Missed McHenry’s Green Street Cruise Night? No problem, we’ll see you there tonight

You missed McHenry’s Green Street Cruise Night last week? That’s a shame. After all, a good time was had by all – hot cars, entertainment, good food. If you’ve attended Green Street Cruise Night before, which means that you’ve attended the annual summer event last year, or a previous year, you know what that means.

Green Street Cruise Night is the equivalent, for automotive enthusiasts, of a kid in a candy store. The city parking lots south of Route 120 and west of Green Street have been repeatedly filled, Monday nights in the summer, with an incredible array of custom and classic cars. So, if you did miss Green Street Cruise Night last Monday – not to worry – you’ll have another chance tonight.

Tonight, as you stroll through the parking lots, among the best Ford, GM, Chrysler, AMC and other foreign and domestic car manufacturers have offered over the years, you’ll appreciate the craftsmanship and ingenuity auto makers bring to the process. You’ll witness vehicles that were at the peak of automotive engineering in their day. You’ll also see examples of engineering excellence from today’s automotive engineers.

Some of the cars you’ll see have undergone radical customizations. The current version of the vehicle may only offer a limited reflection of the original vehicle that rolled off the assembly line years ago. With these fine automobiles, you’ll discover the imagination and creativity of car owners who see in the assembly line the base of something more, something different, something unique.

You don’t see a lot of cars coming off the assembly lines with blowers on the engines. For all their engineering prowess, car manufacturers tend to limit the use of a vehicle’s potential horsepower. Some custom-car owners seek to maximize that potential and it shows as you peruse the horses at Cruise Night.

There are other custom-car owners who have focused on aesthetics. They’ve taken the best automakers have to offer and changed it to fit their personal perception of automotive perfection. Chrome, anodized metal, layers of lacquer, leather and more: these are the tools of their imagination.

Others have spent their energies returning older vehicles to showroom condition. These cars take you back to the day when that ’69 Camaro was fresh off the assembly line and waiting at a dealer for its first owner to take it home. But, whether a vehicle is customized or restored, all the cars at Green Street Cruise Night have one thing in common; they were all handled with tender-loving care. They all represent their owners’ hard work, dedication and love for fine automobiles.
Some of the owners have done all the work on their cars themselves. Others have brought their cars to expert technicians for some of the work, such as the folks at Ringwood based Performance Unlimited.

“We can take someone’s dreams about their car and turn it into reality,” said Dennis Norton, the owner of Performance Unlimited. “Whatever they can envision for their car, we can make it happen.”

For those who would like to join the ranks of exhibitors at McHenry’s Green Street Cruise Night, if you want some help, you can call Performance Unlimited at 815-728-0343 or visit www.4performanceunlimited.com for more information.

Is your antifreeze safe from freezing this Richmond winter

You still have time to have it checked Well, there’s no denying it – winter tends to get chilly here in Richmond. We have to deal with snow and ice on the roads, scraping the same off our windows and windshield, and staying warm while we drive. Of course, you had your antifreeze checked before winter rolled into town. What?! You didn’t have your antifreeze checked before winter clamped down on Richmond? So, how’s your antifreeze doing? If you haven’t had it checked, there’s really no way of knowing, is there? This car has overheated in the middle of a Richmond winter. But, on the other end of the spectrum, the antifreeze can also freeze if it's not up to its job. Hopefully, you haven’t had a serious problem with your antifreeze already. If you did, you’d probably know. When antifreeze fails, it’s a potentially catastrophic condition for your vehicle’s engine. You could have hoses that have burst because of freezing antifreeze. Worse than that, your engine block may have crac...

Blocks of ice falling from cars in McHenry could cause accidents or damage

We’ve all seen those blocks of snow falling from behind the rear tires of a car when the snow rolls into McHenry . Fortunately, they’re just packed snow that will disintegrate under your vehicle’s tires as you simply drive right through them, right? Don’t count on it. Those blocks of snow are often packed so tight, condensed by the thaw-and-freeze cycle, that they’re anything but oversized snowballs . They’re often more like boulders. Hit one of those blocks and the collision between the block and one of your tires could send you careening off the road or into oncoming traffic. In some cases, they’re so solid you could pound them with a sledgehammer with little effect. They truly can represent a serious road hazard. The problem is that it’s difficult to tell how solidly they’re packed when you see them on the road, left their unwittingly by another driver. Either way, your best bet is to try to avoid them. But you want to be careful dodging blocks of ice in the road, too. You need...

October 20 Hootenanny will benefit veterans with PTSD

Been to a Hootenanny lately? When you read that question did you ask, “What?” Well, if you have gone to a Hootenanny in a while, or if you don’t know what a hootenanny is, we have an event for Oct. 20 that will clear up either question. From 6 p.m. to Midnight, Saturday, Oct. 20, MC3, the McHenry Area Chamber of Commerce business networking group, is helping to host an inaugural Veterans R&R Wild Horse Hootenanny at Beyond Stable Farm (11129 Rte. 176, Woodstock). The event will benefit Veterans R&R Operation Wild Horse. Operation Wild Horse serves veterans with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Working with the horses has proven to have an incredibly calming effect on the veterans. And, it’s good for the horses, too, rescued wild mustangs. This means that the hootenanny is for a very good cause. But, it’s also a lot of fun. So, what is a hootenanny? According to a Google search, a hootenanny is “an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing.” The V...

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