96 grand am shop manual

You may be able to pick one up used at a car swap meet or e bay.

I don't know what Chilton or Haynes are like. The factory service manual are the one's I've always bought ( from Helm Inc) When I bought one in 96 for an 89 Z -24 it was almost $100.

If you do most of the work on the car and plan to have it at least 7 more years buy one.

========= Harryface =========

Only you can answer that. How good of a tech are you? I have the 92 manual for my 92 G/A but I rarely need it. It is thorough & better than anything else.

Chilton works nice for the common stuff. It isn't always right, but with that book and some common sense it is possible to take the whole car apart and build it back together. The main difference is that (normally) a shop manual has far better illustrations and is more accurate. Haynes and Chilton leave quite some space for imagination.

I would say the best is to buy a Chilton/Haynes for $10-15, if you want to work on something not covered in these books (by that time you'll have enough experience to figure things out yourself) get a shop manual. I do pretty much everything on my cars myself and think Haynes is good enough.

I have the Helm Publications Service Manual for the '01 Bonneville ($120). It is the most thorough and accurate manual. It also includes "Description of Operation" sections which are useful. The electrical schematics are great to have also. To me it's worth the money easily.

-- markwb

I have been buying the manufacturer's manual for all my cars, new or used, since the 60's and have in every case found them to be worth much more than the purchase price. Perhaps the greatest payback is that you can find out what a job entails and make a decision as to whether or not you want to tackle the job BEFORE you get up to your whatever in that brown stuff. Special tools (not always necessary)are called out which also prevents surprises. In addition, knowing what a job entails is of great importance when having work done by someone else.

I have found Chilton manuals to be sadly lacking in detail to the point of being ridiculous. Much of Chilton's "help" is in the form, "Take it apart; fix it; put it back together." Some help!

RPB

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