Customer Reviews

How to Hot Rod Volkswagen Engines

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bill Fisher's book is what most VW fans start out with. It may be outdated (written in 1971 I believe). The current printing has no updates and lists some catalogues as being 50 cents. The information is what most people will find interesting. Once you understand what Bill is talking about you can learn more by participating in online VW forums like the Cal-Look Forum on the net. There are lots of people out there willing to help with advice and information.

Start with this book if you want to know how to increase the efficiency of your VW engine. You must be patient as this book is a bit outdated. However, many of the ideas here can still be used today. A good buy for any VW enthusiast.

Many good tips to hot rod VW Beetle (Bus). Book include history and birth of Volkswagen. If you want to know how to exhaust tuning, port sylinder heads (very good section), make better carburetion, what you have to do that it stay together, read this book once at least.

Published in 1970 this book would be very good for the novice of vw air-cooled. Starting with History, Variations of engines, Bolt on power, Ignition, Exhaust, Heads, Pistons & Cylinders, Crank-shafts, Lubrication, Cooling & Breathing, Camshaft & Valve Train, Blueprinting, Engine Assembly, Supercharging, Porsche or Corvair?, Stability & Handling. Yes It's 30+ years old. May not win Indy but still very intersting for the basics. Hard to find comparable updated info.

A VW classic but a little dated. With a little Internet research a pretty good book.

If you are looking for something to help you choose from modern aircooled vw performance parts this is not really the book for you. The engine used for most of the tests in the book is a 1500 single port with single oil relief, the book only touches on dual port heads and dual oil relief cases. Although this book is outdated their is still a lot of good information.

This book has great engine set up info that is as valid today as it was 30 years ago. I give it three stars because the parts list is obsolete and some of the people mentioned are no longer with us.
I would buy this book again gladly just for the valve train set up chapter which is superb

I bought this book to guide me on basic building techniques. This book is dated. My version was "used", literally from 1970. This guide refers to 1600 dual ports, 92mm cylinders, and IRS as "new technology", so it won't be a lot of help on big bore builds. However, where this book excels is on building techniques: case upgrades, counterweighting crankshafts, prepping crankshafts, building pushrods, bore machining, head assembly. The book can save you time and money simply by avoiding poor building techniques and little details that we tend to overlook. It's a cheap book, spend a few bucks and avoid some headaches. If you avoid one mistake the book will pay for iteself.

Contains a lot of very good information on how to customize the VW engine. Downside is that some of the manufacturers addresses and phone numbers may no longer be valid since it was published in the 70's. But a quick Google search should fix that to get the current contact information.

Lots of information, but much of it is very dated. If this is your first VW engine build, I would highly recommend this book.