I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while – this is the collection of books from my car based technical library. They get opened and used (well, some of them do) but it’s a good book list to share.

What Author Why I like It
Porche 956/962 The Enduring Champtions Peter Morgan A great book that goes into long term racing strategy at the same time as having a great photo archive. The archive has some great pictures on how problems are solved as well as covering the history and evolution of the cars.
Automotive Handbook Bosch It’s a well indexed reference book. I don’t really read it much; it’s like learning C++ from the reference guide.
Race and Rally Car Source Book Allan Staniforth It’s a detailed book, covering Allan’s speciality (suspension and chassis) as well as having lots to say about aerodynamics.
Competition Car Suspension Allan Staniforth It’s the bible. It has all the hard sums in, but lots of pictures of how they’re applied to cars. All hail Allan.
Drive to Win Carroll Smith One of the three of his essential books I own. Studies show that 80% of learning is experential, and 20% is from training. This is the 20% you need to know if you want to improve your technique and have groundwork over and above instinct to get you started.
Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Carroll Smith A brilliant book that covers everything from ensuring your holes don’t have a sharp edge, metallurgy, how to arrange rivets so they don’t fail, how to radius a transfer, etc. If you’re building a high performance car, this book shows you just how not to cock it up and squish yourself for the sake of a bad bolt choice.
engineer to win Carroll Smith How to build your car so it survives the race, and you survive it. Way more of the same above. Don’t forget Carroll Smith has build many championship winning racing cars and seen many drivers come and go.
Competition Car Composites Simon McBeath This is a great book that takes you through simple moulding techniques all the way through to carbon fibre. However, that’s not the good bit. The good bit is that it’s aimed at us, making this stuff in our sheds, enjoying too much solvent and seeing the devil erupt from our kneecaps.
Race Car Chassis Design and Construction Forbes Arid Terrific amounts of design information from first principles. It’s backed up with lots of excellent photographs from paddock that clearly show just what to do. I loved this book and often refer to it.
Fibreglass Composite Materials Forbes Arid Another great book on the subject. This one includes techniques we can use, and also takes you into some of the professional tooling and techniques. A great read in a day.
Race Car Aerodynamics Joseph Katz If you want to know how it’s done and how the pros do it, this is the book. It’s a good primer if you intend to design anything based on what the composite books above may have to offer.
How to Make Your Car Handle Fred Puhn There’s a lot of what’s in this book in the books above, but Fred shows how to do it with two bits of hairy string and a dangly weight.
Automotive Fuel Injection – A technical guide Jan P Norbye This book is potentially dated now, bearing in mind on the kit car community this is now considered a commodity where before it was considered witchcraft. However, it’s a great book to get you up to speed with the principles and gives a great summary of the evolution of fuel injection.

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