You glance at the clock in the dashboard and realize that, if the McHenry traffic doesn’t start moving, you’ll be late for that important meeting. To make matters worse, for some reason, the car’s air conditioning isn’t quite doing its job today. You feel a bead of sweat rolling down your cheek and it prompts you to glance down at your pits. Sure enough, they’re soaked. This is not good.

It’s uncomfortable on hot McHenry days when the air conditioning doesn’t work. It’s even worse when you have somewhere important to go and your best wardrobe is soaking in perspiration. The fan is blowing but the air coming out of the vents feels hotter rather than cooler.

A car’s air conditioning can break down entirely. For instance:

• The fan can stop working
• The air compressor can freeze up
• You can have a leak and lose all your AC coolant
• Seals can fail
• A hose can break
• A belt can break
• Mold can grow in the coil and block the air (not to mention making it bad to breath)

But, it doesn’t take a complete breakdown of the car’s air conditioning for the system to leave you sweating. In some cases, the coolant is low and the air conditioner’s ability to provide cool air inside the car is hampered. It can get so bad that, for all intents and purposes, the air conditioning isn’t working at all. Or, it can simply make it difficult for the AC to do its job to your expectations.

Those muggy, hot days of summer haven’t arrived yet but, be assured, they are coming. You can wait until they’re here to see if your car’s AC is up to the job or you can have it checked now.

One problem with turning on the air conditioning in your car and holding your hand to the vent to see how it’s working is that, since it isn’t that terribly hot in McHenry yet, you won’t get a true test of the AC’s ability. A qualified auto repair technician knows how to check your car’s AC to tell if it will work to designed capacity in the Dog Days of Summer.