Online Car Manuals

Go away.

Thank you for any responses given,

- Dan Margetts.

The message from snipped-for-privacy@kent.ac.uk contains these words:

No.

It's much simpler to go to certain russki websites and download the whole Haynes manual free. ;-)

-- Stuart

Actually I might, if they were say 50p a time. And well indexed, so I knew the info I wanted was going to be in it!

snipped-for-privacy@kent.ac.uk wrote on 18 Jan 2006 02:27:47 -0800:

No. Usually with Haynes manuals you go to chapter 4 section X, which refers you to chapter 5 sections Y, Z, chapter 1 section A....

So not only would I likely end up paying more than the cost of the whole book to buy to whole book (which I'd eventually need), I'd still have to print the damn thing.

I reckon you're looking at it all wrong. Just like you pay a lot less for a legal music download compared to buying the CD (I'm not fully up to date on prices of these though), the total cost of a Haynes manual via download should be something around the £5 mark, compared to £15-16 for buying the book. Add in the usefulness of only needing to print out the sections relevant to the job in hand (i.e. not the entire gearbox chapter, just the bits relevant to removing/refitting it, when doing a clutch, for example), choosing whether or not pictures will be needed, etc etc., I reckon it could be a very handy tool.

AstraVanMan ( snipped-for-privacy@whataloadofforeskinbollocks.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

A LOT less?

79p/track (iTunes) for a 12-track CD works out to £9.48 vs (say) £9.99 for the CD. You can rip the CD to MP3 and listen to it on your car player, portable player, computer. The iTunes purchase is DRM locked.

Seems to me you pay a tiny bit less for a whole lot less - assuming you want all the tracks on the album. I *like* having the "physical thing" there in my hands.

Same applies to a downloaded PDF Haynes.

It'd cost you a fortune to print out on your average domestic inkjet, and then you still have to holepunch/ring bind it, and you have something less wieldy and durable (crap quality of current Haynes notwithstanding)

AstraVanMan wrote on Wed, 18 Jan 2006

12:47:39 GMT:

For all the hassle, I'd rather just spend the extra tenner to get a hardback book.

Aye, I see your point, but personally, given the fact that the book will inevitably get dirty and grease-ridden, and the fact that you're probably only ever going to need a small percentage of the whole book when you're actually down by the car (or ever, in fact), I'd quite like the electronic version. Doesn't take up space on shelves, and I love the whole minimalistic lifestyle thing.

Yes, I would provided:

1) Not the Haynes' (of recent years) lousy black-and-white pictures but the much clearer, cleaner line drawings of old; 2) Step-by-step procedures, e.g. not just "Remove the light housing..." not detailing where the catches are and how they, hidden by the housing itself, can be detached from the panel behind; and 3) The charges are reasonable, say, of £2-3 a time.

If the product is of very high quality (texts as well as drawings) and are genuinely helpful (target audience clearly focused) to the casual weekend DIYers, it should succeed. After all, nowadays the tools required are generally readily available; time is also available if the job needs doing is pressing enough. What is lacking is the know-how. There is a need at present for easy availability (as against accessibility) of high quality knowledge (of all sorts as a matter of fact).

The message from "PC Paul" contains these words:

Ah, there's the rub. If you want to remove the steering rack you only find out after you've bought the steering section that you have to remove the boot lid and rear light clusters first and that's a different bit of the manual.

Yup, I had a feeling it was around that money, and was thinking "actually, iTunes downloads aren't *that* cheap, all things considered".

So you can't burn your iTunes downloads onto a CD then? Obviously you can put them on an iPod, which are pretty good, and can be taken anywhere, and plug into most things, but I agree, it doesn't give the flexibility of buying it on CD.

Aye, I do too, and for only a tiny bit more, I'd go for the CD too. Even with singles, when it's often just the main track you're buying it for - it's always good to see if there are any decent B-sides or live recordings or whatever, so if you want all of them, you're better off just buying the CD.

Well, unless you're buying a car that needs absolutely shitloads of work doing, the Haynes manual is just a point of reference, and most people end up not reading 90% of it, but it's handy to have it there, just in case. So you wouldn't really need to consider printing out the whole lot - just the odd 2-3 pages now and again as required, and you could chop and change bits so you'd only be prinitng exactly what you'd need. Plus it saves having to go out and buy one, only to find it's out of stock, etc etc..

The message from "David Taylor" contains these words:

I'd rather the sodding things were of any use in the first place.

The paper they're printed on these days is crap, the images aren't as useful as they used to be, with too much reliance on photographs instead of drawings (though both are useful) and too much "This isn't really doable at home".

At £15 for a Haynes I would always buy the Haynes just for the simplicity of having the whole lot accessible with no further hassle.

As others have said the Chapters would definitely have to be re-written with lots of repetition.

And any form of copy protection is another unacceptable downside.

Perhaps for those with a penchant for changing their cars very frequently, there might be some attraction as they would only be doing the odd job.

Andy

The message from "AstraVanMan" contains these words:

Certainly not. Everyone might want to do it!

I don't have a computer in my garage, using my computer to download and print car manuals would inevitably lead to my computer becoming dirty and grease ridden too. Any downloadable manual is going to have some similar DRM nonsense.

Down with downloadable manuals! Book is best! Hurrah for books! Long live the book!

(c:

Douglas

According to the Itunes website "You can burn songs from the iTunes Music Store an unlimited number of times."

But that's off the point :) .. Thank you to those who have provided constructive answers so far, especially those who answered the questions. I'm really interested to see what the internet car community thinks, and the price (in this hypothetical situation) would definitely be set to accumulate much lower than the cost of a Haynes manual.

Guy K> The message

Bollocks.

Maybe.

Fool.

Bad form I know, but perhaps I should explain :-)

You print the things out on your computer in the house before you start, in the same way that you pick the book up off the shelf in the house (or possibly in the garage, but either way you do it before you get dirty), so the only thing getting dirty is the bit of paper, which will be cheap paper that can easily be diposed of.

This could be an issue, but you're unlikely to need to edit it. Though it would be handy to be able to snip the exact bits you want, and condense them onto perhaps a lesser number of pages than they originally appeared on.

Books are good actually. But so is online content. People say change is bad. I say Hooray for change!