Top Dead Center 2: Racing and Wrenching with Cycle World's Kevin Cameron Paperback – September 10, 2014

TDC2 is a new, four-part collection of Cameron's CYCLE WORLD columns back to 1974: `Memorable Machines,' `Timeless Technology,' Gearhead Geniuses' and `Racing Revealed.' The first ~200 pages cover motorcycle technology, back to the first motorized bicycles. The last 100 recount men, memorable moments and important places.Enthusiasts know that building, fettling, riding and racing motorcycles is not enough. To appreciate our sport, we want to know how bikes work, in detail--engines, transmissions, frames, brakes, suspension, tires. We'd like to understand the designs, materials and processes that make winners, on track and in the showroom. We hanker for insights that will help us, as mechanics and riders, to go faster, to keep us out of trouble, to win as racers and to report as motojournalists. We'd like to know more about the sport's great, successful role models.Enter Kevin Cameron, motorcycle polymath. Over the years he has mastered the essence and core values of motorcycling, emphasizing racing, and put it on paper for us. Through his writings we can, in effect, take in and learn essentially everything we need to know about the men and the machines. He has distilled a lifetime's learning into words of wisdom.Despite his writing skill, the author had to use nothing but words, where drawings, diagrams or detailed photos would have supplemented and clarified the text but were not available to accompany the original writings (the book's photos are mostly inconsequential). This puts the onus of understanding on readers, to comprehend dense technical detail down to fundamental physics and chemistry. Chassis and suspension take four chapters/40 pages, tires three segments/28 pages, one third of the book. So: re-read for comprehension--tough going, but worth the effort.For many readers, the personal snapshots of Morbidelli, Buell, Kanemoto, Honda and Czysz may be more accessible. Richly anecdotal, these five chapters provide rare insights into a few of the great men who changed motorcycling and racing, at almost superhuman levels of effort and commitment.Cameron's final reminiscences are sheer delight. They show the author as acutely observant, exercising all his senses and appetites to live more fully, assimilating and expressing the realities of foreign travel, food and wine, architecture and ambience, men and their motivations, providing first-hand, historical detail on Doug Chandler, Gary Nixon, John Kocinski and Ago that greatly enlarges our knowledge of these great racers. Try this chapter opening, a personal remembrance of a long-gone Yamaha TD1: "Innocent events sometimes punch through time into the past, leaving us fascinated, surrounding us with the vapors of forgotten feelings." Poetry, matching the man's analytical mind.A bigger, epochal motorcycle book, fully illustrated, lurks behind the writings and books Kevin Cameron has given us. For now, we must take him in bites, but what tasty and tasteful bites! TDC2, essential reading, enhances his oeuvre and has us hungering for more.

Top Dead Center 2I've read Kevin's articles in Cycle World in the past and thought some of them were insightful and useful. Top Dead Center 1 and 2 weren't that interesting, and mainly recollected racing and motorcycles in the past. There isn't much material covering anything beyond 2000 or newer technology. I've never been a fan of older motorcycles, even though my dad encouraged me to learn about them at a young age. I only got interested in bikes after fuel injection started to become dominant in sport bikes. I remember in high school and college when the Yamaha R1 was still carbureted.One article of interest in TDC 2 was a discussion about Japan's rise in motorcycles. The article was talking about how Japan was only known for cheap cameras, toys, and uncreative copying in the 1950s-1960s. This sounds almost word for word the same as a description of modern day China. What do we think of China in the year 2012? They manufacture toys, and almost everything, and are often regarded by the US as being responsible for "uncreative copying". Well, if this was used as a description for Japan in the 1950s, what do we regard Japan in the year 2012? They are known for making precision instruments, the highest quality steels and metals, high-tech cars and motorcycles brimming with the latest in gear especially with motorsports. They are even regarded as being in the forefront of lean manufacturing. That is a significant change from their reputation 50-60 years ago. Perhaps this is where China will end up in the next 20 years?Other than that, TDC 2 was more of the same with some Rossi worshipping thrown in to the mix.Overall: 4/5 stars

Kevin and Peter Egan are probably the main reasons I keep on subscribing to Cycle World.Full disclosure...I've been car and bike crazy since I was little...and now I'm competeing with the dinosaurs on age.If you're one of those piston heads that puts everyone else at the party to sleep while you discuss BMEP with your fellow addicts you'll just love this. Even if you're more into cars or other vehicles the simplified tech lessons layered through the excellent stories are great entertainmment and learning.Even if you're not tech oriented the stories alone are so well written you'll probably enjoy them.This also has a series of his articles explaining the development of racing car and bike suspensions. You will never find a better tech or history reference on this subject. I dearly wish I had access to this level of info when I was first learning these things.

In his first book, Kevin gave long winded stories about years past, which were indeed a pleasure to read, but I was hoping for his in depth, technical expertise written in terms a layman can understand, just like his columns on Cycle World. Well, that is just what we get in TDC 2. It's not a straight collection of columns, some are stories that were I'm sure published elsewhere, but were page-turner interesting. In this book he gets into the technical aspects of every aspect of a motorcycle, just what he is now known for. He covers the technology as it develops over the decades, talking about the trial and error approach that was often taken. His analysis and words are simply sublime. In short, Kevin at his best. I recommend owning both books, but if money is an issue, skip the first one, get the second one, and save up for a hopefully soon forthcoming third.

A wealth of information and experience in these pages. A book to refer to again and again.

Excellent read. The chapters about tyres are probably the most in depth, informative work on tyres I've read.

Well worth reading with lots of interesting content

Great book, Kevin Cameron has a real knack for describing highly technical concepts in a way that is both understandable and entertaining.