Bowker Biography:
Tom Newton

 

I am a psychologist specializing in learning disabilities. How Cars Work was first conceived as a learning tool for teens. Since then, How Cars Work has been expanded and organized into a comprehensive beginning car book useful for everyone.

After working on cars since I was a teenager, and always on the lookout for good car books, I became serious about writing the best beginning car book possible. Most car books I studied were poorly written, with confusing, complicated and intimidating photographs or worse, silly cartoons. Most mechanics can’t write; and those who can, can't draw. I was given a broken Jeep for my 16th birthday. Within a few months I was sniffing burned transmission fluid from underneath the car: a broken transmission. I asked my dad to help me pay a mechanic. He looked at me in disbelief, "Not on my nickel."

In the basement, behind the cobwebs was a rusty tool box left over from WW II. "Use these kid." That was my first exposure to car repair, it was a rude and unpleasant realization. It only cost me a few dollars but it took three months to fix that Jeep. The culprit was a broken gear tooth. I finally put it all back together, slipped it in reverse, let out the clutch, the car lurched forward. Oops, I put the reverse gear in backwards. Soon after this I got my first real job, in an auto garage as a clean-up boy. I was qualified because of my experience with the Jeep. My job was to clean and organize everything in the huge garage. So, every day after school, I gathered all the parts that looked the same and stacked them together, like gathering sea shells at the beach except everything was heavy, broken, greasy and metal. I went to the dumps many times, cleaned the grease-soaked floors, and organized everything. Then, I was abruptly fired. There was no more work, everything in the garage looked great. I didn't know it then but I learned an important lesson: all starter motors look the same. I also learned I should go to college.

My next car was small and Italian, a Fiat 600. It helped knowing how cars worked with this vehicle because a simple ski trip to the Sierras required a timing adjustment at 7,000 feet, just to keep that Fiat moving. My next car was a classic MGB roadster, 1964, which I still own and drive. I have continued to work on cars and help folks with the many cars problems and ripoffs that confront consumers today. In my office, clients all too often seemed more interested in car problems than their children. That’s the real reason I wrote a book about cars instead of a book on reading improvement.

 

Web: www.howcarswork.com
Email: newton@blackapplepress.com
Address: Black Apple Press
1609 Fern Pl.
Vallejo, CA 94590 USA
Phone: (800) 988-0614
Fax: (800) 988-5138