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Chilton manuals getting worse...

I just bought the Chilton manual for the 96-00 Honda Civic, and I was disappointed at how little actual information it contains,

*even compared to older Chilton manuals*. Worse, they seem to have merged with Haynes, and the old Haynes manuals were actually somewhat useful.

I'm not quite convinced that I need to spend $100 for a real shop manual, though, because I'm not likely to attempt any "real" repairs. I mostly just used the wiring diagrams and the interior body panel diagrams (the latter are now so generic that they're almost useless).

The old Haynes manuals served a real need, which they are no longer serving. If they're trying to save money, they'd be better off to sell them on CD (so you can print out the relevant pages), rather than skimping on the research and then spending all that money on dead trees, when there's no useful information inside.

Reply to
Ron Bean
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I don't understand why people buy these worthless aftermarket manuals. Bad information is worse than no information.

First purchase I make before I even change the oil in a new-to-me car. No excuse not to have it if you're even so much as going to remove and clean the ashtray.

Great place to find all kinds of entertaining aftermarket-manual fuckups. I have better things to do with my time than play technical editor for $0.00/hr.

Yep. With all pages glued together and big red "DANGER" letters scrawled on front and back, they made a half-decent doorstop. "Quality" of info inside was just as shitty as you're finding now with Chilton.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

I ourgrew my first Chilton manual when I was 17, after I had owned a car for less than a year. They are worthless. Get the factory service manual.

Reply to
Childfree Scott

The best overall books are Mitchell. These are very year specific & expensive but well worth the $$. There are a lot of worthless books out there, but don't condemn them all because of a few. Good luck.

Reply to
PA-ter

I was wondering if there is a website selling them somewhere for a discount. Thoughts?

--G--

Reply to
George

Why go through all this bullshit monkey motion trying to find the "best" of the aftermarket books, *ALL* of which are distillations and rewrites of the factory book?

JUST GET THE FACTORY BOOK!

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Chiltons is pretty good actually.

They do copy a lot of the information from the service manuals and put it in their manual.

I wanna say it is "honda" that don't want the consumer to have information on repairing their cars, and only real mechanics. If it isn't them, then some other Asian manufac that does it.

If your going to keep the car and tend to do all the work. Get a used service manual.

Reply to
Erik

Mitchell on demand CD, really nice. Put in the year, make, model, and it spits out more than chilton/haynes. Probably pretty expensive if you don't pirate it though.

Reply to
paint8oy

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