Customer Reviews

How to Build Custom Cars (Tex Smith's)

5 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book to be very informative as it discusses many of the pros and cons of almost all aspects of building a custom car. The photos were very helpfull in some of the more critical areas of discussion although some shots were a little hard to make out the extent of work done. The step by step approach was very thorough and each step is described in great detail with photos accompanying most of the steps throughout each phase in the book. I am currently building a '47 Chevy Coupe and have already included several ideas from this book into my plans for the car. Overall, I would highly recommend this useful book for anyone interested in building custom cars or just looking to add some custom personal touches to their everyday car.

This is a very curious book both in execution and content. It covers many aspects of older custom cars. It doesn't cover modern cars or modern electronics. The articles are informative and perhaps even inspiring, if old.

There are some very colorful car pictures on the cover of the book. I find that a little misleading because the rest of the book is entirely in black and white. While that is not really an issue for most of the construction pictures, the section on paint looks particularly pale. I'd really like to see some color shots of those cars.

The book is a collection of short articles by a variety of authors. Interspersed are full-page advertisements for a variety of automotive goods and services. While all the ads include prices, they don't include dates. Disturbing. There is no copyright date in the front of the book, but there is a note in the front referencing the "first 1994 reprint". Given this review was written in late 2003, the ads are at least a decade old. The articles within could be another decade or two older and some are poorly edited.

That being said, the fabrication articles were interesting to me considering I have little experience in automobile fabrication. The book covers "top chopping" (lowering the roof), "sectioning" (cutting a slice out of the middle of the body), and "channeling" (lowering the body in relation to the floor). Of the three, I had only ever heard of the first, so I learned something.

The book covers how to: "French" (recess) headlights and radio antennas; custom fabricate chrome trim and scoops; cut curved windshield glass; and polish aluminum equipment under the hood. All of theses topics are the basic tools needed to customize a car body and they all gave me ideas.

After reading the section on "polishing" I spent about 5 hours polishing a grimy, sand cast, run-of-the-mill, ugly alternator on my car with astonishing results. It went from rough and dirt covered to smooth and shinier than my bald head; and finally to the point where I could see my sweaty smiling face in it. I didn't realize that standard factory aluminum equipment could be polished to such a high shine. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. (My son wants me to polish the entire (large) intake manifold now.)

The electrics section most covers how to install electric windows and electric door locks. This section suffers most of all from being out of date. My MP3 player install and ideas for mounting a computer in the rear are light years ahead of this material. If that's what you want- don't buy this book. That being said, the metal working I suspect is largely the same as it has been since Henry Ford's day and this book can give you some ideas and basic body reconstruction methods. So if you don't mind black and white, and want some basic construction ideas, this book might be useful, especially if you are building '40-'60's customs.

If you are interested in or planning to build a Custom,this book provides a great basic overview of many of the techniques and designs used,and will provide you with lots of usefull ideas.

I like this book as it covers various subjects on customising your car like top chopping,sectioning,chassis swapping and many other techniques.You will find a lot of ideas in this book.If you are contemplating your next project and you're looking for ideas you should add this book to your collection.Plenty of photos and diagrams but tends to be a bit light on for text in places.
Overall,a good quality book.
I also recommend this book too:
"Standard Guide To Building Street Rods and Custom Cars" By Ken Wickham.This book is available from this site too.

How to Build Custom Cars was poorly edited and hard to follow. The many misprints and misspellings made it hard to read. Lack of detail on subject matter makes it a poor match for a novice car builder. The text was written at about an 8th grade education level and therefore has turned me off to any other books by Tex Smith.