Books?

[formula]

So I'm tired of feeling like a total car newb. I realized that, despite all of my aspirations, i am nothing more than a hack kid with no money and no independent ideas, waiting to bolt on the next premanufactured hunk of metal to his car just because other people tell him it will work more gooder.

So, I want to learn. Suspension design first, followed by drivetrain engineering, then maybe electrical systems and body work.

Point me towards sources. I need books, technical journals, high-profile magazine articles...anything that has to do with the science and engineering behind proper automotive design. It can be biased towards hot-rodding or oem applications or whatever, doesnt matter. I just want to know what the heck is going on so that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to do something on my own and not base my every automotive decision off of the moves others make.

Can anyone help me?

[BB69]

Here are a couple of good books:

How to Make Your Car Handle. A little older title, but the information is good and the examples are realistic.

Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics by Gillespie. More technical textbook style book.

Chassis Engineering by Herb Adams. Another great book.

All three are well regarded. You can find them on ebay and Amazon.

Good luck.
Ken

[TonyHuntimer]

Yeah! What he said.

My GM Pro-Touring Book might be a good one to wet your whistle on most subjects.


Tony Huntimer

[formula]

nice...nice! these are exactly what im looking for.

give me more!

[Chevy350]

I can recommend "Carroll Smith - Tune To Win", fun to read, lots of drawings to make you understand.

Maybe "Allan Staniforth - Competition car suspension", but I haven't read it yet, just flipped through. Seems a little harder to read (I'm foreign), but the tech is good.

[DeepBlue68]

I bought a book recently that I thought was pretty good if you've never done much car restoration (which I haven't - this is my first one) called 101 GM Muscle Car Performance Projects. It's from the Motorbooks Workshop line of books that I have read 3 of now. There's a lot of good restoration and modification info in there, and I'm learning a lot. It will definitely reduce the amount of headaches when I'm working on the car because I'll have a pretty good idea of what I need to do before I start instead of just diving in blind.

[MuscleRodz]

Also lurk at Corner-carvers.com. Some of the best suspension tech you will find. I have used the search function over there many times when looking for info. Alot of it may be over your head until you understand the basics but definitely wirth the look.

You can also search here. There is some good stuff here as well.

Mike

[indyjps]

alibris.com is a good place to look for used books along with ebay of course. i picked up many of those books a while back and found them there used. alibris is great for out of print and used books, got most of my hunter thompson collection there.

[wantahertzdonut]

I would recommend Gillespie's Vehicle Dynamics book too. That's the book I had for that class when I was in engineering school. It's purely on the technical side of things and might require half a brain to understand, but it goes into details of suspension types and how they interact with the rest of the car. It details more than just suspension too, it explains overall dynamics of cars. I should see if I still have my notes from that class, they are in electronic form and would help out as well.

[formula]

these are awesome...thank you guys a ton!