Complete Guide to Gasoline Marine Engines Paperback – September 5, 2000

I have this book now for several years and read it many times, every page is full of interesting information for how an engine works with great explainations for details.This is not a regular boaters handbook, it is really for tech's that just want know more about marine engines.

now sure who this book is intended for. If you a beginner mechanic you want find any practical information in it and if have some expertise you will find even less use for it. It has a tone of misprints and very few random illustration that are so badly printed that the text is unreadable. Save your money!

I purchased this book after I bought my first boat expecting to get some information from an experienced person. I have a lot of friends I can talk to about cars but, nobody to talk to about boats - especially a competition ski boat. I was hoping to get some incite into the workings of a boat, especially some suggestions regarding maintenance and the function of things I didn't have much experience about like a stuffing box or raw water pump or direct drive. I was dissapointed.It's a great book to start out with, if you don't know how an engine works or the basic function of a boat. If you are looking for maintenance tips, performance suggestions, solutions to problems you are having or anything specific, look elsewhere. This book gives an overview of these areas but no real information that you can use to diagnose a problem. You couldn't even close down your boat for the winter from the information. It is not comprehensive."General Guide to Gasoline Marine Engines" should be the title.

i ordered this book thinking that it would tell me how to work on gas enginges. i was surprised, it was not at all the type of book i was looking for. but i opened it up and started reading. i have worked on car engines in the past with a degree of success, and i like to think that i can keep any engine running if it fall into the older model catagory. John O'Connor has written a book that i will be happy to keep with my "how to manuals", because this one is a "why" manual. if you are a novice, or even a little more advanced, this book explains the dynamics of a gas engine to a degree that will surely enlighten any reader. don't look for this book to fix your engine, look to this book before you start and what you may encounter when you start to do any modifications. a very impressive little book, put together well and very detailed. thanks for the great reading.

I am an engine builder, but had never built an engine for marine use so I wanted a book to tell me the finer points. There are specific needs, like cooling systems, gasket materials, etc that are very different in a marine engine. This book says NOTHING about marine engines at all. Its a book about how engines work, period. I wanted to see things like cam recommendations, gasket tech, wet and dry exhaust tech, but its literally just a book on how engines work in general. There is NO marine tech in this book at all except a brief chapter on how propellers work. Very disappointing.