Performance Unlimited Blog

Now that the lawn is cut, the garden is planted and ready to start dazzling all your McHenry neighbors, it’s time to relax in your lawn furniture while dinner sizzles on the grill and you enjoy a tropical drink with a little umbrella. Memorial Day is made for this. Of course, you can relax without worry because you have prepared the coolant in your car, truck or SUV for the summer ahead, right? What?! You haven’t checked the coolant yet? That is not something you want to neglect until your car, truck or SUV tells you it’s too late. If you discover that your coolant isn’t ready for the hot days ahead, it’s certain to be an inconvenience. It’s also liable to be costly. Having your coolant checked is generally free. If you need to replace it, the cost is minimal. You may need some hoses, which are still fairly inexpensive. Even if you need a water pump, you’re likely to spend considerably less having that replaced on your time rather than when your vehicle and the weather conspire to stra...

The track is carefully manicured as though the green of the 18th hole at McHenry Country Club. The pits are organized and ready for racers to pull in for a quick change of tires or repairs from a minor collision with a competitor. The drivers have carefully dressed in preparation for a possible crash. And then there are the cars – sleek, ground-hugging IndyCar rockets that make the 500 one of the most anticipated racing events of the year. IndyCars run twin-turbocharged 2.2-litre V6 engines that will hit speeds of approximately 240 mph. That’s why the crews are so diligent in assuring that the track is clean; hitting a piece of debris on the road at 240 mph can be, well, problematic.  The roads we drive with our street machines lack the luxury of crews that sweep the pavement before you go. And though we don’t hit those speeds on Route 120 in McHenry, hitting an object in the road can still cause problems. Just multiply the 35-mph speed limit by seven and it’s not hard to imagine t...

The late-model car in your McHenry driveway has come a long way. Most likely, it gets better gas mileage and performance than its predecessor from a decade or two ago. One change that has been coming is the idea that you could have a self-driving car out in that driveway.  GM makes its Cruise Automation car with self-driving technology. Daimler Intelligent Drive is the Mercedes Benz entry into the market of cars that drive themselves. Ford’s partnership with Argo has given us the Argo AI. Then we have BMW’s Aptiv. Volkswagen and Audi have teamed up to give us the Traffic Jam Pilot for “autonomous driving at highway speeds (not available in the U.S.).” Then there’s the Waymo that originated as a Google project. Lifewire Tech for Humans online site compliments Waymo as having “Fewer accidents than competitors.” GM’s Cruise Automation is knocked in the article for having “more accidents than other competitors” and “only work(ing) on approved highways.” The Daimler entry is credited fo...

Remember when you were young and caught the flu or a cold? It was mom who nursed you back to health, right? When you scraped a knee, it was mom who cleaned the wound, put some antiseptic on it, followed by a bandage and a kiss. How about all those years when mom cleaned your clothes and packed you off to school with a lunch she put together with care? Who cheered when you were in the school play, or knocking a hit into the outfield in softball or Little League? Who made those meals you’ll never forget and that you now measure all other dishes by? It was mom, wasn’t it? After all they’ve done for us, our mothers deserve more than one day specially designated to sharing our appreciation for the tender-loving care they’ve shown us all our lives. Even those times when they may have yelled, their concerns were based on our best interests. While we owe mom our love, affection and respect every day, all year round, at least we should make a special showing of our appreciation on Mother’s Day....