I'm a motorcycle mechanic, a motorcycle enthusiast, and a degreed Mechanical Engineer. I collect and read books that deal with motorcycle maintenance, repair, improvement, and design. MOST of the books that I read are filled with popular misconceptions and misguided "shop knowledge" based on the "experience" of a poorly trained or poorly educated author. This particular book is well-researched, reasonably well-edited, well-formatted, and pretty easy to understand. It contains accurate technical information and is certainly capable of giving the reader a solid foundation in understanding and troubleshooting motorcycle electrical systems.

The book is straightforward and easy-to-read. It covers various aspects of critical test instruments, electronic components, troubleshooting techniques, and shortcuts. It has a chapter with practice problems designed to improve the reader's ability to use circuit diagrams. In particular, the sections on testing by voltage drop and using wiring diagrams are particularly useful.
The book is a bit marred by a few (not too many) mistakes and weak explanations. The author gets the relationship between dwell angle and point gap backwards, and at one point he describes a test method as "place the red lead here, and the red lead here". He clearly meant one of the leads to be the ground (black) but it could prove confusing to the target audience. He gives short shrift to CD ignitions and magnetos. His states his coil testing procedures will work on all coils, without clarifying if that includes capacitive coils as well as inductive types (CD coils are a special case, as they do not have 12 volt primaries). His stator testing heuristic -wattage divided by four equals output AC voltage- is useful but given without information as to why the rule-of-thumb holds true.
These lapses are not indicative of a lack of knowledge on the author's part, but point toward a need for a better review of the draft manuscript prior to publication.
Even with faults, I give the book a "B+". It is worth reading, with the caveat that a reader may have to crosscheck a topic with another source if it just doesn't seem right.
It goes without saying the best use of the book is to read and study it *before* the information is needed. Absorbing the knowledge during an emergency repair situation is difficult at best, impossible at worst.

Im very happy that i bought this book. I have to dispell the one reviewer whom was upset about the fact he went over his fluke multi meter.. I dont think it was a sales pitch at all. He was just explaining the product so you could follow along. YES this made me want to throw away my crappy multi meter.. If your new to this kinda home mechanic kinda stuff i would recommend this book!!!

This manual does exacly as it says in simple clear terms. what more can you ask for.

I bought Tracy Martin's other book on automotive electrics, and as a motorcyclist, I was really excited when this book came out. It's more of the same high quality of work. He's got a real knack for explaining concepts in plain language I can understand easily. His illustrations are also very easy to follow. This book is great because there are lots of new material on motorcycle specific topics such as battery tenders, accessories, rebuilding starters, points ignition (where else can you find a current book that covers points???), and fuel injection.