Performance Unlimited Blog

What happens to a liquid when it gets hot? It expands. Just like a person whose temper gets the better of him, as the coolant expands in the radiator, it may seek a way to relieve that pressure. You probably won’t like what happens when it finds that place. The place where the pressure is relieved is the place where steamed coolant will erupt from under your car’s hood. By the time this happens, your vehicle is overheating. Keep driving with an overheating car and you could ruin the engine or cause other problems. This is a stuck-on-the-side-of-the-road type of emergency.  The way to avoid finding yourself stuck somewhere as your radiator blows steam under your hood is to have your cooling system checked now. Checking your cooling system will include checking for leaks. The following are places coolant may ‘let off steam’ in the form of a high-pressured leak: The radiator The radiator cap Radiator and heater hoses Gaskets, such as under by the thermostat Through a crack in the engi...

An insurance company has a commercial where a driver has forgotten their fishbowl, with a goldfish, on top of the car. The suggestion of the commercial is that drivers who are fastidiously safe behind the wheel will not drop the fishbowl off the roof and will receive lower rates for their auto insurance. In reality, it doesn’t matter how you drive from your McHenry home – that fishbowl is not going to stay on the roof. A fishbowl won’t stay on the roof of a car because, with the application of Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion, when the car comes to a stop, or pulls away from a stop sign, the fishbowl would be inclined to either slide forward or backward, respectively. The other problem is that we don’t drive our cars on carpet-smooth roads here in McHenry and beyond, particularly after a passing winter. That fishbowl would find itself bouncing and dancing on the roof of the car until it was thrown off and to the ground where it would crash into little wet pieces with a flopping fish on the p...

How hot will it get this summer? The high temperature in McHenry during the summer of 2020 was 92 degrees on July 26. We hit 90 or higher on seven or eight days in the course of the year. But there were any number of days that hovered close to 90.  The reality is that the temperature in McHenry doesn’t need to hit 90 before you turn the AC on in your car. At what temperature do you turn on your car’s air conditioning? Let’s suppose you turn the AC on at 80 degrees. There were approximately 69 days in the McHenry summer season of 2020 where the thermometer reached or exceeded 80 degrees. How will the temperature work out for 2021? It’s hard to say. The Old Farmers’ Almanac is calling for a “warm and stormy” summer of 2021. This brings up another point.  If it’s a nice day, even if a bit warm, you can roll the windows down and, if you don’t want your hairdo blown beyond recognition, you may not turn the AC on at the same temperature. But if it’s a stormy day and you have the win...

It may come to you as a rattle. Then again, it may catch your notice with a squeal. Maybe you’ll notice a grinding noise. Or you could experience a repeated thump. These are all indicators of a possible problem. While they may cause some concern, they are all much better than noticing this problem when you hit your brakes and your car, truck or SUV doesn’t do what’s expected – it doesn’t stop. Brakes are critical elements of the mechanics that make your vehicle operational. Most of the components on your car, truck or SUV are designed to get the engine running, keep it running and to make you go. The primary role of your brakes are to bring your vehicle to a safe stop. Actually, your brakes do something else, too. They provide confidence that you can stop while all those other mechanical parts make it go. Imagine if you had no confidence in your brakes. How fast would you drive? How far ahead of time would you start applying the brakes while praying that they’ll work. Possibly the one ...

Brad Keselowski took the checkered flag at Talladega Speedway Sunday, April 25, in the GEICO 500, one of nine different winners in the first 10 races of the 2021 NASCAR CUP SERIES. “The whole race, I had a couple of opportunities to take the lead, but I just kept thinking, ‘Man, just keep your car in one piece till the end.’” And he did keep it together till the end as he took the first position in the final lap. Victory in NASCAR depends on the skill of the driver, but it also depends on the quality and dependability of the machine that driver is racing. You might say that a NASCAR race puts a year’s worth of wear and tear on a vehicle. Good thing these vehicles are made for that kind of abuse. Keselowski won the race by taking the lead in the last lap. Imagine if something broke in Keselowski’s No. 2 Ford Mustang halfway through that last lap? It’s infinitely possible.  The heat is tremendous as a NASCAR racer’s engine spins at around 9,000 rpm. The average rpm on the highway is ...