Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330357 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780760309483
• Condition: USED - LIKE NEW
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Good information poorly edited
I don't have the budget or the guts to actually take my car out for track days or street performance racing. I've played racing simulators for a while and the level of realism they provide has come to a point where chassis setup is a vital ingredient of the game experience.

So I bought this book looking for information on how the various components of the chassis work to maintain balance in the car, how they can be adjusted and how these adjustments affect handling. I found all of this in the book, and I keep looking it up after reading from cover to cover. The tire temperature chapter is especially good and shows some great examples.

This is all very well explained in the book, but I missed some sort of "setup table" at the end, some sort of quick-lookup table summarizing the rest of the book.

The one thing I really hated about this book is its editing. There isn't a single page without a picture (which I'm fine with), but most pictures are only loosely connected to the subject. Once again, this would be fine with me if it weren't for one small problem: there are so many pictures that the ones which are actually related to some topic are placed far away from the place they were referenced in. It is not unusual to read something like "see the accompanying figure for details" and finding out that this picture is already 20 pages past. Not only that, but figures have no reference number either!

Summing up, I'll give this book a 3/5: the promised information is there, but there is no "quick reference"; there are some great pictures, but the editing is so poor that they can only be referenced as "the accompanying figure" and that company can be as far as 20 pages away.

Alot of pracitical info, without a physics course.
I used this information to determine the exact spring rate for my 300ZX when paired my my current Bilstein shocks to give me the ride characteristics I desired. I have helped a few friends make the right adjustments at the AutoX course with simple adjustments suggested in this book.

Tires, Camber, and Corner weighing. Very USEFUL, PRACTICAL, everyday info. Not a lot of math, or math theory, just enough to make sense of you setup.

Overall GREAT info that will help anyone fine tune there cars ride, and would pair well with a TI-85 and Automotive Math Handbook.

Great basic education on suspension upgrades
I found this to be a great starting point for learning what is possible in the way of handling improvements for street cars, what the issues are, and what to avoid.

This book provided me the background I needed to be able to hold an intelligent conversation with the guys at the performance suspension shop so that I could clearly describe what I was looking for, what I wanted to avoid, and to be able to evaluate their suggestions. I ended up with a terrific setup that made a huge posititve difference in my car's handling without making the ride so harsh that I didn't enjoy driving it.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all recipe. Each car and application is different. Understanding how the components each contribute to overall performance and what trade-offs can be made is the key.

This book provides enough theory to allow you to understand the concepts without requiring an engineering degree and without getting bogged down in theoretical research models that don't actually work in the real world.

Be sure to check out the Honda del Sol project car. It's amazing what they were able to accomplish.