Performance Unlimited Blog

Well, your antifreeze kept your engine block from freezing and cracking last winter. How should you reward it? How about giving it a physical examination and, if it isn’t up to snuff as a coolant, having it replaced. That might not seem entirely appreciative but it’s probably the smart move. The liquid in your radiator is supposed swing with power from both sides of the plate – in winter and in summer. Where baseball players take the winter off, however, antifreeze/coolant comes to bat year round. Without that opportunity to recuperate, it can wear down and go into a permanent slump. In other words, you may have no choice but to put your current antifreeze/coolant out to pasture and bring in a fresh player from the bench. There are inexpensive hydrometers in local auto parts stores that even a rookie can use to determine the ability of a car’s coolant to take on the summer ahead. Will it be a hot summer? Time will tell. For those who enjoy a little pointless risk in life, waiting to s...

Have you rotated your tires lately? If not, maybe you should. “Rotating your tires will extend the life of the tires while ensuring safer driving,” said Denny Norton, owner of Ringwood based Performance Unlimited .   “Tires wear differently on the front of the car than they do on the rear. By rotating the tires you make sure that they wear a more evenly.” Uneven wear between tires will have one pair of tires worn to the point of needing replacement before the others. At that time, car owners have to decide whether to purchase two tires or a full set of four. Even wear on the tires also offers the optimal traction for steering and braking. Some car manufacturers recommend rotating the tires every 5,000 or 10,000 miles. However, checking the owner’s manual is a good way to make sure you’re doing it according to the recommended schedule. Rotating the tires is a procedure car owners can do themselves. However, it’s important that they know which way to rotate the tires – front to back...

The bad news was that your car threw its timing belt. But, once you recover from the sticker shock of an operation such as that, now the work is all done and you can pick up your vehicle. Good news, right? Not so fast. This is a question you probably should have asked before the mechanic started working on your car but what kind of parts did they use? Were they OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) parts or were they aftermarket parts. Some aftermarket parts can have potentially shorter life spans? Some people might say, “Parts are parts.” It’s not true. Not all parts are created equal. Denny Norton, owner of Ringwood based Performance Unlimited, says that he approaches aftermarket parts with a sense of caution. “Some aftermarket parts are as good as or better than OEM equipment,” he said. “Some aren’t. Experience teaches you which aftermarket parts you can trust.” Aftermarket parts sometimes cost less than the OEM parts they were designed to replace. However, Norton said using the af...