young age.

2

00:03:10

Girls do more than just hold the flashlight. Yeah. So this, this wrench, you know, you’re probably going to use it a lot. I even use it around the house a lot and I actually keep this one in the drill bag. I’m a thrifty person and I don’t like to spend money where I don’t need to, unless it’s on fishing Lewers, he’s Scottish. So I keep this one in the drill bag because the drill bag comes into the house when we’re done camping. And it goes back into the truck when we’re about to go camping in the trailer. So I always have it with me. The next thing I would suggest that you make sure you have as a socket for your power Jack. So on the tongue of your trailer, if you have a power Jack, there is a method to manually raise and lower your Jack. If the Jack completely fails. And the most likely case that it’s going to fail is because your battery’s dead.

2

00:03:53

You’ve blown a fuse. You can’t get it to go up and down, but if there’s some other kind of mechanical failure or that battery’s dead, that fuses blown and you can’t fix it, at least you have a socket to raise and lower your trailer. And that’s really going to save you. There would be nothing worse than pulling into the campsite and not being able to get your trailer off the hitch. The other thing I would add to that is have yourself a socket set. That’s going to fit the nuts and bolts of your hitch. And so the easy way to do this is hopefully you’ve already got that socket in the tool kit that you keep, that we told you about previously, but go out and make sure that you have a socket or wrench that’s going to fit those hitch components. Because there are going to be times where something’s going to look loose and you want to tighten it up or you run into some kind of problem and you can probably fix that pretty easily.

2

00:04:37

And so for us, the, we pulled into a campground and the driveway entrance was rather shallow. The hitch bottomed out that knocked the sway bars off the trailer that dislodged or loosened the bolts that held that sway bar to the trailer. And so I had to tighten them up. It was a real easy fix. I just had to go around to the other side of the trailer, look how it was set up, go back to my side, make sure it was set up in an identical facts, fashion, and then tighten it up. But it’s something that’s really easy to save and not have to wait around for a tow truck or a mobile RV repair. So that’s a socket for your power Jack and a socket for your hitch components. Going along with sockets and wrenches, I would get an attachment that goes onto your drill cordless drill so that you can raise and lower your stabilizing jacks on your trailer, much more quickly than if you have to do it by hand.

2

00:05:26

And so this one just came to mind this time, because of course I took the girls out for a short three night midweek camping trip, and I had forgot the drill bag and they made me turn around pretty quickly and go back and get the drill bag. Cause that’s also where we keep the socket that raises and lowers the stabilizing jacks because you know, they do hold more than just the flashlight and they knew that their job was going to be to raise and lower those stabilizing jacks.

1

00:05:48

Okay. But at the end of the day, I would put this one further down on the list because it really doesn’t take that long to lower them manually. And I heard it about it for days when I took them out on a solo trip and we did not have the drill bag and so they could not raise and lower them automatically. And they whined and complained and I poured myself a drink and sat there and watched them whine and complain because these kids, these days don’t understand what hard work is.

2

00:06:17

Yeah. You can get away without it, but it’s going to make your life a whole lot easier, especially if you’re the one who has to do the stabilizing jacks, if it’s your kids and Hey, you could probably cheap out on this one, the next one’s pretty inexpensive. And you know, the first three were inexpensive as well. I just keep a can of WD 40 around. It’s great for oiling up to squeaky parts, your stabilizing jacks, your bikes, your hitch components. You need to loosen something, you know, a rusty bolt, something like that. It’s just handy to have that around. And it’s something that’s really inexpensive that you can just kind of throw in your tool bag. Fifth thing on the list is channel lock pliers. And so I keep two sets of channel lock pliers in there. The reason I do that is sometimes you got to get in on something that’s rounded over bolt.

2

00:06:59

It’s not quite a bolt, but it needs to be tightened. A fitting needs to be pulled and you need to grip on both ends of it. And channel lock pliers, let you put on lots of pressure to an irregular bolt type face, and either tighten, loosen, pull it apart, whatever it needs to be done. But two of those I find are really, really handy. I actually started carrying those when you know, our drain caps for the water system started to kind of wear out, need to be tightened up a little bit. And so I used both of those to tighten it up, to avoid any leaks in the system, but I found lots of uses for them as well. And to kind of go along with that spare drain caps. And I don’t know if it’s because they wiggle off for people. Don’t remember where they put them, but your drain caps that go on your low point, drains your hot water tank on your water system.

2

00:07:41

It’s always good to have a couple of spares of those around because there’s not a lot of other things that you can use to improvise in the meantime. And so you don’t want to have to show up and be short, a whole load of water for your whole camping trip because you don’t have

1

00:07:53

Them. Well, I think they do tend to come off like, well, we go on fairly long road trips and we’ve lost our water cap for the low point drain the fresh water twice. I think over the course of the six years that we’ve had this trailer. And it’s just nice to know. I went out in the spring while I was winterizing the trailer by myself when Dan was away and I could not find for the life of me the low point drain cap, which had been taken off when we winterized. However, we did have a spare in the underbelly of the trailer in a container where we keep other various, you know, odds and sods of tools. And I found an extra cap and I put that on so that when I was filling up the fresh water tank drain or the freshwater tank to sanitize it, it wasn’t just pouring out on the ground at me.

1

00:08:40

And I did end up finding the original one later in my travels. However, it just saved a whole lot of headache and a whole lot of stress, knowing that there was a second one available to me in the trailer. And then I just took the one that I had found that was the original. And I put it in that tool kit that we have in the underbelly. And it’s there, if this one should ever fail or

2

00:09:01

Yep. And this is a really easy upgrade, a little hack, and you’re not going to get any big credit for it. But when you got your trailer from the dealership or from the factory, it had a very simple cap that went on there and that’s fine. That has become our spare somewhere along the way. I picked up the deluxe model of cap and inside that cap, there’s a little seal inside. It not just provides a little bit of extra seal on it when you’re tightening and loosening that cap. And those are the ones to ask for when you go to the dealership and they’re not a, they’re not a ton of money, but Hey, if you’re going to go and buy one, that’s probably where I’d spend the extra 50 cents to get the better one going along with the water system. Maybe something that we don’t think about a lot, your hot water tank is going to have a plug that lets you drain the water out of it.

2

00:09:42

And if you’re going to put your trailer into storage for a couple of weeks, you’re not going camping, or maybe you just want to reduce your weight load going down the road. Having that wrench handy to pull that plug in and out is, is going to be a nice to have tool because it’s often located in an area where you’re not going to be able to squeeze in a set of pliers and, and in our case it’s plastic. So I don’t want to mash it with pliers or the wrong size wrench to try and get it off because that’s eventually just going to round it down. So, you know, probably could have a whole discussion on how to drain your system and sanitize it when to drop your hot water tank. But needless to say, I just keep a wrench in the trailer just for draining the hot water tank. And you know, again, it’s just making sure you have the right tool for the right nut bolt plug that you want to remove or tighten for

1

00:10:29

Sure. The next item on our list is a bit of a repeat see from episode seven. And the reason it’s on here again is because it is literally the number one thing that I say, if you only had one item to pick that you would tell new RV years or campers to bring with it’s this and that is a battery powered headlight.

2

00:10:47

Yep. And I say, not Elvin, I’d say don’t have just one have two or three, because two or three in a couple of strategically located areas is going to let two people work on a job. Maybe one’s inside, one’s outside. Maybe you’re under the trailer trying to fix something at the side of the road and it’s the evening and the person that’s kind of making sure you’re not going to get smoked by the cars has got one in their hand to kind of use the Blinky function to let cars know that you’re there. So having two or three is not a bad idea. So if you’re the chief tool officer and your family go out there right now with my permission and buy yourself a couple of fancy headlamps,

1

00:11:24

I would say for the amount of small areas that I’ve had to stick my head into in, in our trailer to solve problems that headlamp has paid for itself in spades. We all actually also use them for reading at night around the fire or just in bed, you know, just so we’re kind of keeping the light down for anybody else who might want to sleep. But you know, when we had ants in the trailer one time in California and they were those teeny tiny little pavement ants, those really small ones. And we were trying to find out where they were coming in. So I had to stick my head like underneath the shower, because that’s actually where they were coming up. And I had to unscrew the access panel underneath the shower and stick my head in there. We’ve had other times where the tap got left on very briefly, but we needed to make sure that all the water that had overflowed the bathroom sink had exited the trailer appropriately as to not cause any damage.

1

00:12:14

And we’ve had to use headlamps for that. We’ve had fuses blow and we haven’t had light in the trailer and it’s been at night and we have had to open the panel. It just, it’s an invaluable tool.

2

00:12:25

Yep. This one probably. I don’t think we see this get used as much as it might have in the past with kind of gadgets on cars and the likelihood that you leave your headlights on decreases a lot. I just keep a set of booster cables in the truck underneath the seat, out of sight, out of mind, hopefully you don’t even need to use it for yourself, but at least you’ve got a set of booster cables to be a good Samaritan and help somebody out in the campground or heaven forbid you needed. At least you’ve got a set that you can get boosted because if you’ve ever had to ask anybody for a boost, their number one excuses, I don’t have cables. And if you say I’ve got the cables, you know, you’ve taken away a good chunk of the reason why they can’t help you. So, you know, not really expensive, doesn’t have to be the deluxe model, but something you can just throw underneath the seat and you’ll be glad that you have it for the one time that you need it.

2

00:13:12

For sure. Number 10 on the list is ratchet straps. And it’s a bit of a repeat CS from previous episodes, but ratchet straps have a lot of different uses. Whether your wife makes a surprise trip to an antique dealership and you need to bungee cord something down, or whether you hit a random deer in the middle of the road and that knocks the bikes off the back. It lets you make a quick repair at the side of the road or a quick securing of a much love that antique. And it’s really handy. I’m not a big fan of bungee cords to secure a load. I think bungee cords for me, actually. I really remember when bungee cords came out, my dad was over the moon in the 1980s. And so of course I’m dating myself, but now that we have these ratchet straps, they’re easy to get.

2

00:13:53

They’re not terribly expensive. I think ratchet straps are good for providing the security to the load. If you need to something to stop it from rattling, then maybe that’s a spot for bungee cords, but I would not rely on bungee cords to keep something secure to the vehicle, the truck, the trailer, inside a room. And I would give

1

00:14:08

An example of this when it comes to our trip to pancake bay, when we had the pop-up trailer and we had a beautiful site right on lake superior. And if anybody has camped or driven through or seen lake superior, the winds that come off that lake are absolutely fierce. And unfortunately it was wreaking havoc on our awning, on the pop-up trailer and to maintain the integrity of the awning. We actually had to strap the awning to the truck, right? Like we parked the truck as a windbreak in front of the trailer or in front of the awning. And then we had to strap our manual awning. It wasn’t one of these, you know, automatic things that we have now, but we had to strap the awning to the truck so that it wouldn’t blow away.

1

00:14:49

And if we had had cords like good luck, it never would have happened, but we luckily had ratchet straps and it was a really, really good solution. And it helped us avoid an awning being ripped off. But we did need the awning cause it was, you know, whether required it, but there’s, there’s no place where you won’t find a need for a ratchet strap. I think

2

00:15:08

Know some people can get intimidated by ratchet straps. That can be a little confusing on how to work. And you know, it kind of can be a little bit frustrating. I think once you figure it out, it’s not too bad. Cause I’m a guy who, if you don’t know knots tie lots. But if I figured it out, I think everybody else can figure it out. I’m sure you can go onto YouTube and see a video of how to make them work. The thing I would tell you is, listen, you can buy a pack of bungee cords, but I’ve never seen a package of bungee cords. Tell you what they’re rated for in terms of weight. And you can get bungee cords that are, pardon me. You can get ratchet straps for 500 pounds, a thousand pounds. So pick an assortment to fit what you need to do. And I think you’ll be satisfied with it.

1

00:15:46

And pro tip, if you like to antique is we have sets of racks or straps that we keep in the trailer for obvious reasons. But I also snuck a few pairs and I put them underneath the seat in the back of the truck. So when we’re unhitched from the trailer and we happen to find a beautiful dresser are more, what have you at an antique shop? And Dave says, oh, sorry, we can’t. The ratchet straps are in the trailer. And it’s kind of like the booster cable thing. I just say, well, guess what? We have two sets underneath the seat. We’re bringing this baby home.

2

00:16:14

Well, I guess I’m going to have to go clean up the truck. This weekend. Number 11 on our list is nuts or wing nuts, preferably that secure your cables to the battery and the trailer. And if you’re taking care of your battery for your trailer properly at the end of a weekend or the end of a trip, you take the battery out of the trailer, you bring it home and you put it on a slow trickle charge and you make sure that it doesn’t go dead. What I would say is, Hey, nuts and bolts are small little things. And in this case, having an extra set of wing nuts or an extra set of bolts can be really handy on the off chance that you forget them, that the kids take them off that for whatever reason they go missing, you don’t want to have to be backed up just about ready to put the battery in and hook up for the weekend at your storage yard to find out that you forgot the nuts or the wing nuts wing nuts are actually your preferred model.

2

00:17:00

You know, this is, I don’t even know if this is a $5 purchase, but what it lets you do is tighten them up really securely, just finger tight with your hands, as opposed to having to get a wrench or something else to hold it on with a traditional type nut. And then the last thing is number 12. And I don’t know what’s going on in our family here, but there’s shop towels and there’s rags. And we seem to be going through a lot of shop towels around our house for one reason or another, whether we’re cleaning stuff up or we’re working on projects, having a set of shop towels in the truck about the size of paper towels. I, it, I think is handy and I’m not a big fan of rags because the rag is dirty and it’s irregular. And for very absorbent, not absorbent, it’s usually somebody’s old soccer t-shirt and Hey, it’s not an ideal thing for cleaning stuff down, wiping it down.

2

00:17:47

When you maybe really do need to get clean paper, towels might not be sturdy. They’re certainly not going to stand up. If you have to leave them in the truck for several months, they’re inevitably going to get some kind of moisture into them. Shop towels are as durable or more durable than a rag. They’re more durable than a paper towel. And you know, that that shop towel was going to be clean when you need to use it. I would say

1

00:18:08

We should probably buy stocks and shop tells them what ones, because our entire family is just a group of walking disasters and we’re constantly making messes. So yeah, I would say that is definitely a good one to hit.

2

00:18:20

You know what, at the end of the day, you’re going to have used one of the first 11 tools your marriage may or may not be on the line at this point, you’re going to want to clean yourself up and you’re going to need a shop towel and a wet one to do that. So that’s why that’s on the list. It’s the thing you never think of until you absolutely need it. And you know, it’s just going to wrap up a job a whole lot easier and at least hopefully raise your morale just a little,

1

00:18:41

Can I give two bonus items? Sure. One’s a tool and one’s technically not a tool, but it’s kind of a tool. So I would say if I would add two bonus items of my own choosing, I would say spare trailer keys for your trailer. And perhaps, maybe one of those like hidden Mount things where you stick it to the frame of the trailer. However you want to do it, make sure you have a spare set of keys cut, and they are stored somewhere outside of the inside of your trailer. And aside from that, I would say ensuring that you have a reliable roadside service. So a lot of these tools, whether it’s, you know, our episode seven, where we talk about some of the staff, whether it’s this episode, you know, a lot of these things will, will help you avoid some of these long waits, but at the end of the day, if you really need roadside roadside service, you want to make sure it’s appropriate for not just your tow vehicle, but for your RV as well.

1

00:19:30

So there’s tons of options out there. We have CAA RV plus because it works for us. It works all over north America. You can use it as triple a in the states and it’s been great, but there’s a, there’s a lot of different, you know, versions out there. But I would say for anybody who thinks that, you know, a hundred dollars a year is a waste of money or, you know, $150 a year, whatever it is, it will pay back in spades when you’re sitting on the side of the road and you actually need help. Absolutely.

2

00:19:57

Because I think that was probably be the feeling would be more worse than the feeling of not having the tool that you could do to fix the problem yourself. But if you don’t have the tool to fix it yourself, at least you’ve got somewhere to get you away for the night and get your family off the road, safe and sound and figured out in the morning. Right.

1

00:20:14

For sure. That is episode 37. Those are underrated tools as always, if there are other tools that you have found that you just cannot leave home without, or you have some hilarious stories about times when you’ve maybe needed things and didn’t have them on the road, be sure to reach out and let us know. And we will read them on a future episode.

2

00:20:35

I really hope everybody can kind of shoot a note if they disagree with us. Because I feel like right now somebody is sitting in their car to think, and that I’m right out to lunch, but I’d really like to hear what other people’s ideas are out there. And I also don’t want this to scare anybody away from tackling a problem to fix it. If you don’t know how to fix it. And that’s okay, that’s cool. But at least you have the tool. You never know. There might be somebody in the campground that can help you as long as you’ve got the tool. So these are really inexpensive. And so you have my permission to go out on Saturday morning down to Canadian tire and pick up these tools that you absolutely. All right.

1

00:21:07

Well said, Dan, so that is it for us as always reach out to us on Instagram, Facebook, and check out our website@rvconnects.com. And we will catch up with you again in a few weeks when we will be on our great Canadian road trip. It’s going to be awesome. Talk to you later, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.