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This is my site! This was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I wondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today. I'm

This is my site! This was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I wondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today. I'm happy to answer any questions. I finished this redesign last week so any feedback is welcome. The main task was to recreate labels and annotations on the illustrations in SVG format, and to reformat the articles in a way that flows nicely and is responsive, but without needing complex markup in the articles. I'll write about the process if there's interest. I've previously written a little about this project: http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on Current traffic is 200k uniques a month and it's taken about two years of steady growth to reach that point.

gshrikant 11y ago
The site is amazing! For someone only vaguely familiar with the mechanical-side of cars, it was a pleasant surprise to see all this quality content consolidated outside of a textbook. I was reading the sections on suspension systems and the diagrams look just plain beautiful! Dated or not, it is definitely a great place to get some fundamentals straight. So I took the liberty of posting it on HN this morning. Thanks for the great work!
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  Thanks! I'm curious - did you just find the site on Google? Over the past two months I've re-mastered the old illustrations with a few filters and the difference is incredible. There's still a little more to do but I'm pleased you find it useful. The next step is to update the iOS app with new versions of the pics. Here's a comparison of the pics: Old - http://www.howacarworks.com/images/846/leaf-spring-suspension.jpg http://www.howacarworks.com/images/846/leaf-spring-suspensio... New - http://www.howacarworks.com/illustration/1333/leaf-spring-suspension.png http://www.howacarworks.com/illustration/1333/leaf-spring-su...
  - gshrikant 11y ago
    Yes! It was the top result for 'car damper working' and a bunch of other search terms.
    - abakker 11y ago
      I love when people are interested in suspension. Its both one of the most ignored (in standard cars) and most important parts of a car.
Svip 11y ago
Do you take submissions for articles?
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  It's not something I've thought about. No-one's ever asked before. I'd certainly take submissions of service / workshop manuals but this area of the site is still very much in progress.
  - Svip 11y ago
    I would like to provide some articles on Citroën's special suspension, brakes and steering. And I mean Citroëns from back when they were Citroëns.
    - AlexMuir 11y ago
      Fantastic! I'd be delighted to have them - drop me an email to me@alexmuir.com and we'll have a chat.
otis_inf 11y ago
Great work! two points of criticism: 1) The site still talks about carburetors and has no mention about fuel injection systems, while in Europe all cars sold must have a fuel injection system for quite some time now, so this looks quite outdated 2) Diesel engines of course don't have spark plugs, but you don't mention diesel engines.
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  Good points. We do have articles on there about fuel injection and diesel engines but it's clear that I'm not surfacing this in the best way. Thanks.
- Spearchucker 11y ago
  Hey I'm all for old school. Building a 1:10 scale radio-controlled replica of a Ford Bronco, and the pages on fixing window winders gave me a great example of how I can make it work for my model.
higherpurpose 11y ago
Maybe do a "How an electric car works" site/page in the future. I imagine it would have quite a bit less content, though.
- thom801 11y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Basically it is just this connected to a drive shaft. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/mothow.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/mothow.h...
  - bcohen5055 11y ago
    Although yes "connected to the drive shaft" in a sense is how it works but there can be some great discussions of 3 phase motor design, torque demand motor control systems, power electronics, regenerative breaking... The list goes on and on
- Kluny 11y ago
  I've heard stories of almost-new Priuses being sold for a pittance or given away because the battery went - batteries are expensive to replace, but they're not quite as scary as some people think. They can be replaced with generics for $2000 and installed at home, and an article about how to do that would be an awesome idea.
mrspeaker 11y ago
Hey, I think this site is amazing and certain appeals to my "hacker aesthetic" even though I'm not a car person! One thing that I'd like to see is some kind of guided tour - I got to the page and instantly saw "how heating systems work" and then "the engine - how power is created" and this confused me a bit. It made it seem like the first thing you need to know about cars is how the heater works! Then I realized there wasn't rhyme or reason about the order of the Basics and I kind of got a bit of the tyranny of choice and then came back to the Hacker News article. I feel if there was a path for first time visitors I would have taken it and been lost in engine parts for the rest of the day ;)
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  You're right - the order to Basics is somewhat chaotic - I'm going to fix this today. I'd reordered it to push heavily trafficked articles to the front page for SEO reasons. That was a bad idea with hindsight.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    I don't think that was a terrible choice. Just that maybe if you're going to do that, that there should also be a "Start Here if you have no idea what's going on" option that would be an ordered walkthrough of the basics.
  - myth_buster 11y ago
    Hey, can't you put them all into a popular/most visited section on the home page.
zeroxfe 11y ago
I would love to buy the book, but I see it's available for iOS devices only. Any chance you could make it available on other devices (e.g., Kindle, or just PDF)?
- saturdaysaint 11y ago
  There are links on the site to a PDF you can buy - https://www.howacarworks.com/pdf?from=how-car-heating-and-ventilation-systems-work https://www.howacarworks.com/pdf?from=how-car-heating-and-ve...
avinassh 11y ago
I have a feedback, the form doesn't look right on latest Safari (OS X 10): http://i.imgur.com/d27jsic.png http://i.imgur.com/d27jsic.png
edpichler 11y ago
Congratulations. Could you share some analytics reports? I have curiosity on this content websites. When it's started to really grow?
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  You'll find a graph of growth at the page above from 2013. It basically continued with linear growth at exactly the same rate from the day i launched it.
thibaut_barrere 11y ago
Nice work! Little feedback: on this screen http://www.howacarworks.com/electrical-systems/checking-the-batteries http://www.howacarworks.com/electrical-systems/checking-the-... the ads overlaps the content completely (one paragraph).
larrys 11y ago
Suggest a reverse idea. Content that is on the web and then you make a deal with the site owner to create a printed copy of the material which can be postal mailed to someone. Why? Because many times I don't want to click around on links I want a "manual" that I can refer to or read like a traditional book and make notes etc. (Without forking all over the place).
gwbas1c 11y ago
Don't forget the section for electric cars!
mattexx 11y ago
This all begs the question, "What kind of car do you drive?" :)
justjimmy 11y ago
That's some nice Adsense income! My site gets about 13k visitors daily and I can't even average $5 from Adsense :(
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  That seems extremely low - what's the site?
  - justjimmy 11y ago
    www.hearthstoneplayers.com Right now I've replaced the banner spot with an Amazon link with a more relevant ad message.
netfire 11y ago
Nice site. Suggestion: It would be nice to have some sort of search box at the top that would instantly filter the list of articles as you type. Instead of having to dig through the "more articles" links to find what you are looking for, you could just type "oil", "air filter", or other terms and see the corresponding articles immediately. Also, sometimes the ads cover page content and when this happens sometimes you can't close them. I'm using Chrome on a Mac.
eightofdiamonds 11y ago
Just a heads up. While it may have changed Google is pretty strict on publishing Adsense income with traffic figures. I'd just read up to make sure so you don't run into troubles.
gregsexton 11y ago
I would love to own a print copy. Do you have any plans to publish?
- esalman 11y ago
  The site was created from a paper book. See about section- http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making
troels 11y ago
From your "a year on" article: "Getting backlinks There are still hardly any backlinks to the site and I don't really know how to boost this efficiently. I was thinking about licensing the content under Creative Commons as I've noticed a couple of sites just copy and pasting my articles in without even a link back." Did you try contacting the sites and ask them to provide a backlink? Seems like a very reasonable request that most would comply with.
- AlexMuir 11y ago
  Yeah, I emailed a couple but heard nothing. It's not something that I've spent much time on to be honest. I know when people email looking for links I just delete their emails, so I'd expect the same treatment myself.
electic 11y ago
I love this site. Would love one guide on the details of electric cars as well.
raquo 11y ago
The content is awesome, thanks for that! As for responsive design, my laptop screen & browser width is 1440px, which makes the font size 24px. This is way too big and is uncomfortable to read. I would say 20px should be absolute maximum because it's so much bigger already than any other text on screen. Line width is also too wide imho, could be 800px easily.

gshrikant 11y ago

The site is amazing! For someone only vaguely familiar with the mechanical-side of cars, it was a pleasant surprise to see all this quality content consolidated outside of a textbook. I was reading the sections on suspension systems and the diagrams look just plain beautiful! Dated or not, it is definitely a great place to get some fundamentals straight. So I took the liberty of posting it on HN this morning. Thanks for the great work!

AlexMuir 11y ago
Thanks! I'm curious - did you just find the site on Google? Over the past two months I've re-mastered the old illustrations with a few filters and the difference is incredible. There's still a little more to do but I'm pleased you find it useful. The next step is to update the iOS app with new versions of the pics. Here's a comparison of the pics: Old - http://www.howacarworks.com/images/846/leaf-spring-suspension.jpg http://www.howacarworks.com/images/846/leaf-spring-suspensio... New - http://www.howacarworks.com/illustration/1333/leaf-spring-suspension.png http://www.howacarworks.com/illustration/1333/leaf-spring-su...
- gshrikant 11y ago
  Yes! It was the top result for 'car damper working' and a bunch of other search terms.
  - abakker 11y ago
    I love when people are interested in suspension. Its both one of the most ignored (in standard cars) and most important parts of a car.

Svip 11y ago

Do you take submissions for articles?

AlexMuir 11y ago
It's not something I've thought about. No-one's ever asked before. I'd certainly take submissions of service / workshop manuals but this area of the site is still very much in progress.
- Svip 11y ago
  I would like to provide some articles on Citroën's special suspension, brakes and steering. And I mean Citroëns from back when they were Citroëns.
  - AlexMuir 11y ago
    Fantastic! I'd be delighted to have them - drop me an email to me@alexmuir.com and we'll have a chat.

otis_inf 11y ago

Great work! two points of criticism: 1) The site still talks about carburetors and has no mention about fuel injection systems, while in Europe all cars sold must have a fuel injection system for quite some time now, so this looks quite outdated 2) Diesel engines of course don't have spark plugs, but you don't mention diesel engines.

AlexMuir 11y ago
Good points. We do have articles on there about fuel injection and diesel engines but it's clear that I'm not surfacing this in the best way. Thanks.
Spearchucker 11y ago
Hey I'm all for old school. Building a 1:10 scale radio-controlled replica of a Ford Bronco, and the pages on fixing window winders gave me a great example of how I can make it work for my model.

higherpurpose 11y ago

Maybe do a "How an electric car works" site/page in the future. I imagine it would have quite a bit less content, though.

thom801 11y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Basically it is just this connected to a drive shaft. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/mothow.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/mothow.h...
- bcohen5055 11y ago
  Although yes "connected to the drive shaft" in a sense is how it works but there can be some great discussions of 3 phase motor design, torque demand motor control systems, power electronics, regenerative breaking... The list goes on and on
Kluny 11y ago
I've heard stories of almost-new Priuses being sold for a pittance or given away because the battery went - batteries are expensive to replace, but they're not quite as scary as some people think. They can be replaced with generics for $2000 and installed at home, and an article about how to do that would be an awesome idea.

mrspeaker 11y ago

Hey, I think this site is amazing and certain appeals to my "hacker aesthetic" even though I'm not a car person! One thing that I'd like to see is some kind of guided tour - I got to the page and instantly saw "how heating systems work" and then "the engine - how power is created" and this confused me a bit. It made it seem like the first thing you need to know about cars is how the heater works! Then I realized there wasn't rhyme or reason about the order of the Basics and I kind of got a bit of the tyranny of choice and then came back to the Hacker News article. I feel if there was a path for first time visitors I would have taken it and been lost in engine parts for the rest of the day ;)

AlexMuir 11y ago
You're right - the order to Basics is somewhat chaotic - I'm going to fix this today. I'd reordered it to push heavily trafficked articles to the front page for SEO reasons. That was a bad idea with hindsight.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  I don't think that was a terrible choice. Just that maybe if you're going to do that, that there should also be a "Start Here if you have no idea what's going on" option that would be an ordered walkthrough of the basics.
- myth_buster 11y ago
  Hey, can't you put them all into a popular/most visited section on the home page.

zeroxfe 11y ago

I would love to buy the book, but I see it's available for iOS devices only. Any chance you could make it available on other devices (e.g., Kindle, or just PDF)?

saturdaysaint 11y ago
There are links on the site to a PDF you can buy - https://www.howacarworks.com/pdf?from=how-car-heating-and-ventilation-systems-work https://www.howacarworks.com/pdf?from=how-car-heating-and-ve...

avinassh 11y ago

I have a feedback, the form doesn't look right on latest Safari (OS X 10): http://i.imgur.com/d27jsic.png http://i.imgur.com/d27jsic.png

edpichler 11y ago

Congratulations. Could you share some analytics reports? I have curiosity on this content websites. When it's started to really grow?

AlexMuir 11y ago
You'll find a graph of growth at the page above from 2013. It basically continued with linear growth at exactly the same rate from the day i launched it.

thibaut_barrere 11y ago

Nice work! Little feedback: on this screen http://www.howacarworks.com/electrical-systems/checking-the-batteries http://www.howacarworks.com/electrical-systems/checking-the-... the ads overlaps the content completely (one paragraph).

larrys 11y ago

Suggest a reverse idea. Content that is on the web and then you make a deal with the site owner to create a printed copy of the material which can be postal mailed to someone. Why? Because many times I don't want to click around on links I want a "manual" that I can refer to or read like a traditional book and make notes etc. (Without forking all over the place).

gwbas1c 11y ago

Don't forget the section for electric cars!

mattexx 11y ago

This all begs the question, "What kind of car do you drive?" :)

justjimmy 11y ago

That's some nice Adsense income! My site gets about 13k visitors daily and I can't even average $5 from Adsense :(

AlexMuir 11y ago
That seems extremely low - what's the site?
- justjimmy 11y ago
  www.hearthstoneplayers.com Right now I've replaced the banner spot with an Amazon link with a more relevant ad message.

netfire 11y ago

Nice site. Suggestion: It would be nice to have some sort of search box at the top that would instantly filter the list of articles as you type. Instead of having to dig through the "more articles" links to find what you are looking for, you could just type "oil", "air filter", or other terms and see the corresponding articles immediately. Also, sometimes the ads cover page content and when this happens sometimes you can't close them. I'm using Chrome on a Mac.

eightofdiamonds 11y ago

Just a heads up. While it may have changed Google is pretty strict on publishing Adsense income with traffic figures. I'd just read up to make sure so you don't run into troubles.

gregsexton 11y ago

I would love to own a print copy. Do you have any plans to publish?

esalman 11y ago
The site was created from a paper book. See about section- http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making

troels 11y ago

From your "a year on" article: "Getting backlinks There are still hardly any backlinks to the site and I don't really know how to boost this efficiently. I was thinking about licensing the content under Creative Commons as I've noticed a couple of sites just copy and pasting my articles in without even a link back." Did you try contacting the sites and ask them to provide a backlink? Seems like a very reasonable request that most would comply with.

AlexMuir 11y ago
Yeah, I emailed a couple but heard nothing. It's not something that I've spent much time on to be honest. I know when people email looking for links I just delete their emails, so I'd expect the same treatment myself.

electic 11y ago

I love this site. Would love one guide on the details of electric cars as well.

raquo 11y ago

The content is awesome, thanks for that! As for responsive design, my laptop screen & browser width is 1440px, which makes the font size 24px. This is way too big and is uncomfortable to read. I would say 20px should be absolute maximum because it's so much bigger already than any other text on screen. Line width is also too wide imho, could be 800px easily.