Hot rod books?

What are the best books out there on building hot rods? From chassis to chopping and everything in between.

 

Hamb, you're on it.

 

The Hamb is a great on line tool but I have learned a lot from the old Tex Smith books. HRP

 

You can tie a lot of money up in books. Worst part of books, it typically shows you that guys way to do it. Perfect example of this, many moons ago there was a book called "how to build a t bucket roadster on a budget". Great book, got a LOT of guys into buckets, BUT the work is not, ummmm, lets say, overwhelming top notch or the best way to do things.

Advantage on the Hamb, you can see a billion pics to see how to do it, on many different cars, plus, if you get into a bind, you can ask questions for help. A book might show you a couple basic answers on specific cars, but unless your car is covered in that book, it may fall short. Chopping a Model A and chopping a 50 Buick, are not one and the same, so if the book doesnt cover that car, you might not get much more than basics.

 

Gotta love the HAMB! Thanks guys!

 

vern tardel's got some you might be interested in.

 

Over the past 50 years I've accumulated a library of how to build hot rod books and each has it's good points but some have more than other. The Tex Smith books are always good reference. If you are building a traditional Model A the Bishop-Tardel book http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Traditional-Ford-Revised/dp/0760309000 needs to be in your library. The old how to build a cheap T bucket book that you can now download for about ten bucks is interesting reading but the methods are extremely crude by today's standards. Not many of us would cut rectangular tubing with a torch and grind it to fit in this age. That can be found at tbucketplans dot com The California custom roadster plans are helpful if you are scratch building a T bucket though.

As others have said you can learn a lot by studying the builds on here and we have several highly skilled builders along with a few hacks but you should be able to sort that out. I learn something for my Model A Victoria build every time I study someone's Model A build thread and have saved countless photos for reference. It's usually the very simple and clean things that catch my eye though as my build will most likely be a bit too plain for many non Hambers when I am done.

 

The Hamb is great and so is researching the net. I carry a camera with me whenever I'm going out. If I see something interesting like for instance, a suspension setup I've never seen before, I take pictures. Ken

 

This book is the best there is.