101 Sportbike Performance Projects

Many of the most popular cars of the muscle era came from General Motors. Spread across the General's various marques were models like the Camaro, Chevelle, GTO, Cutlass, Skylark, Tempest, Impala, Monte Carlo, El Camino, and many others. This book will provide 101 hands-on, how-to projects aimed directly at fans of classic GM muscle, showing them how to do just the kinds of projects that they want to do: restoration of the exterior and interior, and performance upgrades to the engine, driveline, and suspension.The existence of many large aftermarket companies provides evidence of the vast potential audience for this book. Restoration and performance part companies like Year One, National Parts Depot, Summit Racing, Jegs, and Original Parts Group count on this audience to provide a large portion of their business. For example, Original Parts Group, which specializes exclusively in parts for GM A-body muscle cars, sells an average of $100,000 worth of parts each day. Primedia alone has six magazines that serve this crowd (Hot Rod, Car Craft, Chevy High Performance, High Performance Pontiac, Popular Hot Rodding, Super Chevy) with a combined circulation of 1.7 million readers per month.Like the 101 series books before it, this book provides an immense quantity of do-it-yourself projects that are accessible to the at-home mechanic who has a good set of hand tools and a place to work. Procedures will be performed on specific GM cars of this era, which differed more in sheetmetal and trim than in the functional components, which were often similar or identical from car to car.

Suzuki's GSX-R series revolutionized the sport of motorcycling. While other manufacturers had dabbled with building high-performance motorcycles, the GSX-R series were the first motorcycles to bring state-of-the-art racing technology to the street. Suzuki's GSX-R is an icon, a modern day BSA Gold Star. It is a bike you can ride on the street or race at the track. The GSX-R is a bike ridden by champions and casual racers alike. This book provides the best single resource for improving the performance of these modern-day classics, whether for road use or for racing.

The hottest segment of the off-road motorcycle market is high-performance four-strokes, and the most popular of those are Yamaha's motocross and off-road line of machines. In this Motorbooks Workshop title, Off-road enthusiasts would be treated to 30 projects for their Yamaha high-performance four-stroke motorcycle. It would include the YZ250F, YZ400/426/450, and the WRF variants. Mods would focus on making the bikes work better day-to-day, with a few engine overbores and so on in the mix.

Many people modify their Harley-Davidson engines--and find the results disappointing. What they might not know--and what this book teaches--is that emphasizing horsepower over torque, the usual approach, makes for a difficult ride. Author Bill Rook has spent decades perfecting the art of building torque-monster V-twin Harley engines. Here he brings that experience to bear, guiding motorcycle enthusiasts through the modifications that make a bike not just fast but comfortable to ride. With clear, step-by-step instructions, his book shows readers how to get high performance out of their Harleys--and enjoy them, too.

Drifting started as a niche motorsport among Japanese-American Californians, but has quickly evolved into a full-fledged competitive motorsport involving everyone from kids in the Midwest to a 55-year-old World Rally Championship Driver. This is the first how-to book to focus on both how to properly prepare a car to compete in drifting events, and how to drive it effectively in those events.Written by one of the original American drifters, it expertly covers car preparation, driving techniques, competition rules, and much more. Drawing on an extensive storehouse of knowledge and using full-color photography, diagrams, and charts to support his text, Calvin Wan explains the theories behind every aspect of the sport. For those who want to do it, those who like to watch, and those who simply seek to understand, this is the quintessential guide to drifting.