See a lot of post about storing fuel and none about stocking some automotive lubricants and fluids.

I keep on hand enough filters and oil to do two oil changes per vehicle. Thinking about stocking some extra filters in case I have to stretch oil life.


Fluids for filling transmission twice per vehicle. I can use the same fluids for power steering if I have to.


Brake Fluid in tightly sealed containers. Brake fluid when collect water from air.


Enough gear oil for axles.


Bearing grease


Fuel and air filters filters. I am making the change to synthetic reusable air filters that don't have to be oiled.



A lot depends on the situation as some events might require a reduced amount of vehicle use, while other events demand lots of use.

How much fuel do you have. I dont have enough to go significant distances to be worried about changing the oil. If gas is available oil is likely also going to be avalable. I do try to have oil and filter for the next change but other than leftovers i have no extra fluids.

I have enough fuel for two tanks worth for each vehicle plus them being kept full. 3 tanks worth in my worse vehicle gets me 1350 miles.

Plus we are looking at alternative fuel sources. Living in the country with lots of available land gives us plenty of options for a fuel source.



People are stacking back fuel need to also consider vehicle and small engine maintenance goes along with keeping it running.


You have to consider to is what happens and you rupture an oil filter. Yes it does happen but not often. Well there goes all that oil, you need to replace it.


Something happens and you knock a hole in the oil pan. OPPS there goes that oil. Hope you know how to make a metal patch with JB Weld so you can continue using that vehicle. A crack develops in the crankcase of your tiller Here again a small piece of tin and JB Weld is your friend, but you need oil.


You overheat the transmission and need to change the filter and fluid to save the transmission.



It is just like sticking back extra belts, hoses, spark plugs. Your prepping with fuel, water, and food. Why not the basics to keep things running that you might have a need for to continue a living lifestyle.



I chuckle when people talk about in a disaster or civil unrest people will be looting wally world, grocery stores, gas stations. Guess what someone forgot the auto parts store. No I am not advocating. I am just thinking of the little things that could shut you down and leave you without a necessity. It is the small things that count to that people often forget.

I will run out of fuel looong before my lube goes bad.

Try to keep at least enough on hand for 4 changes.



Seal oil or whale oil works as lube for some things.

Even other animal fat.

I only store oil for my generator, given that it should be changed every 100 hours and that is basically every five days.  In general, I think oil will be available long after gasoline has run out (gasoline runs out pretty much once the power goes out b/c stations can't pump it).  So I keep enough gas to get out of Dodge, and that's it.

I have gone to the synthetic motor oils as they have a longer change time,

I also think it is wise to have extra oil and filters

I'm all syn fluids throughout, plus the next change interval's worth on hand.

I run synthetic oil everything. Have enough oil to wear out my generator, or change truck a few ttimes. Antifreeze, brake fluid, etc.

Have hyguard by the gallon for the 316. Years worth of grease. Also keep my drain oil. Could be filtered and reused in a pinch, or used for non pressure lube needs.


I don't worry much about the truck to go crazy. Things that bad, I won't be cruizing the town. Oil and fuel reserved for critical tractor and generator needs. Have enough gas and oil on hand for 10 years plowing the garden and generator running the well pump.


I grew up on the farm, and I was the mechanic, so parts and supplies for machines is second nature.

You can probably go 20-30k or more without an oil change particularly if you top it off. Never hurts to have some laying around but there will be spare cars before you'll need to do any maintenance.

Great reminder! Will pick up some ATF and Brake fluid.  Plus, some window washing fluid, too. We use it by the barrel this time of year.

I have enough for an oil change, maybe two if I don't worry about using the correct oil.

The length of time a car or truck can function between oil changes is a hell of a lot longer than I can feed it with fuel. There is always a chance I could puncture the trans pan and need to patch it and refill it with fluid.  There is also the chance I could break one of thousands of specialized parts.  When gas hit $4 a gallon, no one was punching holes in drain pans, but they were stealing gas.  If shit goes too sideways, I think fuel will be way ahead as far as limiting factors goes.  

How many tires do you keep stockpiled?

NO

If your talking shtf, then most (99.9%) of people cannot store enough fuel to make it to a oil/lube change.

If your just talking good items to have, then yes.

The only thing besides gas I keep is AIR FILTERS. And thats only after living in AK and seeing what volcanic ash can do to an engine. A volcanic event can be SHTF IMO

Some of it comes down to your specific vehicle and uses and what not.



I don't store enough fuel to care about needing oil and filters for preps.



I do store oil and filters and stuff I buy on sale.  I rotate it out as I use it and it saves me trips to town.



If you have a 4x4, and I guess a car would need some checking as well, and go through deep water you might find yourself in need of some oil for changing out the differential fluid and if you have a posi unit you need the additive for that.  This is if you have a design that sucks in water at a certain point, many people run the vents higher up but I recall the instruction manual of my dad's grand wagoneer saying something about needing to examine and repack wheel bearings after a creek crossing.



Now if things were in good shape, no biggy.  But some folks never keep up on that stuff and letting water run around in old grease can cause a very short lift for bearings.  These days marine synthetic wheel bearing grease for trailers seems to have solved a lot of those problems.



An air filter, both for engine and cab filter, can get plugged up if you find yourself in some seriously dusty conditions.  Worst I ever read about was the mt. st. helens eruption where people had ash in the air.  It was shutting vehicles down.  Some old designs like oil bath filters handled it ok I think.  I think the centrifigal design the semi trucks used worked ok.  But a lot of common car filters needed help like a pre filter for big stuff and even then the stock car filters had problems.



I spose transfer case and transmission fluids are about like differential fluids, better to have then not.



I am a bit low on blinker fluid and the muffler bearings are rattling a tad in the ford, whole exhaust is rattling in that thing.



And I was just messing around on amazon last night looking at windsheild wiper blades cause this year's weather has allowed me to procrastinate more than normal on my wiper blade changes.  I find I don't do well stocking ahead on wiper blades for some reason.



Anyway, I guess the short version is that some of my prepping is done just because I buy when things are on sale or I buy in bulk to get a discount and doing so can apply to preps but really it is more geared toward saving some money.

I already have oil, filters, fluids, because I either pick them up on sale or carry them as spares out in the middle of nowhere.

That's more than enough fluids to handle any typical shortage.  Any greater shortage, and we're probably not going to have gas anyways.

If we don't have gas, then all hell is going to break loose.

This is pretty much where I'm at. I keep extras on hand of filters, oil etc. Usually picked up on sale. But it's all relative to how much actual fuel i can keep on hand.


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Not so much automotive,
but I do keep oil and other fluids on-hand for the tractor, as well as extra oil, fuel, and air filters and an assortment of spare parts.

I also keep oil on-hand for the generator.

Yeah I am out of muffler bearings. I need to pick some up I dropped one the other day and now my muffler is dragging. I will also need to pickup a metric adjustable wrench so I can change it out.

If you ever do electrical work I do have a wire stretcher and wire dye I can loan you.

I'm curious where you heard that? I sell lots of oil and install many of these style units in shops and farms. We're actually doing a huge number of installs in high end homes in our area that basically have an in garage shop for doctors and such that don't want to have to take their Bentley or Aston Martin to a shop for oil changes. They have in house service mechanics that come out, change the oil/do repairs, and then just bill the owner for labor.

Any sealed container of lubricants will easily have a 5-10+ year shelf life. I just brought in a bunch of Mobil drums for a power plant that requires a diesel engine oil that is no longer made in the USA. The drums Mobil sent me came up from Colombia (the country, not the city)  and the lot they pull from were blended in 2002.  That is a 14 year old product that the manufacturer is pulling from to send to me a distributor and pass on to a customer who will probably sit on them for another 5 or so years.

 

I usually have a spare oil change on hand, plenty for the generators, wood splitter, chainsaws etc.  

Truth be told for me, fuel is the limiting factor.  I don't have enough gas on hand to go one oil change let alone two.  Generator is a different story but when it comes to vehicles, TEOTWAWKI, or gas shortage or whatever you could probably run 10k+ on whatever oil was in your motor.  I know I don't have enough gas to do that.  Oil changes are something that push vehicles into 100k territory.  If you don't need to go that many miles you could probably run 25k+ on original oil before catastrophic failure.  Provided you kept it topped off.  More likely to get a few flats before that happens.  

I keep enough to do 2 oil changes in my vehicles and two extra filter changes. I run Royal purple.

I also keep enough oil to change the genny's oil 10 times.

I keep some on hand but I figure if things get bad, fuel will be scarce anyway so I probably won't be driving a lot. I do keep extra oil for the generators and a lot of 2 stroke oil though.

I'm with you OP.
Here's some of my automotive fluids stockpile.


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...After all air-conditioning is essential!

Now you know that SeaFoam is just wasting space! At least that is what everyone says

Holy S--t Rocky  

IIRC, it's mostly acetone and petro distillates, good for cleaning brakes and stuff...

I've heard teens pour it into their engines and fool themselves it does something besides smoke up the place...  

I keep about 6 to 8 gallons of antifreeze on hand and about 12 to 15 gallons of Shell Rotella 15/40 oil for my Diesel engines.
I keep a little over 1000 gallons of diesel on hand and about 300 gallons of gas on hand.
My biggest fear is a fuel shortage or some type of fuel rationing due to war or terrorism in the Middle East.
Here in America we as a nation are addicted to fossil fuels and I'm no exception. I like to be able to get around and
go when I want. I would hate to be strapped down due to no fuel or oil.




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It has been a couple decades since I turned wrenches.



Back when I was going to a 2 year tech school and doing some co-opping at some local garages I played with some seafoam.



We had a kit we sold and used on vehicles to clean up the intake and knock build up off valves and what not.



With engine running and this kit hooked to a vacumn line coming off the intake somewhere appropriate, wanted to miss mass air flow sensors but tried to get in ahead of anything like a pcv valve, you metered this stuff in.  Too much stalled the engine out.



If today's net had been available back then I would have just bought some T's for the vacumn hoses and a bit of hose and a valve to stick inline with a bottle of water and gone with that perhaps.



I was the kid that asked questions, so I asked where all the carbon went?  Did it plug up catalytic convertors or get stuck to an oxygen sensor or what?



Shortly after this I gave up working on dinky little cars, I am a big fella and always been a big fella, and I went over to a spring shop that wanted someone to be dumb enough to want to work in a spring shop but was willing to deal with the abs stuff that was starting to show up on class 8 trucks and trailers and what not.



I wound up mostly redoing king pins in front axles, ups brought us all their axles after they pulled em out of the truck and we just called when they were done.  



So anyway, seafoam has a history and has some uses but I would have to rethink how I used it in the past and the shop manager was the one telling me to to do it so they would get to deal with any issues from doing that.

Here's what sea foam has done for me. I have had 5 small engines of my own and several friends with small engines that became rough running at idle or high speed. I contribute this to letting ethanol gasoline sit in the carburetors and dry out and clogging various jets. I had a leaf blower that I had gave up on fixing, When my neighbor said " try this sea foam in the fuel and put it in strong, let it run as wide open as you can safely for about 5 to 10 minutes and then let it idle and run it agin for awhile wide open". I did what he said and the leaf blower that would not run well was starting to run better. After about 30 to 45 minutes it ran like new.
Since then every small engine that runs bad due to carburetor trouble I throw in sea foam and 9 times out of 10 it fixes it. Is sea foam a fix all, No but it does wonders on cleaning out small carbs. Now before you say take off the carb and just clean it out. You can easily on large engines, but the small jets in small engines can't be cleaned out as easy.YMMV. But that's my findings with sea foam and use it regularly on fuel systems on cars and small engines, with good results.