Automotive Technology: Principles, Diagnosis, and Service (Halderman Automotive Series)

I'm a DIY guy who wanted a book to take me closer to the level of knowledge of an auto service technician, so I looked for books that technicians actually use in their training. This book (6th edition) is just that and has helped me improve my knowledge. However, the task is harder than it needs to be due to the extremely poor editing of the book. It is as if it was published without being read at all. It seems to bear evidence of repeated editions with new information jammed in and hasty editing; it often doesn't "flow". There are: repeated identical paragraphs within one page of one another, other unnecessary repetition of sentences or information, pictures or figures that add no new information, confusing or illogical flow of information, garbled sentences, sentences stuck on the beginning or ending of the wrong paragraph, misspellings and nonsense words, inconsistent values for the same thing on the same page, and incorrect unit conversions. As an example of the latter, in the A/C service chapter on the same page where it says, " Always use the specified amount of refrigerant", it also says "0.96 Kg is equal to 0.44 pounds" (it should be 2.12 pounds). Another nice one is 1 teaspoon = 1 mL. That is off by a factor of 5 and should be obvious to anyone who has any experience with spoons and milliliters. My favorite little editing mistake is to have volt-8 instead of V8 referring to an 8-cylinder engine. You can picture than happening when using find/replace in an editor.

The first chapter on electricity is particularly strange. It keeps emphasizing things like, "A conductor is any element that has one to three electrons in its outer orbit" with similar discussion of insulators and semiconductors. This is simplistic at best, wrong for most interpretations of what an "orbit" is, and leaves unanswered how things that aren't pure elements can be conductors. Additionally, the information is useless to the typical technician. About two pages of confusing material could be replaced by sentences something like, "Some materials are insulators and conduct electricity poorly or not at all, some are conductors and conduct electricity well. Semiconductors are insulators under some conditions and conductors under other conditions, such as when a certain voltage is applied."

As an example of the strange flow of information, the clearest definition of a speed-density system and the use of a MAP sensor comes as the introduction to the chapter on MAF sensors which *follows* the MAP sensor chapter. It would have been perfect in the introduction to the prior chapter.

There are many cases where the possible differences between vehicles or vehicle types are ignored and the discussion just launches into a description of one type--usually assuming an older vehicle and a US manufacturer. For instance, when first describing measuring fuel pressure, it says to, "locate the Schrader value and attach a fuel-pressure gauge." I haven't had a car with a schrader valve on a fuel line for 20 years and most modern makes don't have them. Similar confusions arise when discussing distributor based vs distributorless ingition and the various sorts of fuel delivery systems. The book needs some consistent way to identify the kind of system it is discussing and it needs to mention that different systems exist before jumping into a description of one type as if it was the only type.

My favorite out-of-date inclusion was the discussion in the alternative fuels chapter on the Mobil Methanol-to-Gasoline (MTG) process. The text describes it as Exxon Mobil's process, which means the company name was updated after the Exxon/Mobil merger in about 2000, but it says, "The process ... is currently being produced in New Zealand." The NZ MTG plant closed down 25 years ago and there were no MTG plants running until one started up in China in 2009. I wonder how many other errors exist in the book that I haven't recognized because I don't have any prior knowledge of the subject.

There is some, but not much and heavily US-manufacturer-centric, discussion of differences between different car makes and how to diagnose and service them. It isn't necessarily a bad thing to focus on the principles, but don't expect to gain much understanding of the differences between modern car makes.

This book needs a thorough re-write and error-checking. Maybe if that was done, they could remove some repetitive or unhelpful material and bring the book down below 1760 pages. My guess is that you could remove at least 20% of the material and make a better book. At its current size, it could usefully be split into two volumes as it is physically huge.

I had just received this book today. Upon opening it, the glue on the spine immediately sperated. It's expected with such a large, heavy book, but I expected the glue to hold longer than a day.