Snafu's Book

[ISO]

Tony is there any other reputable places where we can leave reviews for you and still get them out to the public. My financial disposition is not allowing me to write a review for amazon yet. I do have an account now.

I want to say sorry to about the guy that didn't give you a good review. He seams to lack real world experience. I have only worked for 2 shops and they both had different philosophies on how they wanted wires connected inside the vehicles we worked on. Our opinions didn't matter as the owner or head insataller made the call on how we did this.

With that being said, I feel that was actually a very important part of the book. It will help educate(typo) people that are new to this or people that have began working for a shop and are expected to do it the shops way to do it the best way possible.

I'm very glad you wrote the book and I do feel that it is an important piece to get out there that is down to earth and very realistic and helps even us somewhat experienced guys to better our technique.

[snafu]

Tony is there any other reputable places where we can leave reviews for you and still get them out to the public. My financial disposition is not allowing me to write a review for amazon yet. I do have an account now.

I want to say sorry to about the guy that didn't give you a good review. He seams to lack real world experience. I have only worked for 2 shops and they both had different philosophies on how they wanted wires connected inside the vehicles we worked on. Our opinions didn't matter as the owner or head insataller made the call on how we did this.

With that being said, I feel that was actually a very important part of the book. It will help educate(typo) people that are new to this or people that have began working for a shop and are expected to do it the shops way to do it the best way possible.

I'm very glad you wrote the book and I do feel that it is an important piece to get out there that is down to earth and very realistic and helps even us somewhat experienced guys to better our technique.

Sorry, I didn't know Amazon.com charged anything to write a review. I obviously can't write a review on my own book . . . I guess they think it'd be a little biased . . . so I hadn't actually tried to do that. My website has a bunch of info on the book - http://www.candela-sales.com/Templates/aut...e%20wiring.html - I was going to add a REVIEW page so that I could cut and paste reviews from all over the web. But, my web site gets zero traffic in the big scheme of things - especially when compared to the traffic Amazon.com gets. If you'd like, just post your review within this thread - that'd be cool too.

Thanks!

[jbondox]

Tony I didn't know you could write.... congrats bro

[ISO]

It seems that you have to make one purchase from them before you can leave comments or reviews.

I am awaiting a password retrieval from Barnes & Noble where I had purchased the book.

Review of Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems by Tony Candela from Jon S aka ISO on the car audio internet forums.

First I would like to thank the author for writing this book.

Why?

I have been in and out of the car audio field for a good while and at almost 29 years old I don't expect to get back into the buisnes end of it. I love doing car stereo's and chasing after the never ending quest of searching for sound quaility as a personal hobby.

Back to the why do I like this book?

The truth is the car audio industry is much larger than doing stereos,amplifiers and big bass and the couple of shops I have worked for would not have survived if that was the only thing they had to rely on to financially support themselve's. The buisnes end of car audio relies on a wide variety of different aftermarket equipment and installation techniques such as car alarms,remote starts, and keyless entry systems to name just a few of the things a person trained in this field will deal with on a daily basis. In fact there is so much to learn and to learn how to properly and safely utilize everything that I am not able to remember all of it unless I'm in the install bay every day and that is where this book comes in handy to me.

The book Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems covers just about everything that a car audio installer will deal with on a daily basis and then some.

For the people just getting into the industry it will definetly help them with the basics of understanding electrical theory of DC electricity and how it works to showing you different ways of connecting too or splicing into a vehicle's electrical system, which can become very dangerous if not done propperly in a fairly easy reading that most people should beable to comprehend and will help the newcomer understand quicker to beable to be more self relient.

As for the more experienced, the first thing I did when I got the book was look up everything that I was taught to see if there was a better way to do the things I had learned over the years. With connecting wires as the second part of the book I read after going over electrical theory again and to my surprise the Westinghouse split was in there. This is a splice I have used for years (I never new the name of it) and I was quite happy to see it in this book as this very handy way of connecting wires if done properly can't be beat in my opinion and to my surprise the author had added one finishing touch to the splice that may have helped prevent any warranty work that would have cost the shop time and money and I found these little details through out the whole book. Another example is the relay, I never thought in a million years about connecting a diode between the main switching section of a relay and the more I had thought about it, it made alot of sense to help safe guard some fairly expensive equipment from something that may or may not ever happen for very,very little cost.

This book has definetly helped me to fine tune some of the skills that I have been taught by some very good people and to make my work more reliable.

This is suposed to be a review and I think I'm starting to turn it into a book,LOL.

To sum it up for me with what I know and the fact I will always have something to do with the electronics in vehicles, this book gives me a way to easily fall back into the understanding of how to do things I have forgotten (keyless entry on older Mustangs) and the ability to do some of the things I have not had to do very easily.

Thank you to the author for making it that much easyer on me to beable to utilize and trouble shoot the electronics of automobiles by doing some simple reading.

Thank you,

Jon S aka ISO

[jbondox]

This book is not up to the standards of books published by CarTech. Chapter 3 is full of misinformation. No one who understands electrical systems would ever connect wires by twisting them. Electrical connections on automobiles should always be crimp connections and terminations. Soldering should only be used for connections to circuit boards and repairs to circuit boards. Scotchlok and T-Taps should never be used for any automobile connections. These examples show that the author does not have a good understanding of the practices used in the automotive industry.

This guy is an idiot. However, I do believe that the standards should be raised by shops to NOT use T-taps and scotchlocks. Imagine if the car manufacturers started using them to make connections.

[Gotloud555]

Now we're talkin'! This book is full of all kinds of tricks that I learned over the years . . . the 1 amp fuse trick is another such example. I was fortunate to work in two different extremely high volume shops from 1991 - 1997. I worked with many extremely talented installers over the years. One of these environments was commission only pay. Trust me, in that kind of job one cannot afford to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Getloud555, if you didn't understand the content I provided on the relay, then you should go back and re-read the section I wrote on switches - you simply must understand how a switch works in an effort to understand how the relay works. This is the single best explanation of how relays work that I know of. Also, don't be afraid to have a relay in hand and connect it as shown in the numerous diagrams I provided. Sometimes, hands-on is the only way to grasp such topics. My tip of the day . . . if you know how to turn the light on in any room in your house, then you already know what a relay does . . . it's how it does it that makes relays different from switches.

BTW, guys . . . I ALWAYS appreciate formal reviews of the book - CLICK HERE to review the book.

Thanks!!!

I'm not done reading it but i like some of the chapter you explain in the book with wiring crimpiing, voltage, current, Resistance and the forumla. The picture were very informative and clearly shooted. I wanted to ask about relay because i new to this stuff and haven't use very often on electrical devices. I wanted to know how to use a relay on hooking multiple amp. I know the book didn't really show much or maybe it did. I'm still reading it carefully. Can i use any size wire to power the relay or there is certain size in can use. It say that i would need a fuse to power it. Sorry I'm noob on this. I want to fully understand relay so i don't blow any electical devices on the vehicle otherwise it will be very costly.

[may03LT]

Soldering should only be used for connections to circuit boards and repairs to circuit boards.

I lol'd

ISO, I didnt know the proper name of the westinghouse split either.

Gotloud, if you start a thread here I'll help you out.

[snafu]

This guy is an idiot. However, I do believe that the standards should be raised by shops to NOT use T-taps and scotchlocks. Imagine if the car manufacturers started using them to make connections.

It just goes to show you that you need to read the text that accompanies the pictures . . . versus just looking at the pictures. T-taps and Scotchloks are the absolute worst way of doing things. But, I would have been remiss if I didn't cover them, point out their limitations (extensively I might add), and show the reader how to properly use them if they were faced with that.

But, I think the three people that responded to his review all but eliminated it as valid in the eyes of the typical amazon customer. Thanks ISO for the review. Gotloud555 . . . keep reading!

[snafu]

A quick update. Modified Mustangs and Fords reviewed the book extremely favorably in their September, 2009 issue! They closed the review by saying " . . . Automotive Wiring and Electrical Systems just went to the top of our list of 'must have' books in your reference library! . . . "

The book is selling extremely well and has already gone to reprint with my publisher - after only 5 months! This morning when I checked, the book was # 3 in Best Sellers at Amazon.com in the Automotive > Repair category!

Thanks to all of you for spreading the word . . . and if you don't already have your copy, pick one up!

Thanks again!

[jbondox]

I want an autographed copy!