You won't see my name alongside Stephen King and Tom Clancy on the list of best-selling authors, and my book is not likely to be reviewed by the New York Times. Nevertheless I'm very proud to have joined the ranks of professional writers. When the first bound copies of the two-volume Reher-Morrison Engine Assembly handbooks arrived at the shop, I felt the same sense of accomplishment that I get when we fire a new engine on the dyno for the first time.
I really can't take credit as the sole author of this work. Like the Encyclopedia Brittanica and the Bible, the 433-page Engine Assembly books were a collaborative effort, albeit on a much smaller scale.
The project began several years ago when
Education Technology Consultants (ETC) approached us about writing a textbook for a course on building race engines. Several key people at Reher-Morrison Racing Engines became involved - my partner Bruce Allen, along with machinists, cylinder head porters, engine assemblers, and dyno operators. Many of them are racers who know first-hand what it takes to win. We worked together, literally sitting around a table for hours, to make sure that what we wrote was accurate |
- and we racked our brains to make sure that we didn't overlook anything essential. We took drafts home to read on weekends, and went through revision after revision. And when we were finally finished, I was proud to have the Reher-Morrison name on the books.
Writing is good discipline because it forces a person to think seriously about a subject before committing his thoughts to paper (or, in this era, a word processor). Even though I've worked on engines all of my adult life, writing a textbook made me really think about the basics of engine building. Our goal was to provide a solid foundation in the art and science of engine building. It's like constructing a house: It doesn't matter whether you have crystal chandeliers and gold-plated plumbing - if the foundation isn't firm, the house isn't going to stand very long.
We purposefully avoided including abstract theory and esoteric information. It wasn't our intention to teach racers how to run six-second elapsed times and 200 mph speeds in Pro Stock - but I know that you can't run sixes at 200 mph without knowing the basics of engine building. We wanted to write for the racers who run the brackets and
heads-up classes every weekend at literally hundreds of
tracks across the nation. These weekend |
