Performance Unlimited Blog

Kentucky Derby horses have more in common with Richmond automobiles than you might think Horses running in the Kentucky Derby this coming Saturday receive the finest care. Your car, truck of SUV is running a different race, so to speak. And if you want it to keep running reliably, you want to give it the finest automobile maintenance. Look at those ponies run! Yes, even though this is a blog dedicated to maintaining automobiles, it’s timely to point out that horses will be running this coming Saturday, May 2. It’s a thrilling event to watch, even if you’re watching on your television in Richmond , and must be twice as exciting for those who are participating, whether a jockey, a trainer or an owner. Of course, there are some similarities between horse racing and auto racing . In auto racing, the amount of power produced by an engine is referred to as “ horsepower .” No doubt, this is a reflection of how automotive engines were compared to horses in the infancy of the automotive age....

It would be nice if your car would change its own oil right there in your McCullom Lake driveway. It's not likely and you may want to accept the responsibility of making sure it gets timely oil changes . Imagine someone who takes their car out of their McCullom Lake garage frequently to wash and wax the vehicle in their driveway. They bring it in for regular maintenance, have the tires, suspension, steering and brakes checked on a regular basis. You’d think they take their car’s maintenance pretty seriously, wouldn’t you? What if you found out they seldom or never had the oil changed? They pulled out of their McCullom Lake driveway, day after day, kept their vehicle looking tip-top but never changed the oil. Would that make any sense? Of course not.  Engine oil is the lifeblood of your car's engine It wouldn’t make sense to do all that other maintenance and not have the oil changed. There isn’t any other maintenance procedure that’s as important as having the oil changed. Engin...

You don't always have to drive off-road after winter to feel as though you're off-road. When  you leave your Johnsburg home, you're liable to see some potholes that will challenge your struts , shocks and suspension . You’re familiar with rumble strips on the roads, right. They’re the rough areas in a road designed to make the kind of noise that will wake sleepy drivers or those not paying sufficient attention to something ahead. In some places around America and the world, roads have been built with musical rumble strips . They’re designed so that, as you drive over the rumble strips, they create musical sounds. In fact, they’ll play a specific song. While that’s very interesting, and it would probably be fun to drive over musical rumble strips a while, the kinds of bumps and potholes thrown at you this late Johnsburg winter have hardly been music to your ears, or to your car, truck or SUV. The potholes and cracks in the pavement around Johnsburg and beyond, are almost...

You're liable to see new drivers on the roads of McHenry . Sometimes, you'll know because of the sign on the roof of their car. Other times, you may notice a novice driver by the way that they drive. In any case, cut them a little slack. We were all new drivers once. We see them on the roads each spring here in McHenry. No, I’m not talking about deer, racoons, wild turkeys or other denizens of nature that venture out as the weather warms. I’m talking about new drivers. Often nervous about the new experience of operating a vehicle on our roads, new drivers, often still driving on driver’s permits, can pose a challenge to us all. Due to their anxiety , they may be hesitant about maneuvers the rest of us (hopefully) take for granted. They may forget to properly signal their intentions, such as a planned turn on Route 120 in McHenry . They may accelerate suddenly, not intentionally but because they’re still getting accustomed to the gas pedal in the vehicles they drive. They may h...