Haynes manuals

IME the newer manuals are infinitely worse than the older ones. The one I have for my Omega is little more than a doorstop. OTOH I have an american Chilton manual for my wife's Previa. It comes with an English translation! While it too has its problems I find it much more useful than Haynes' offerings.

They're far worse now IMO. The paper is thinner and there are fewer useful instructions, details and, well, just about everything. In one was an average electrical diagram, i.e. one that should match most of a typical model, not as in the old days, one for each variety of a model.

I agree about the standard of production of the modern manuals - but I still have an old Triumph Herald Haynes book from the early 7's - you could drop it in a puddle of oil and just wipe it off. Still has some of my old oily/dirty thumb prints in and on it ...

Modern version falls to bits if you drop it.

The paper quality is appalling, it now soaks up oil instead of being wipeable. The page for the gearbox on my Focus basicall tell you how to remove it from the bellhousing and that's it - the old BWM manuals for example would tell you how to strip and reassamble the layshafts.

I used to like the Clymer series for my bikes but not sure if they are available for cars.

Have to agree. I'm now on my 4th Fiesta (I've had 1985, 1986, 1994 and 1998 models) with the corresponding Haynes Manual for each. The latest one is vastly inferior to previous manuals, with pages made of blotting paper and information that has clearly been lifted from previus editions and is just plain wrong (eg the bit about restarting the engine after overhaul says nothing about the ECU having to relearn its settings, it talks about an engine management warning light that just doesn't exist on the dash etc. etc.).

I'm am really disappointed with my latest Haynes manual - quality and accuracy are just not what they used to be.

Tony

The older Haynes manuals were far better, imho.

I find the Peter Russek manuals generally contain more useful information than the Haynes ones.

However, the print quality is dodgy and the paper highly absorbant but this is forgivable as the books are actually useful!!

sponix

I can suggest no reason for the poorer paper quality, but as regards poorer accuracy and lack of detail I wonder if this is perhaps accounted for by today's vastly increased no. of models as compared with 20 years ago. There must be a helluva lot more manuals produced now (with fewer copies of each sold) and Haynes are not now putting in the work (and investment) needed to do a proper job.

I came across this subscription only on-line service manual, ALLDATAdiy.com

line drawings are much clearer and appear to be more pertinent to therelated text discussions. I prefer this to the washed out black-and-whitephotos in Haynes.

Has anyone used this ALLDATA? What is it like?

?35 years ago, there were the ?Autocar (unrelated to the magazine) service manuals. The HQ was in Brighton or Bournemouth (or somewhere in the south cost). They were pretty good, and were in competition with Haynes. Anyone remembers that?