Product Description
This clear and concise text explains the fundamental principles of electricity and electrical circuits that today’s professional automotive technicians are required to know. Emphasis is on the circuits and devices found in modern cars. Semi-conductor theory and a survey of solid-state devices are also discussed. A comprehensive chapter on accessories is included…. More >>
Today’s Technician: Automotive Electricity and Electronics
Tags: Automotive, Electricity, Electronics, Technician, Today's
#1 by Patel, Sap on March 29, 2010 - 8:18 pm
I have got the book, but It says Shop Manual as well.. and i haven’t received that yet? How do I return it? or can u send me the shop manual or alteast explain why does it say shop manual and its not being send
Rating: 2 / 5
#2 by Spaminator on March 29, 2010 - 9:07 pm
This like all automotive books from Thompson Delmar publishing tries to cover everything. The problem is it doesn’t have enough detail to fully explain the theories being discussed. How can Hall effect sensors be fully explained without a picture of what it actually looks like in an automotive shop environment? Automechanics must know how to test a hall effect sensor to properly diagnose a crank no start condition. This test is done on the signal wire coming out of the sensor. There is only one signal wire coming from a hall effect sensor in an engine. On page 312, it shows a hall effect sensor with two signal wires going out of it. Which wire would be tested? The picture is misleading. That’s just one example of many of how this book cuts corners and shortchanges in explaining.
If you need this book for class, pray that you have a conscientious teacher who will fully explain all the misleading pictures in this book. If you don’t have a good teacher, you will most likely have to buy books by Halderman to understand what is being discussed in class and then you will be prepared to understand this book. If you can understand everything in this book then you are either a genius or you have been exposed to automotive electronics in a professional or hobbyist setting. In either case why even bother signing up for an automotive electronics class? I would give one star to this book but it challenged me and pointed in me in the right direction of what to study if I’m going to make any money from repairing automotive electronics. For that it gets two stars.
Rating: 2 / 5
#3 by czz on March 29, 2010 - 10:24 pm
I agree with the opinions expressed in other reviews, but I also really like the book. It is one of the few automotive books I own, i only have ten or so, and i think there is a real problem with writing this kind of book, you really need to see the parts. But, seriously how can you get modern photos into a book, photos go out of date, etc. I love the lab book, it says, “if some dude complains about this, check out that” and that is really helpful and no other books have that. i think the bits of info in the margin is well done, some books have way too much junk in the margins, and often it is the same phrase from the main text- definitions are normally like that. There are so many bad bad bad textbooks out there that i thought I should say this one is not bad, so I gave it five stars.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by J. Amaro on March 29, 2010 - 10:48 pm
I purchased this book because it was required for my automotive electronics class.. Although it’s a two volume set, a lot of the same information can be found on both books. Never the less, it’s a nice book to learn from and use as a reference when trouble shooting electrical circuits.
One huge issue though is because it’s written with a students perspective in mind the quizzes/questions at the end of each chapter do not come with answers that you can use to cross check!
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by J. Miller on March 29, 2010 - 11:07 pm
As a college teacher of an automotive electrical & electronics course, I use this book as a text. I chose it because it is the best book I could find, but I am still not very satisfied with it. Only about half of the material is useful to someone who is learning how to understand, diagnose, and repair automotive electrical systems. The other half of the material is confusing and makes electrical systems seem more intimidating than they really are. For this reason, I only assign students to read segments of each book. I often get comments from students about how confusing the book is on a certain subject–and I would have to agree with them in most cases.
There are also a fair number of inaccuracies in the text and the diagrams. Overall, it is about the best textbook of this type, but it really needs to be streamlined and more effectively written!
Rating: 3 / 5