Quick answer: Before a long drive, check tyres (pressure, tread and the spare), engine oil, coolant, brake fluid, brakes, battery, lights and wipers. Allow a week not the night before so there's time to fix whatever you find.
Most highway breakdowns aren't sudden failures. They're small problems that were already there, pushed past their limit by six hours of sustained running. A tyre that's fine around town fails at 120 km/h in August heat. A battery that starts your car every morning gives up 300 km from home.
The checklist below takes about an hour.
Key Takeaways
- Check tyre pressure cold, before driving — hot tyres read falsely high
- Use the door-jamb placard figure, not the number on the tyre sidewall
- Check the spare too. Spares lose pressure sitting unused, and most people discover this at the roadside
- Brake fluid matters more than people think on mountain descents old fluid boils and brakes fade
- Heat kills car batteries faster than cold does, which makes Pakistani summers harder on them than European winters
- Start a week early. Finding a problem is only useful if there's time to fix it
Why You Should Check Your Car Before a Long Road Trip
Daily driving is forgiving. Short trips, moderate speeds, and you're never far from home or a workshop.
A long drive removes all three cushions. Sustained high speed generates heat that city driving never does in tyres, in the engine, in the brakes. A fully loaded car weighs several hundred kilos more than usual, which changes how it steers, stops and sits on its suspension. And if something fails on the M-5 at 2am, you're a long way from help.
Preventive maintenance isn't about the car being new. It's about knowing its actual condition before you commit to 500 km.
Give yourself a week. A pre-road-trip inspection done the night before just tells you what's about to go wrong, with no time left to do anything about it.
Check Your Tyres and Spare Wheel
Tyres are the single most important item here, and the most commonly neglected.
Pressure. Check it cold before you've driven, or at least three hours after. Driving heats the air inside and raises the reading, so a hot check gives you a falsely comfortable number.
Use the figure on the placard inside the driver's door jamb or in the owner's manual. The number moulded into the tyre sidewall is the maximum the tyre can take, not what your car needs a very common and genuinely dangerous mistake.
If you're carrying a full load of passengers and luggage, most manufacturers specify a higher loaded pressure. That figure is usually on the same placard.
Tread depth. The legal minimum is 1.6 mm, but tyres lose meaningful wet grip well before that. Below about 3 mm, stopping distance in rain increases sharply. If you can't measure it, most tyres have wear indicator bars set into the grooves if the tread is level with them, replace before you travel.
Age. Rubber hardens with time regardless of tread. The DOT code on the sidewall ends in four digits giving week and year of manufacture "2721" means the 27th week of 2021. Anything past five or six years deserves scrutiny, and Pakistani heat accelerates this considerably.
Sidewalls. Look for bulges, cuts and cracking. A bulge means internal structural damage. That tyre should not go on a motorway.
The spare. Check its pressure. Spares sit for years losing air quietly, and finding a flat spare while changing a flat tyre on the hard shoulder is a bad evening. Confirm the jack and wheel spanner are actually in the car and that you know how to use them.
Inspect the Brakes Before Your Road Trip
Brakes work harder on a trip than they ever do around town — especially in the north.
Listen and feel. Squealing usually means worn pads. Grinding means metal on metal, and that's an immediate workshop visit. A pedal that feels spongy, or sinks slowly under steady pressure, indicates air or moisture in the system.
Pull. If the car drifts to one side under braking, that's uneven braking force — dangerous at speed.
Brake fluid deserves its own paragraph. Brake fluid is hygroscopic: it absorbs moisture from the air over time, and moisture lowers its boiling point. On a long mountain descent anywhere in the Northern Areas sustained braking heats the fluid. If it's old and water-contaminated, it can boil, and boiling fluid produces vapour bubbles that compress. That's brake fade, and it's the mechanism behind a genuinely frightening number of mountain accidents.
Most manufacturers specify a fluid change every two years regardless of mileage. If you're heading anywhere with long descents and can't remember when yours was last changed, change it.
On descents, use engine braking. Select a low gear and let the engine hold the car back rather than riding the brake pedal continuously. This is the single most important driving habit for mountain roads in Pakistan.
Check Engine Oil, Coolant and Other Fluids
Engine oil. Check on level ground with a cold engine. Pull the dipstick, wipe it, reinsert fully, pull again. The level should sit between the minimum and maximum marks. Note the colour too oil darkens normally, but if it's gritty or milky, get it looked at.
If you're due for a service within a few thousand kilometres, do it before the trip rather than after. A long drive is exactly when you want fresh oil.
Coolant. Check the level in the expansion tank against the min/max marks. Never open a radiator or expansion tank cap on a hot engine — the system is pressurised and the escaping coolant is well above boiling point. This causes serious burns every summer.
Overheating is the most common highway breakdown in Pakistani summers, and it's usually a coolant or cooling-system problem that was visible beforehand.
Brake fluid — level between the marks, and see above on age.
Washer fluid — top it up. Insects, dust and road film build up fast on long drives, and smearing them across the screen with an empty reservoir is worse than not trying.
Look underneath. Park on clean ground overnight and check in the morning. Fresh drips tell you something's leaking before it becomes a roadside problem. Clear water under the AC on a hot day is normal condensation — that one's fine.
Test Your Car Battery Before a Long Drive
Batteries rarely warn you. They work, and then one morning they don't.
Age is the best predictor. Most last three to five years. Heat is harder on batteries than cold high temperatures accelerate the internal degradation that eventually kills them. In Pakistani conditions, plan toward the shorter end of that range.
Check the terminals for white or bluish powdery corrosion, and make sure the clamps are tight. Corroded or loose terminals cause starting problems that get misdiagnosed as a dead battery.
Watch for symptoms: slow cranking, headlights dimming noticeably at idle, or needing several attempts on a cold morning. Any of these before a long trip means test it now.
Most workshops will load-test a battery in a few minutes. If yours is over three years old and you're heading somewhere remote, it's worth doing.
Check Lights, Wipers and Visibility
Get someone to stand outside while you run through everything: headlights on low and high beam, indicators front and rear, brake lights, reverse lights, hazards, fog lights. A brake light you can't see from the driver's seat is exactly the sort of thing that stays broken for months.
Clean the lenses. Dust and oxidation cut headlight output significantly, and night driving on unlit roads is when you need every bit of it.
Wipers. Blades harden and crack in Pakistani heat, and a hardened blade smears rather than clears. In monsoon rain at highway speed, that's a genuine safety problem — you lose the screen entirely for a second or two on each pass.
Run them on a wet screen and look for streaking, chattering, or missed patches. Blades are cheap and among the easiest things to replace yourself. If yours are leaving marks, fit new car wipers before you go rather than discovering the problem in the middle of a downpour.
Also check the washer jets actually aim at the screen, and clean the inside of the windscreen interior film causes far more glare at night than most drivers realise.
Make Sure Your Car AC Is Ready for the Journey
In a Pakistani summer, air conditioning isn't comfort — it's the difference between arriving alert and arriving exhausted. Driver fatigue in a hot cabin is a real safety factor on long drives.
Test it properly. Run it for ten minutes and check the air is genuinely cold, not just moving. Weak cooling usually means low refrigerant, and a system that's low is a system that's leaking.
Check the cabin air filter. It clogs quickly with the dust levels on Pakistani roads, and a blocked filter chokes airflow the AC works harder and cools less. It's an inexpensive part and often a five-minute job.
Listen for unusual noises when the compressor engages, and note any musty smell, which usually means moisture in the system.
Check Your Belts, Hoses and Suspension
Belts. With the engine off and cool, look at the accessory belt for cracks, fraying or a glazed shiny surface. A snapped belt takes the alternator and often the water pump with it, which strands you.
Hoses. Squeeze the radiator hoses when the engine is cold. They should feel firm but slightly pliable. Rock-hard or mushy means the rubber has degraded. Check the clamps and the ends where hoses connect, since that's where they usually fail.
Suspension. Push down hard on each corner of the car and let go. It should settle in roughly one bounce. Continued bouncing suggests worn shock absorbers which matter more on a loaded car over long distances than they do around town.
Wheel alignment and balancing. If the car pulls to one side, or the steering wheel vibrates at speed, get it checked. Poor alignment ruins tyres quickly and makes long drives tiring. Vibration usually means wheel balancing.
What to Keep in Your Car for a Long Road Trip
Essentials:
- Spare tyre (checked), jack and wheel spanner
- Jumper cables
- Basic tool kit
- Torch
- First aid kit
- Warning triangle or reflective marker
- Tow rope
- Coolant and engine oil top-ups
- Drinking water — for you and the radiator
- Documents: registration, licence, insurance
Phone power is genuinely part of your safety kit. Long drives run on navigation apps, and if you break down somewhere remote, a dead phone turns an inconvenience into a serious problem. A reliable car charger is worth having permanently in the car and if you're travelling with passengers all charging devices, a multi-port socket saves arguments.
Also worth having: sunshades for parked stops, a cushion or two for rear passengers, and cash in small notes for tolls.
Best Car Accessories for a Long Road Trip
A few things genuinely earn their place on long journeys rather than just adding clutter.
A dash camera. Car cameras record continuously while you drive, which matters on Pakistani highways where fault in an incident often comes down to one driver's word against another's. Footage settles that immediately. It's also useful evidence if someone else's dangerous driving affects you.
Sunshades for when you're parked — cabin temperatures climb fast, and a hot car is unpleasant to get back into after a meal stop.
Floor and trunk mats. Long trips mean dust, spills and luggage sliding around. Exact-fit mats are far easier to remove and wash than trying to clean carpet at the other end.
Phone mount. Navigation needs to be visible without being held. Holding a phone while driving is both unsafe and a challan waiting to happen.
Ready for Your Next Road Trip?
Before heading out, make sure your car is properly prepared and equipped for the journey. Explore Asad Autos for practical car accessories designed for everyday driving and long-distance travel.
Browse All Car Accessories →15+ years in business · In-house fitting in Multan · Nationwide delivery · Exact-fit products, never universal
Questions about what fits your car? Contact Us — 0321-1117525 · Or call 0321-1117525 · Open Mon–Sun, 9am–9pm