Stay warm and comfortable in your car this Richmond winter

A Richmond winter can get darn cold. You may

not want to wait until the temperature drops to
have your car heater checked. If it works
properly, you can stay warm and comfortable
all through the winter.

You look out the window of your Richmond home and think about running out to the car; you think about it because you can see how cold it is out there and you’re reluctant to leave the warm and comfortable confines of your home. Imagine how reluctant you’d be if you knew the heater in your car didn’t work very well.

Imagine driving all winter with a heater that doesn’t work. Every time you left your Richmond home, you’d enter a frozen tundra behind the wheel of your car. And what about clearing the frost from the windshield.

The car heater that provides and warm and comfortable environment for you while you drive is also essential to keeping the windshield clear so you can see where you’re going.

The key element for your heater is the coolant/antifreeze that runs through the radiator and engine of your car. If it’s not up to par, or if you’re low on antifreeze, you won’t have consistently warm air blowing from the vents. If you’re low on antifreeze, the warm air will come and go as pockets of antifreeze passes through the heater core.

The heater core is another essential part of the cabin heating system. It’s like a little radiator with a block of fins built around pipes that carry coolant/antifreeze. If the heater core doesn’t have any coolant/antifreeze in its pipes, you’ll have no heat coming out of the vents.

A fan is equally important. The fan pulls the air across the heater core where it collects heat from the coolant/antifreeze. The air is then pushed through the vents and into the cabin. It works just like the radiator of your car only, instead of merely dispersing the heat so the engine won’t get too hot, it uses the heat to keep you warm.

The vents play their role bringing the warm air into the cabin. You have controls so you can direct the warm air on your feet, directly at you or up into the windshield when you need the heating system to defrost the windshield.

You also need a thermostat so you can control how much heat comes into the cabin. It’s nice not to be cold but it’s also nice not to drive down frigid Richmond roads while you’re not sweating profusely because you only have two choices – Polar Vortex or Equatorial blast oven.

Comments

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...

Get out to McHenry Music Festival for a good time and music near to home

Some folks here in McHenry will load up the car and head out to Red Rock Amphitheater near Denver to see a show. Some will go to the MSG Sphere near Las Vegas. Some will go to the Bonaroo Festival Concert to see a show. That’s quite a bit of driving and you’d better make sure your vehicle is up to the trip. What happens, however, if something goes wrong – if your vehicle breaks down while driving there or back? What happens if the show is canceled, as happened this year with the Bonaroo Festival? We’re talking about some serious inconvenience, aren’t we? Wherever you go, whether your driving to Colorado, Nevada, Tennessee or anywhere else in this continent, you want to perform your due diligence and make sure the vehicle is up for the trip before you go. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re driving somewhere to see some live music or for any other purpose. A breakdown can be costly and may put you at the mercy of weather conditions or nefarious characters that come across you while y...

Performance Unlimited Blog

Search This Blog