Hib Halverson
This book, How to Rebuild and Modify Muncie 4-Speed Transmissions, is a Muncie-specific sequel to the Author’s earlier manual transmission book, How to Rebuild and Modify High-Performance Manual Transmissions, which is reviewed elsewhere on this web site.
This new book by Paul Cangialosi is the best manual transmission, technical-instructional book this reviewer has read to date. The Author, an acknowledged expert who owns “Medatronics” a business which both sells transmission parts and and services a variety of domestic stick-shift gearboxes from the “musclecar era” including Muncie four-speeds, has done the C2 and C3 DIY Corvette enthusiast community a big favor in writing this book.
The book is detailed and comprehensive. Not only was there a plethora of how-to info on servicing, rebuilding and modifying Muncie four-speed, but there was lots of backstory–history, development, trivia and so forth–which any reader looking for in-depth information on the Muncie four-speed transmissions used in Corvettes will appreciate.
Technically-difficult subjects, such as how synchromesh transmissions work and the “torque-flow” though a Muncie from input shaft to output shaft, were explained quite well.
The book’s only weakness? Imagery. A few of the images in the book are too small to illustrate the subject discussed in their captions in a useful manner. Sometimes, I found myself, looking, then…looking closer, trying to “see” to what the caption was referring. Reality is that Publishers of this type of book sometimes make compromises in image size. Unfortunately, because this type of title is so dependent on imagery to achieve its “how-to goal”, that reality detracts from the book’s success as an instructional tool. If the point being made was so important that it needed an image, but yet, the image is too small for a reader to “see” the point; then the reader is the loser.
Nevertheless, in spite of a few too-small images, this book is an outstanding piece of technical-instructional content. Nowhere but this book will Corvette enthusiasts find as much comprehensive information on the Muncie four-speeds.
For more information visit the CarTech Books web site.
http://www.cartechbooks.com/
