Tool Review: FineAuto Products 31 Piece Roadside Emergency Kit

It's always a good idea to be prepared. Keeping tools in your home helps you prepare for emergency repairs that might need to be made.  Similarly, keeping tools in your car or truck can help you be prepared for an auto emergency. When you're stranded on the side of the road and the closest tow truck can't get there for an hour or two, it's nice to know you have some tools on hand for small repairs.

You obviously can't keep every tool you'd like to have in your trunk, but a small, simple tool kit like the FineAuto Products 31 piece roadside emergency kit is much better to have than nothing at all when your car breaks down. This kit does not take up much space, and it only costs about $10 at BigLots (though it sells for $20 or more online).

The FineAuto Products kit includes a variety of tools that could be useful to have at various times. There are two screwdrivers (one slotted, one Phillips), a nut driver with nine different bits, a pair of slip joint pliers, some spare fuses and electrical terminals, a tire pressure gauge, and a pair of cloth gloves. Perhaps most useful of all, the kit includes a set of jumper cables.

These tools are not top-of-the-line, but they will get the job done. The slip joint pliers are made of very thin metal and the nut controlling the tension tends to loosen, but it can easily be tightened again. The nut driver bits don't fit perfectly on the nut driver, but they fit well enough for normal usage, and they won't fall off unless you really try to knock them off. The bits are standard quarter-inch bits and can be used with a quarter-inch socket wrench.

There are four common fuses in the kit, which are nice to have on hand, and some electrical tape along with the spare terminals, so if you're comfortable working with wires you should be able to fix most small wiring problems — at least temporarily, if not permanently.

This kit is certainly not comprehensive, but it contains a lot of useful tools and parts that you'll be happy to have when you need them. This kit gets 2.5 out of 5 stars.  For 10 bucks or so, it's a decent kit to throw in your trunk and forget about until you need it.  It's probably not worth the $20 or $25 it would cost online ($26.99 at Amazon.com right now).  For the same price, you should be able to find a better tool kit.

(Originally posted on Helium.com, February 2013)