Items related to Top Dead Centre: The Best of Kevin Cameron from Cycle...
Kevin Cameron is one of the most widley read motorcycle journalists in the world, and here for the first time are the features articles and coloums that have made him a must-read for motorcycle afficionados for over twenty years: stories of racing life, interviews with top-notch racers, profiles of builders and engineers such as John Britten, accounts of change in the world of motorcycle racing, analysis of riding techniques and winning technology, reports of racers, accounts of engine and suspension theoryWith each piece, Cameron puts his on-the-spot writing into context, and offers a valuable, clear history of the best on bikes.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Book of the Month! What a pleasurable read! Reading it made me a better rider. the reader learns more about what a bike can and cannot do, and what a rider can and cannot do --Cycle World--Best, don't hesitate to buy this...It's staggeringly good...definetley worth the price.. --BayAreaRidersForum dot com
I am guilty of performing dubious surgeries on internal combustion engines. In retrospect it is surprising how many miles I was able to travel running on ignorance, luck, and brute force. Before reading Kevin Cameron s earlier work, Sportbike Performance Handbook, I only considered the basics of how an engine works. Squish zones? Back pressures? $^@#, I just wanted it to run! I immediately appreciated Cameron s skill as a technical writer, having struggled with the challenge of explaining a technical concept to a slack-jawed/glassy-eyed audience. Cameron s conspiratorial tone soon infected me with the desire to lift the curtain on a host of subjects that would at first glance appear dull.That is the 'technical' Cameron you may already be acquainted with. Top Dead Center has that. It also has the indelible sense of a personality in it foibles, humor, disasters, distractions. And, most over-riding of all, passion. We take a journey in time in this book. Many years, many scored pistons. At no time do you sense the passion is truly in jeopardy, however. In Cameron s words the series of TDC columns that formed the backbone of this book were a 'monthly letter to like-minded persons.'The book begins by taking us all racing. Racing! The smell of race gas, the shriek of intakes, the colors and flash of a racer blurring past all are present yet are rendered transparent by Cameron s literary eye. He allows us to see with X-ray vision the air sucked into the intake, to slow down the next to instantaneous impulse of a piston s travel. We feel the sense of urgency as the piston progresses intake, the dance of fuel and air, the compression stroke and the flash of ignition, heat and force. The roar of the exhaust, though, is still shared by the roar of the crowd. A microscope, while a powerful and clinical tool, usually doesn t allow us the macro view. Cameron s take on racing does. It isn t all sweetness and light, though. Part of the ride also involves stiff necks from sleeping in vans, eating bad food at the track, harsh financial realities, and resisting the urge to throttle teammates. In the next section Cameron explores the metallurgy of a champion racer. Kenny Roberts takes a corner differently than Freddie Spencer, and Cameron lets us understand why. But this is no dry treatise on riding styles. In a champion s words about recovering from a painful crash: 'There s no comeback,' he [Gary Nixon] says. 'I was never away.' Soon, though, you wonder why he didn t run from the troubles in threes: awarded prize money snatched back, motorcycles lost in the mail and stolen luggage.In rider interviews Cameron underlines one basic prerequisite of a champion racer: the indomitable will to conquer, whether it s personal demons, injuries, other riders, their own machines, or the clock. Less obvious are the mental demands of racing the mental aspects are highlighted in an early interview with Kenny Roberts. But even being able to think clearly at high speed is still not enough; adapting to constant technological change must be accomplished as well. We see that, as the book travels through time, obsolescence stalks both man and machine.The next section turns us from the people on the machine to the people behind the machines. The alchemists of a racing achine; '...that diffuse amalgam of power, power band, handling, weight, and unity that turn a thousand metal pieces into a fine tool for a skilled rider.' The ingredients may be timeless, but nowhere are we more aware of the passage of technological time than in this section titled 'Moguls, Mavens, and Mechanics.'These are the people that have the skill, vision, and grit to change the way things are. If you ride a motorcycle today, then you will find the influences of the people in this section represented somewhere on your bike. --motorcycle dot com, Nov 2008
Like Peter Egan's Leanings series of books (and Side Glances collections), TDC is a compilation of Kevin Cameron's Cycle World columns of the same name. For those unfamiliar, Cameron is a literal engineering genius and it shows month after month in his works (or page after page here, as the case may be). At times though, his writing style can become a bit overwhelming even for an adept mechanic to ingest. He is hardly to blame though as he prides himself on tackling subjects that are simply mind boggling. Readers should expect an information overload as nearly each and every page of this book digs into the most intricate mechanical processes and somehow manages to make sense of them. Cameron has a knack for exploring technologies not only current, but also in their inception and race applications. It isn't uncommon for him to take a look at a mechanism that comes as standard equipment on today's bikes then to jump back to the earliest records of its inception (be it military or civilian), discuss the concept's trial and error evolution, get into how it affected race-bikes in the early 1980's, then relate it back to today's stock iteration. And all of this is a single paragraph of one article. It is clear his thirst for knowledge is rivaled only by his desire to educate others in what he's uncovered. But realize that unlike Egan's works, this can hardly be considered light reading. Cameron rarely spends time penning fluff or downplaying advanced concepts so that younger readers/ beginners can follow along. His columns dive right into the technicalities and continue to pull the reader along whether they're ready or not. I often find myself reading a paragraph over and over in attempt to separate the flood of interesting facts presented into smaller bits. Having KC's works chronologically organized into a single volume turns a solid monthly editorial into a piece of reference literature worthy of any coffee table; Whether it belongs to a meachanic, rider, or otherwise. --Whitehorse dot com, Sept 2008
From the Back Cover:
I am guilty of performing dubious surgeries on internal combustion engines. In retrospect it is surprising how many miles I was able to travel running on ignorance, luck, and brute force. Before reading Kevin Cameron s earlier work, Sportbike Performance Handbook, I only considered the basics of how an engine works. Squish zones? Back pressures? $^@#, I just wanted it to run! I immediately appreciated Cameron s skill as a technical writer, having struggled with the challenge of explaining a technical concept to a slack-jawed/glassy-eyed audience. Cameron s conspiratorial tone soon infected me with the desire to lift the curtain on a host of subjects that would at first glance appear dull.That is the 'technical' Cameron you may already be acquainted with. Top Dead Center has that. It also has the indelible sense of a personality in it foibles, humor, disasters, distractions. And, most over-riding of all, passion. We take a journey in time in this book. Many years, many scored pistons. At no time do you sense the passion is truly in jeopardy, however. In Cameron s words the series of TDC columns that formed the backbone of this book were a 'monthly letter to like-minded persons.'The book begins by taking us all racing. Racing! The smell of race gas, the shriek of intakes, the colors and flash of a racer blurring past all are present yet are rendered transparent by Cameron s literary eye. He allows us to see with X-ray vision the air sucked into the intake, to slow down the next to instantaneous impulse of a piston s travel. We feel the sense of urgency as the piston progresses intake, the dance of fuel and air, the compression stroke and the flash of ignition, heat and force. The roar of the exhaust, though, is still shared by the roar of the crowd. A microscope, while a powerful and clinical tool, usually doesn t allow us the macro view. Cameron s take on racing does. It isn t all sweetness and light, though. Part of the ride also involves stiff necks from sleeping in vans, eating bad food at the track, harsh financial realities, and resisting the urge to throttle teammates. In the next section Cameron explores the metallurgy of a champion racer. Kenny Roberts takes a corner differently than Freddie Spencer, and Cameron lets us understand why. But this is no dry treatise on riding styles. In a champion s words about recovering from a painful crash: 'There s no comeback,' he [Gary Nixon] says. 'I was never away.' Soon, though, you wonder why he didn t run from the troubles in threes: awarded prize money snatched back, motorcycles lost in the mail and stolen luggage.In rider interviews Cameron underlines one basic prerequisite of a champion racer: the indomitable will to conquer, whether it s personal demons, injuries, other riders, their own machines, or the clock. Less obvious are the mental demands of racing the mental aspects are highlighted in an early interview with Kenny Roberts. But even being able to think clearly at high speed is still not enough; adapting to constant technological change must be accomplished as well. We see that, as the book travels through time, obsolescence stalks both man and machine.The next section turns us from the people on the machine to the people behind the machines. The alchemists of a racing achine; '...that diffuse amalgam of power, power band, handling, weight, and unity that turn a thousand metal pieces into a fine tool for a skilled rider.' The ingredients may be timeless, but nowhere are we more aware of the passage of technological time than in this section titled 'Moguls, Mavens, and Mechanics.'These are the people that have the skill, vision, and grit to change the way things are. If you ride a motorcycle today, then you will find the influences of the people in this section represented somewhere on your bike. --motorcycle dot com, Nov 2008
Like Peter Egan's Leanings series of books (and Side Glances collections), TDC is a compilation of Kevin Cameron's Cycle World columns of the same name. For those unfamiliar, Cameron is a literal engineering genius and it shows month after month in his works (or page after page here, as the case may be). At times though, his writing style can become a bit overwhelming even for an adept mechanic to ingest. He is hardly to blame though as he prides himself on tackling subjects that are simply mind boggling. Readers should expect an information overload as nearly each and every page of this book digs into the most intricate mechanical processes and somehow manages to make sense of them. Cameron has a knack for exploring technologies not only current, but also in their inception and race applications. It isn't uncommon for him to take a look at a mechanism that comes as standard equipment on today's bikes then to jump back to the earliest records of its inception (be it military or civilian), discuss the concept's trial and error evolution, get into how it affected race-bikes in the early 1980's, then relate it back to today's stock iteration. And all of this is a single paragraph of one article. It is clear his thirst for knowledge is rivaled only by his desire to educate others in what he's uncovered. But realize that unlike Egan's works, this can hardly be considered light reading. Cameron rarely spends time penning fluff or downplaying advanced concepts so that younger readers/ beginners can follow along. His columns dive right into the technicalities and continue to pull the reader along whether they're ready or not. I often find myself reading a paragraph over and over in attempt to separate the flood of interesting facts presented into smaller bits. Having KC's works chronologically organized into a single volume turns a solid monthly editorial into a piece of reference literature worthy of any coffee table; Whether it belongs to a meachanic, rider, or otherwise. --Whitehorse dot com, Sept 2008
Cycle World’s Kevin Cameron is one of the most widely read motorcycle journalists in the world for reasons that this collection makes immediately and undeniably clear. Here are the feature articles and columns that have made Cameron a must-read for motorcycle aficionados: stories of the racing life; interviews with top-notch racers; profiles of builders and engineers; accounts of changes in the racing world; analyses of riding techniques and winning technology; race reports; and popular pieces about engine and suspension theory. Cameron’s short introductions to each piece put his writing on motorcycle racing into context and offer a quick, clear history of the best of bike development.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherMotorbooks International
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0760327270
- ISBN 13 9780760327272
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages320
- Rating
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