Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Trouble-Free Car Care (First Edition) (Complete Idiot's Guide to ...)

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unless your car is over twenty years old this book is useless. Most of the described maintenance and adjustments simply don't apply to newer cars. Plus I found the descriptions for how to do the repairs so vague that it would be impossible to carry them out.

Nice easy read. Good bathroom book for people like me, who don't know a damn thing about cars (hey, I grew up and lived in a city with public transporation most of my life). I agree that it doesn't really go into alot of specifics. The author tells the reader to go out and get an aftermarket guide (such as Haynes) if you need to do something serious (which I did). In that respect, this book is probably a good starting point for the person who knows absolutely nothing (to get an overview), but it can't serve as the best reference guide for your particular model of car. Other then that, it gives you a general overview of the different systems that have to be in any automobile, a very basic overview of what to look for when inspecting your ride and then some instructions on working with the simple stuff and what goes one when professionals need to do the heavy stuff. Worth the price.

Very helpful and concise book. Ramsey makes learning about cars not only interesting but fun as well. Although the book cant go completely into detail on every car repair there is, the book offers more than enough information to make a person have a clear undestanding on how a car works and what needs to be done when there's trouble with it.

this book just confused me. Most of it only applies to really old cars, and the rest was too vague to actually follow.

One of the things that most appealed to me about this book was fact that it did provide info and guidelines for working on older cars. I've read several other care care/repair books and none of them had guidelines for cars older than about 1980. The guidelines in this book are rather general, but they should suffice for a beginner or for somebody who doesn't need their hand held the whole time.

Unlike most car care books that stop at explaining how to check fluids and change your oil, this one does give at least some general (very general) info on replacing a carburetor or automatic choke, or repairing a fuel-injection system. As noted by the author, however, these jobs really do require a Chiltons or Haynes manual. Since the book does include "Idiot's" in the title, you can bet it won't be nearly as detailed as an aftermarket or shop manual.

One thing I found really irritating were all of the cutesy words and phrases used by the author. It may be for "Idiot's", but we are still adults. On the plus side, the author does provide an entire chapter on using the Internet to further your knowledge. While the info provided was pretty useless (show me one person under 60 who doesn't know the components of a URL), he did offer a bunch of links that I found helpful.

I am not a big fan on the Idiot and Dummy books, but this is a wonderful introduction to car care, but is a little limited. After reading this book, I learned about how my car works, how to maintain it, and do some basic repairs. Mr. Ramsey does a wonderful job with each of these areas. While you can not go to this book and expect to repair everything on your car, he gives you the basics.

The most important item in the book is the "Car Care Card" which goes over thing you need to know such as Year, Make, and Model of car, and certain specification on your car such as tire pressure, part numbers etc. The "Car Care Card" also has a maintenance schedule for Weekly, Three months, six months, every year, and every two years; which helps thwart the need for costly expense later down the road. These are items I wish my mechanic would have told me about when I bought my car or when I hav it serviced. This card is meant to placed in you car for quick reference. Most other manuals rarely give you a proper schedule for maintaining your automobile.

The remainder of the book helps you understand your car better to keep it on the road. There a plenty of pictures and diagrams to show you what basic parts look like. He advocates, getting a Haynes or Chilton book for your specific make model and year of car to help with the bigger jobs. That way when a specific issue arises, you have a more concise book to give you greater details. While the book is not 100% complete with every issue or meant to be a all inclusive how to fix your car, Mr. Ramsey gives you the basic, the rest is up to you.

I recommend this for anyone who wants to start fixing their own vehicles or want to prolong the life of their cars. It is a good referance manuel to take to your car mechanic also. This book has helped keep my repair bills down and have my car last over 250.000 miles and 12 years.

Enjoy