The Hack Mechanic Guide to European Automotive Electrical Systems

Review

A book like this walks a fine line. You can easily dumb it down to the point where you're insulting your reader with cartoon pictures of electrons, or just as easily overestimate the reader's intelligence and attention span and write it like your core audience once built the Space Shuttle.This one is billed as a guide to European automotive electrical systems, and it's true that it does provide a lot of specific data on the idiosyncrasies of Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and any other Euro manufacturer that favors Bosch electrics. But that's not to say that if you own an Austin-Healey that you won't get a lot of it.It's also not just for people who have cars of a certain vintage. A ton of the information collected in the book covers how to diagnose and understand things like all the sensors that make a modern car go and stop.The Hack Mechanic Guide to European Automotive Electrical Systems splits the difference. It's an actual book with chapters featuring engaging writing that doesn't make you want to stick your head in an oven. Each chapter covers a specific topic, but it's broken up with tons of illustrations, and sidebars designed to either offer deeper information, to provide a warning, or to deliver an analogy that can help you sort through your problem.It's complex enough to cover modern electrical issues, but also never assumes that you've done any electrical work or more accurately any electrical work correctly. Early chapters cover the basics of safety and automotive electricity, and most appreciated, how a multimeter actually works. --bestride.comIf the world has needed one automotive electrical system manual ever since different systems evolved in different regions of the world, it's this one. Why? Anyone who's ever looked under the hood and dash of a 40-year-old European car knows the hell it endured at the hands of those who didn't understand its electrical system.As Siegel explains in detail, all BMWs built up to 1996 and some systems after that can be diagnosed fairly well with a digital multimeter. They're super-useful, and you can get one for 10 bucks.Additional chapters cover ignition systems from points through electronic, reading wire diagrams, diagnosing parasitic power drains and even a bit on audio head units. Additionally, Siegel has gone well beyond the basics to subject matter that should make this manual required reading in technical schools and repair shops alike. Heck, BMW service managers would do well to read it. ..and if they do, they'll enjoy it because the editors at Bentley had the good sense to let Siegel be Siegel. Unlike the dry engineer types who usually write manuals, Siegel has a God-given turn of phrase that makeseverything he writes worth reading.Notwithstanding skirting the Brits and dashing my admittedly more-than-a-little odd automotive proclivities like positive ground, this manual puts Siegel and the Bentley Publishers Technical Team on my list of noteworthy authors of truly useful manuals.-Mike Miller --Bimmer magzineSiegel'swriting is well known to Roundel readers, and since the publication of his first book, Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic /, his colorful and heartfelt writing has connected with an enormous audience of "other" car fanatics, as well as those curiously connected with them. I was excited to be reading another one of his books, with the prospect of reviewing it in published form, until I realized that it was a book ... about. .. automotive electrical systems. Perhaps the driest subject matter imaginable, right?But here is a book thoughtfully and exhaustively crafted to put our fears at rest, and explain the nature of the scary, complex things connected to all those wires. It's not as warm and fuzzy as Siegel's first book, but it digs immediately in to the nitty-gritty of why electrical things work - or don't work - on our cars, in a manner that still makes for thoroughly pleasurable reading. I only wish that this book had been presented to me about 25 years ago. In fact, I'd suggest it as textbook material for professional educational programs, and it is essential reading for the do-it-yourselfer. --Roundel magazine

The Hack Mechanic Guide to European Automotive Electrical Systems

A book like this walks a fine line. You can easily dumb it down to the point where you're insulting your reader with cartoon pictures of electrons, or just as easily overestimate the reader's intelligence and attention span and write it like your core audience once built the Space Shuttle.