Received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program.

It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to review this book, because I was waiting for opinions from my husband and older son, who are the car guys in the family. Anyway, when I pinned them down, they agreed that it was interesting, although my husband didn't find it as useful as my son did. Husband has way more experience in rebuilding engines, though.

Received through the Libarything Early Reviewer program.

I assume this was a hard book to write. The author tries to aggregate a large amount of information on competition engine building and disseminate that information. Some of the information appears to come from first principals while some is from empirical data or "experience". For the most part the information is logically organized and clear.

I don't know who exactly to recommended this book to. It is a little too detailed for a lay person to pick up and get the gist of engine building. And since it doesn't focus on any one type of the many varied types of competition I don't see a person who is serious about building an engine for a specific competition being helped much by this book. It falls into a no-mans land of usefullness sadly. Of the three Cartech books I own, I find this one the least useful to myself.

I received this book several months ago as part of the LT Early Reviewers program. It's taken me some time to fully read and absorb, as the book has many interesting ideas that you don't typically find in other books of its kind. First let me qualify what I'm about to say - I've only ever rebuilt one engine from scratch - a 1275cc motor for a 1970 MG Midget and that was in the early 80's. At the time about the only resources for builds were manuals by Haynes and Chilton - I used the former. Along the way I also added some information I had garnered from various resources, like Hot Rod Magazine (woefully lacking, especially in super-tuning the dual SU carbs on my motor) and the various mechanics I knew at the time. Most of those guys knew a few things about building motors, but in general they were all stock. I did learn to balance the cranks to the pistons, used dome-top pistons for extra compression, ported the intake and exhaust ports and did some general things during the build, which made me learn a bit more than I did about tuning. Since then I've only had a cursory interest in tuning, until I got my first ECU-controlled Honda.

Now tuning using various ECU mapping is a totally different animal - I've done little to enhance my knowledge other than play with the mixes and timing using software. A few years ago I picked up a book "Restify Your Muscle Car" published by the National Street Machine Club - this got me interested a bit in tuning old-school and it also had some good ideas on what you can do to build-out the motor (there was some knew info in there but in general most of the information was what was being repeated from earlier). This brings me up to this current volume on Competition Engine Building. Wow - what a difference between this book, what I've read previously and what I practiced on my first build.

Competition Engine Building contains great new information, using modern technology to increase the performance of your engine. As I read the book I kept thinking that the information was probably going to be over my head - and at first glance there's quite a bit of engineering and science being related to the reader. The bottom line, though is that if you have some good understanding of the mechanics of your engine and you have the patience to read through this book, I think it can make a stunning difference in your engine build. I kept wanting to go out and wrench on my truck while reading this - it's really written from the perspective of someone who wants high performance and wants to understand why certain tweaks work the way they do. Much of the focus is on the inter-relationship between the various parts, the mechanics, why certain materials are preferable, and how every piece unifies into a whole that will produce fantastic results. Great stuff in here with lots of full-color photography, text with context and some how-to information. You can do a lot worse and pay a lot more. ( )

I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. I gave it to my brother and he was very excited to read it. It looks like a very good resource to have. ( )

Very informative! Not a insert tab A into slot B type of book, but, rather a book that goes from theory to practice. The author goes logically from theory to goals to implementation, system-by-system. Beside knowing the theory behind biulding a max power engine the author also takes into account the type of competition and the rules under which the engine will run . With this in mind the author examines the various components and how to maximze their utility for the task at hand. tools, related vendors, and techniques are also discussed to make design and/or building a competition engine easier for novice and veteran alike. The autthor takes nothing for granted and allows someone like me, with limited experiance, to plan his work and know what to ask and who to ask for help, or who to goto for what I cannot do on my own. All-in-all, a useful and up to date referance for any gearhead. Just to know what goes into a competition engine makes the motorsport more interesting for participant and fan. ( )