Last week I mentioned some of the people who helped me with the writing of 21st Century Performance, especially in providing the information on tuning programmable management. Those helpful people weren't alone....
Proof Reading
Quite early on in the writing of the book I realised that I strongly required the input of others. I needed people who were prepared to critically read chapters - in typescript form, no visuals available - and then give strong and blunt feedback. And it'd be easy enough to find those people, wouldn't it? Well, no, it wasn't. While a number of knowledgeable people suggested that they'd be happy to read the book in progress, when confronted with 50mm thick sheaf of A4 filled with just words, they were often a bit overwhelmed. This was nothing like reading a book, their blanching gaze seemed to say; this is like reading a bloody essay!
Three people in the end agreed to read every word, scribbling comments in the margin, considering the expression, the language - and the correctness of the content.
Jamie Campbell, friend and practicing mechanic (also currently part way through a tertiary electronics engineering qualification and with a year of university mechanical engineering under his belt) read each chapter from the perspective of a total car nut. I'd send him each chapter's typescript by post (he lives on the other side of the city) and by the next evening he'd have read it and be on the phone, an animated, lively and often argumentative discussion following. His feedback was never of the type "You made a spelling error"; instead always something like "Why'd you leave this out?" or "Where'd you get that from; it's wrong!".
Mechanic and engine builder John Keen has an unusually wide experience - he twirls spanners on a V8 Supercar, and is as happy putting a turbo on a 1.8 litre four as he is building a Chev big block. While Jamie read each chapter in a few hours of concentrated effort, John always took days and days, marking with a pen the point in the text that he'd reached, coming back to it late the next evening after his children were in bed and the day's work was done. I know that John isn't the sort to rapidly read a novel as recreation; I'm sure that reading each chapter was a task that he regarded as pure drudge. Over the course of the chapters, he found (usually with great glee - the mechanic showing up the journalist!) some spelling and grammatical errors; more importantly, he also found some serious factual errors.
My father - Robert Edgar - has never read any of my magazine articles. Why would he? - he finds the notion of modifying cars to be largely a waste of time. Instead, he is much more interested in pure mathematics, electronic design, religion and philosophy. A retired research scientist and engineer, he has extremely eclectic technical and English skills. But no interest at all in the topics covered in the book ....
I asked if he would read and comment on the first finished chapter - and he went through it line by line. He analysed the phrasing, the syntax, the choice of words. He looked at the technical background, the concepts, the clarity. He made numerous notes, spending literally hours and hours reading that chapter. Then he rang me up. Every point that he made was worthwhile, every correction valid. It took four hours to go through that one chapter... During this time I had the phone in one hand while with the other I punched the keyboard and moved the mouse, highlighting on the screen doubtful text, correcting, and placing question marks. And we ended up doing this for every chapter - sometimes in a double shift if the chapter was very long.
In addition, I wanted experts in their respective fields to read each relevant chapter. However, there was no point in giving a chapter to a so-called expert (and I certainly ran across a few of those during the research!) and so this ended up being confined to just two people: Ford aerodynamics supremo Clive Humphris, who commented on the Aerodynamics chapter, and Jim Gurief of Whiteline Suspension, who read the chapter on Tyres, Suspension & Brakes. Both of these men were very helpful, making valid suggestions that were acted upon.
In fact many, many people were extremely helpful - they're individually thanked in the Acknowledgements.
Production
If writing the book was hard work - helped greatly by the willingness of others to make good inputs - the production of the book was just pure stress. I had worked with Dave Heinrich when I edited Zoom; if there's a better comic book (and naughty cartoon!) artist in Australia I've yet to see their work. Versatile and skilled, Dave was my choice for layout artist - a decision helped by the fact that I had negotiated payment to him for the use of some of his brilliant artwork in the book. However, Dave needed persuading to take on the task of laying it out: the big problem was that he had previously never used a computer to do this.
His learning curve was immense, and - as could be expected, perhaps - this made the production both incredibly drawn-out and frustrating. His overall design - the use of a vertical keyline down a wide margin on each page, the choice of body text and title fonts, lots of large pictures - I wholeheartedly agreed with. But his slowness to produce material, the stressing-out that often preceded the making of corrections (in anything task like this there are always literally dozens of corrections per chapter) and the sheer time that all this consumed made it total pain. Changes that to me seemed simple and quick he saw as hours of extra work; thus the diagram on page 52 has lines of uneven width, for example.
He had quoted a lump sum (paid by the publisher) for doing the layout, and as the time stretched 40, 60, 80 per cent over the estimate that he had made, he became less and less willing to make changes and corrections. (In the end the payment was increased to compensate for the longer than expected book.) In the final analysis, I am very happy with the layout and design - readers will never know how much effort went into making it so......
The Cover
Quite early in the book's production (ie well before it was finished being written) Publisher Martin White's artists in Sydney had produced a mock-up cover. This was done to create interest amongst booksellers; Dave Heinrich was to design the finished cover. The use on the cover of a single pic was ruled out early - if you put a 'four' on the cover that would disenfranchise V8 lovers, a turbo would put off people into NA power, etc. We decided then to have four pics, three smaller ones in a column down the left-hand side and a single, larger pic to the right. I picked Chris Higgs' superb Laser Turbo as the main cover car (it's a car also available in the US and UK - important for marketing purposes), and had an opened-up vane type airflow meter, a chassis dyno shot and a pic of a Commodore V8 twin exhaust as the other visuals.
But just before the cover was to be printed, it was found that all these photos had been lost! Urgent replacements had to be immediately found: I lifted a press pic of an STi WRX from within the book, grabbed a new pic of a supercharger, and repeated two other pictures from the contents (an exhaust being welded and a MoTeC ECU). Several people have commented to me on the fact that a WRX is on the cover; it was almost accidental!
Photography
As far as I know, this is the first technical car modification book of its type ever done in full colour. As a professional photographer, this was a very important attraction of the project to me - and one that I took full advantage of. There are about 560 photos in the book, with my shutter release finger behind about 450 of them. Photographer David Bryant - who freely threw open his photo files to me - took most of the rest.
Retrospective
Although the book has only just been published, already I can see areas where I could update or alter its content. Since the book was written, both Autronic and Kalmaker have produced new (and different looking - aaagh!) software. The ability of the Holden Gen III V8 to self-learn back to original power when given breathing improvements is new, as (to me) is the cheap and easy trick of leaning-out top-end turbo engine mixtures by disconnecting the fuel pressure regulator. Michael Knowling has drawn to my attention the fact that an external turbo wastegate can be used with a relatively small turbine and large compressor to allow very quick turbo spool-up without overly limiting top-end power, and my driving experience with a Torsen centre diff four wheel drive car alters a little my views on diffs and four-wheel drive handling. Also, the electronic products that AutoSpeed is currently developing will make some of the products covered in 21st Century Performance look expensive and perhaps overly simple.
But then - as publisher Martin White says - all these changes can be incorporated into the second edition....
21st Century Performance - A Different Perspective! Part 1
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This and That!
- The opening photo for the Exhaust Systems chapter (page 137) is part of a photo shoot done on my kitchen table. Just visible at the top of the pic are the wrinkles in the bed sheet that was hung up as a background....
- The Mazda Familia on Page 100 was photographed in Darwin, tripod, camera and me balanced on top of a shipping container.
- The Jaguar and BMW V8 cam specs shown on Page 13 came from information smuggled out of the back door of official Jaguar and BMW workshops by helpful mechanics, eager to see their marques featured in the book!
- Artist Dave Heinrich was reluctant to include the pic (Page 52) of my dented and damaged Daihatsu, smashed as a result of my tuning air fuel ratios while watching an air/fuel ratio meter while trying to drive in city traffic. "It makes you look like an idiot," he said. So the pic is in, but it's small!
- The Haltech Haligator (Page 58) still hasn't been released!
- The Subaru WRX ignition and fuel maps (Pages 91-94) are the first time I've ever seen published a comparison of standard, chipped and factory high performance ECU maps - thanks Adrian!
- The photos of the porting performed on the Lexus V8 head were taken in Frank Intini's workshop. He had only a desk lamp available for illumination, explaining the strong tungsten (yellow) colour cast. Still, they're pretty amazing shots - actually inside the ports!
- Changes were made on Page 43 to reduce the chances of legal action being taken by chip companies....
- Project Skyline's one-wheel burn-out up my driveway (Page 30) was originally going to be a full page.... other layout changes meant that the pic had to come back in size!
- The engine with the dramatically holed piston (page 221) is from a Suzuki Swift GTi, and was mangled in GTP racing.
- The set expression on my face in the shot of the cornering Mazda MX5 (Page 298) shows how hard I was trying....
- The table of Handling Solutions on pages 299-300 was a very late inclusion. It came about when I was reading the chapter at the B&W proofing stage and realised that a reader after quick fixes wasn't being led anywhere very fast.
- The superb Dave Heinrich rendering of the Plymouth Roadrunner Superbird (page 312) was done from a model.
- The photo of the Corolla on page 313 was taken when I was working as a car detailer in a crash repair business - just about the time I wished that I'd taken an up-front $$$ payment for the book...
- To draw the wing profiles shown in Figure 13.11, Michael Knowling went around to car yards and bent a piece of welding wire around each car's wing, opening it up at the join to allow removal.
- The chapter on Aerodynamics is my favourite, the chapter on Preventing Detonation I think the weakest.
- Not all of the index is in strictly alphabetical order..... ooops!
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