Old Haynes manuals

[diesel=ambrosia]

Just had my Haynes manual though for the mgb. Had a quick flick through and I was really impressed with the amount of detail, especially the exploded diagrams. The other ones I've got for more modern cars are pants in comparison. I think nowadays they don't really expect Joe Bloggs to have a go at fixing his motor beyond the very basics.

 

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[Lankytim]

Yeah, older manuals are quite lovely. The newer ones are shite and seem to be made from the tracing paper style bog roll found in 1980's primary schools

[strangeangel]

Yeah, older manuals are quite lovely. The newer ones are shite and seem to be made from the tracing paper style bog roll found in 1980's primary schools

 

and the pictures are all grainy piss-poor low res scans, if the one I had for my old C15 was anything to go by.

[Partridge]

Newer ones are shite, yes. The one for the 800 seems very sunny and optimistic about how easy it is to do work on the car. It gives one spanner for difficulty for taking the headlights out. Yeah, right. It didn't mention the part about using half a can of WD40, some string and two people.

 

It should have an image of somebody bashing their head on a wall or slashing their wrists, never mind one spanner.

[Pillock]

The Mk3 Golf manual had a four spanner rating for gearbox removal.

It lied, I only used three spanners. And a hammer, two jacks, some rope and a length of wood ripped from the fence. Maybe they didn't have little symbols for those so just put another spanner on it.

[mercrocker]

The one complaint I have always had with HBOLs of all vintages was that they never stay flat when opened.   They also tended to break up their text in

                       arbitrary ways when the page ran

                                                                                   out...............

 

The old ones were nicer print quality though and I preferred them when the bindings fell apart so you could take the bloody pages out and read them properly under street lighting...

[Tamworthbay]

The classic mini ones are perfect examples, they build up over time with full explanations of how to strip gearboxes etc, then the new style dark blue edition is released that says anything other than checking the oil and greasing the hinges is 'best left to a garage'.

[lisbon_road]

Sorry but I never quite forgave the comment in the HB Viva manual 'simply drift out door hinge pins'.

 

But yes, they've all helped us loads over the years.  Especially torque wrench settings.  And chod manuals are normally 20p in charity shops too.

[mouseflakes]

tracing paper style bog roll found in 1980's primary schools

Izal Medicated

[AlabamaShrimp]

The Frontera one is a nightmare to use. It try to cover all the engine on both the mk1 and 2, it just doesn't work.

 

The fiesta ones are good though

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Izal Medicated

 

Did you ever play Izal Noughts and Crosses for the chance to win £3,000 in cash prizes?

 

 

The text under the little pictures is not clear, but it says "here are four things you could ram up your arse with less discomfort than using Izal Medicated Toilet Tissue"

[Urban_Paranoia]

Sorry but I never quite forgave the comment in the HB Viva manual 'simply drift out door hinge pins'.

Or those times when you need to use "BL Special Tool C/3459/X4", which turns out to be a 2-foot long multi-jointed spindly arm with a pair of tweezers on the end (or something equally weird or ineffective).

 

Or the fact that photographs appear to be taken in a spotless white workshop, with pristine white lab-coated "mechanics" undoing hugely-torqued bolts with their fingertips (instead of you lying upside-down on your drive in the rain, covered in 20-years of rust and shite, attempting to free up a highly-reluctant and inaccessible nut which has been cunningly rounded-off (and subsequently ignored) by the previous 6 owners.