Books

Automotive Supercharging and Turbocharging Manual, by John D Humphries. GT Foulis, £14.99

Turbocharging has been a factor of modern motoring life for a considerable time and those who need to become conversant with it are offered this large, 176-page book, which covers it all origins, gas-turbines, coming turbo trends, how turbochargers work, exhaust-emission control, design and manufacturing aspects of superchargers and turbochargers, their relationship to induction and exhaust systems, boost control, engine-control systems and so on.

Pioneer blowers are illustrated and discussed, from one of 1784 onwards! But mostly the book is about today’s installations and problems, both car and motorcycle applications being described. There is advice about adding a turbocharger to the 1.6 Ford Fiesta XR2, 2.8 Capri and 2.9 Sierra XR4x4, tabulated details of turbo cars from Audi to Volvo, maintenance check-lists, a glossary of turbo terms and useful addresses to back up the wealth of data in the main pages, together with calculation factors, power and airflow graphs etc. Useful!

The foreword comes from Geoffrey Kershaw, MD of Turbo Technics.

Triumph TR6 Golden Portfolio. Brooklands Books, £11.95.

Its earlier book on the Triumph TR6 having gone out of print, Brooklands Books of Cobham has brought out a new Golden Portfolio of 41 reproduction road tests and other reports on this hairy sports car, all taken from leading motor journals.

I note that it contains the outspoken story of the faults and fun which an erstwhile Motor Sport assistant editor had with his TR6 ‘pig-in-hell’, along with these other comprehensive surveys of the last of the real TRs (including the TR P1) from 1969 to 1976.

This is quite the best way of obtaining in one volume a very complete view of the case each Brooklands Book covers. The new portfolio is available from PO Box 146, Cobham, Surrey KT11 1LG, and the price includes postage.