Performance Unlimited Blog

In our series on winterizing your car, truck or SUV for the McHenry winter of ’21-’22, this post is all about traction. But it’s not all about winter.  We are not only on the cusp of winter, we are even closer to that moment in relation to Halloween. And with Halloween, traction may prove critical with all those little ghouls out and about in McHenry this coming Sunday. Traction is important when you want to get your car, truck or SUV going. It’s also critical while you’re driving down the street. It’s probably most critical, however, when you want to stop. Traction is based on the ability of your tires to grip the road, so to speak. Imagine if you had no tread on your tires – your tires were bald as Uncle Augie’s head. What kind of traction could you expect with tires such as those? In other words, you want tread on your tires. There is a certain point when the tread has worn away on your tires to the extent where you need to replace them. Not only have they lost their edge in ter...

Ever seen that driver in McHenry who was in too much of hurry to take the time scraping the frost off their windshield before driving? That’s crazy, isn’t it? But it also highlights a point. Vision is critical when driving and never is it challenged more than in the winter. Several characteristics of winter driving conspire to make it difficult to see when driving in the winter. If you accept the notion that visibility is reduced when driving at night, consider that the nights are longer in winter, and substantially so. In other words, you can count on doing more night-time driving during the winter months. More night-time driving is not the only reason driving in winter is a challenge to visibility.  As mentioned in the first paragraph above, winter tends to spread layers of frost across your windshield and windows. On some days, there is a layer of snow above the frost. That frost, and that snow, requires removal if you are going to see where you’re going.  In fact, if you f...

This is the first of several articles about winterizing your car for the cold McHenry season ahead. Today, we’re discussing coolant. Coolant is the liquid that flows between your radiator and engine to keep the latter from overheating. It’s still called upon to do so in the winter, but only after you get going. Once you’ve driven down the road a while, even if it’s a bitterly cold day or night in McHenry, your engine will produce enough heat that it’s possible to overheat. You still want your coolant to work effectively in this way. But you also want it to perform properly in those times when it’s sitting in the driveway. In the summer, coolant does just that – it cools the engine during operation by carrying away the heat created by friction within the engine. When the car isn’t running, when the temperature isn’t likely to dip below 50 degrees and, sometimes, not below 80 or 90, the coolant is just fine. It’s sitting there in the engine and radiator waiting for you to start the car a...

October has only just arrived here in Johnsburg and yet this blog wants you to start thinking about winterizing your car, truck or SUV? Kinda jumpin’ in the gun there, fella. Is it really too early to start thinking about winterizing your vehicle? Truth be told, according to one weather Website, we’ll see some snowfall in Johnsburg every three or four years, but no real accumulation. It’s not until November that we can expect to see some snowfall every year. And the chances of accumulation are very real that month. According to that same Website, we can expect the following in terms of snow accumulation in November, on average, this is how many days, per accumulation, we can expect here in Johnsburg (the numbers for October are in parentheses): 1-inch – 2.8 days (0.1 days) 3-inches – 1 day (0.1 days) 5-inches – 0.3 days (0.0 days) 10-inches – 0.1 days (0.0 days) The average minimum temperature in Johnsburg 46-degrees Fahrenheit. The average maximum temperature is 63-degrees. Last year,...