How to Keep Your Muscle Car Alive by Harvey White Jr. is a brand new release from Motorbooks and is part of the Motorbooks Workshop series of technical titles. This book is a neat reference material for any owner of an aging muscle car or hot rod.

We like to consider ourselves pretty hard core when it comes to the technical end of things involving our cars, and frankly, the most experienced among us would probably find this book to be a bit light in the depth department. The rest of us however can always stand to refresh ourselves on how stuff works.

This is not a piece that will show you how to build massive horsepower or engineer a trick handling suspension, but what it will do is explain in great detail the systems that make up your car, how they work, how to optimize them, and how to repair them in the event that they fail.

We think the perfect owner of this book would be the car enthusiast who has just purchased a project car or even a completed driver and has not been turning wrenches for a while and may need to dust up on a few things, or just the enthusiast who drives the wheels of his or her hot rod and needs to keep it maintained.  

There are tons of good photos and illustrations showing how things work and fit together. There are also clearly defined chapters focusing on things like the suspension, fuel system, electrical, and others.

If you are a factory certified master mechanic or a guy with 20 ASE certifications, you will not be learning much with this book. If you are an enthusiast who loves to tinker and improve your junk like most of us are, we’d recommend putting this on your shelf and pulling it out the next time you are going to wrench on your car. It’s all about the fundamentals!

This book can be purchased straight from the publisher at www.motorbooks.com or at places like amazon.com and your friendly local bookseller.