How to Keep Your High Performance Car Performing at Its Peak

The most important thing to remember about any engine is that heat is an engine's biggest enemy. A high performance car has a highly tuned engine.This means that the smallest thing can affect it's performance. I'm going to run down a list of a few simple things that you can do to keep your high performance car running its best. These are the most basic things that I can think of to make your car perform like a champ.

1. Make sure that you do a full tune-up every 10,000 miles. This includes a change of your distributor cap, rotor, wires and your coil. This is as basic as you can get, and it is the first place you should look if your car isn't performing its best.

2. Check your cooling system for leaks every 10,000 miles. You should also check the water pump, and make sure that it's doing its job the right way.

3. Change your oil regularly. Along with changing your oil on a regular basis, you should check the oil system for leaks and fix them if you find any.

4. If your car has a carburetor on it, you should adjust the air, and fuel mixtures on it on a regular basis. If you don't know how to do this yourself; take your car to a shop.

5. Have the fuel system cleaned out every 10,000 miles and make sure that your air filter, and fuel filter are replaced, or cleaned if it can be.

6. Always run the highest octane fuel that you can get.

7. Have your valves adjusted every 10,000 miles. If your car has hydraulic lifters, this may not be necessary to do, but if you have a flat tappet cam, it should always be done.

8. This tip will break down into six parts, and will take care of the last a few tips, I will talk about indexing your distributor cap and rotor.

8A. Prepare a test cap by cutting a large viewing window in the distributor cap body. The window should be positioned under the posts on the cap, but high enough that you can see the body of the rotor. "It doesn't matter where in relation to the firing order that you cut the viewing window." Simply put the window in a spot where it's easy to see, while the engine is running.

8B. Mark the cap with a series of index marks, that correspond to the center of each post on the cap.

8C. Mark where the center of the rotor sits on the outside of the cap with a small scribe, or precision file.

8D. Set up a timing light to one of the distributor cap posts in the window that you cut, it doesn't matter what post, as long as it's in the window that you cut. Set the engine speed so that the rotor appears to be steady. Use the timing light to view the possession of the rotor versus the cap post.

8E. If you car doesn't have a vacuum advance, you'll phase the rotor so that the tip lines up precisely with the distributor cap terminal. To accomplish this with a conventional cap, you will have to note the position of the test cap, "mark it with a felt tipped pen."

Replace the test cap with a conventional cap; but be certain that you have placed it in the same possession as the test cap. Be sure to use the same brand of cap for both the test cap, and the replacement cap.

There is always a slight amount of play in an installed distributor cap so it should be just about enough to index the cap and rotor.

8F. If your distributor does have a vacuum advance on it, you must take into consideration that the advance will change according to the vacuum in the manifold. If your rotor moves clockwise you rotor should point just to the left of your indexed mark.

This is the last of the tips that I have for now. I hope that it will help at least one car nut make their car do exactly what they want it to. That as you know is my main goal, I love to help like minded people with their high performance cars.