Is your vehicle ready for the heat? Check your cooling system! The cooling system in your vehicle is your engine’s front line of defense when it comes to the ongoing battle against heat. If you properly maintain your vehicle’s cooling system and take a few other preventative measures, you’re ensuring that your engine won’t experience the added stress of operating under extreme high temperatures. But how do you keep your truck’s engine running cool under most normal driving conditions? Is there anything that you can do to prevent your vehicle from overheating? What types of products help keep your vehicle running nice and cool?

The easiest step to keeping your engine cool is checking your gauges! Locate your vehicle’s temperature gauge, pay attention to what the gauge displays as a normal operating temperature for your engine. The easiest way to do this is to simply take a mental note of the reading on several different occasions after the vehicle’s engine has had a chance to run for a while. If your engine’s cooling system is operating properly, you’ll find that the temperature should remain fairly stable or at least consistently fall within a certain range. If you see the temperature reading begin to increase rapidly, you may have a problem. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, either. It’s wise to diagnose and repair an engine cooling issue as soon as possible. If the worst case scenario plays out, you just may be able to avoid a potentially catastrophic engine failure. As you could probably guess, major engine repair or even replacement isn’t cheap.

Checking your vehicle’s coolant levels, and making sure you are using the proper coolant is also very important. Your vehicle’s cooling system doesn’t operate on coolant alone. In fact, your vehicle’s cooling system actually requires a mixture of coolant and water to provide just the right level of protection for your engine. If you skew the manufacturer’s suggested coolant-to-water mixture by adding only water or adding only coolant, you could risk damage to your vehicle’s engine. Stop in at one of our many stores, and talk to our trained professionals to make sure you are getting the exact coolant needed for your specific vehicle.