Why is it that consumer auto repair manuals...

[White Horseradish]

always have these great honking sections on engine rebuilding? I have never rebuilt an engine, and I bet that the vast majority of people buying the Haynes and Chiltons manuals have not and do not intend to do that. They just want to keep their cars running.

At the same time these manuals are missing a lot of the very useful info on component locations and other things that would be a lot more useful than instructions on honing the cylinders. For instance, the Haynes Lumina APV van manual that I am reading right now has absolutely nothing on the mechanism that switches ventilation airflow. I have seen tons of cars with the vents stuck in "defrost" and no manual except the factory shop manual had any info on that. Chilton's drove me up the wall with instructions like "To remove the sensor unscrew the sensor mounting bolt. Installation is reverse of removal" without any indication of where the said sensor is or what it looks like.

[zahc]

I'm pretty annoyed with Haynes after I bought my Buick manual. It supposedly covers all years from like 89 to 2006. Practically every section is overly generic because these model years differed so much. "To fix the brakes, remove the wheels, install new brakes, and reinstall brakes" real helpful....

[Marnoot]

Ditto all the above complaints. Overly generic instructions eventually led to me having to pull out a significant chunk of the innards of my automatic transmission to replace a bolt damaged while trying to follow the (flat-out wrong) Haynes instructions for changing the transmission fluid.

[Harold Tuttle]

torrenting the manufacturers shop manual is a good thing

[myrockfight]

torrenting the manufacturers shop manual is a good thing

What he said. Factory service manual FTW. It is the first accessory I acquire after acquiring a vehicle. Which reminds me...

[Monkeyleg]

Whenever I did anything as complicated as tearing apart a motor, I got a factory manual. The Haynes and Chilton books are pretty useless.

Haynes is fun for translating English into English, though.

[White Horseradish]

Apparently, Haynes now owns Chiltons.  Double the uselessness...

[Jim147]

I've mentioned it a few times. http://www.alldatadiy.com/

Online service manual. I've worked on cars for years. I have used it twice. Well worth the 26.95. They will send you a renewal deal before it runs out.

jim

[French G.]

Alldatadiy is good stuff. Need to renew mine.

[White Horseradish]

torrenting the manufacturers shop manual is a good thing

1995 Lumina van manuals apparently are not to be found in the intarwebs...  However, Google did return some results starting with "Lumina gay porn". 

[brimic]

The worst part is even if you rebuild an engine or transmission, the Haynes/chilton manuals aren't going to be anywhere near as good as info you can get off the internet.

 I found these manual useful 15 year ago, but now with some careful searching, you can find people who have not only had and fixed the same problem, but they posted carefully taken color pictures and instructions to go with it.

[230RN]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Whenever a car is almost ready to go into production, they ought to lock the chief engineer in a big room with the car and have him take it all apart and put it all back together again.

With only a crescent wrench and two screwdrivers.

Phillips and straight shank.

That's what I say.

Terry, 230RN

[brimic]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Whenever a car is almost ready to go into production, they ought to lock the chief engineer in a big room with the car and have him take it all apart and put it all back together again.

With only a crescent wrench and two screwdrivers.

Phillips and straight shank.

That's what I say.

Terry, 230RN

LOL.  I don't think that cars are any more difficult to work on than they were 20 years ago, but they look more intimidating underneath the hood- which only deters those who wouldn't mess with anything under the hood 20 years ago anyhow.

I still find the same annoying features that I'd love to club engineers over the head with that I saw years ago- frame crossmembers right under the back edge of tranny pans, oil filters located too close to headers or mounted horizontally to make it impossible to not spill oil on a suspension arm or skidplate which will in turn drip oil on your driveway for the next week. 
The only new annoyance that I've found that makes me seethe with white hot rage are $150 circuit boards that regulate and protect $50 heater fan motors from burning out. Did I mention that removing one of these boards requires breaking it out with a pair of pliers? How about reinstalling them requiring you to stand on your head with your feet over the top of the passenger seat while gasping for air and installing 3 tiny screws with your arm bent in a very unnatural position while being able to only turn th escrewdriver with the burning tingling tips of your thumb and index finger? If there is a hell that engineers go to, I want this to be a big part of it.

[Owens]

Just my thoughts on this from being in the tech (mechanic) field for 30+ years....

A wanna be engineer/designer should have to work as a  tech for a minimum of 5 years before they can begin to design/engineer. This would put the quieetus on those parts behind other parts that require a tech to develop extra arm joints, long skinny fingers, and microscopic vision.

I've seen TOO many things done that make no sense and have an obvious simpler way of doing it.

One of my pet peeves that is being done more and more is in the electrical. Gone are the simple switched light circuits. Now the switch for a clearance lamp is a signal or control circuit that inputs the command to a computer causing the computer to output a 12 volt feed to the clearance lamp. IE, "we found the problem with your tail lamps. It will just take $500.00 to replace the lighting control ECM, your bulb was fine."

[Tallpine]

I don't think the word "engineering" can ever be legitimately used in connection with auto design 

[Harold Tuttle]

[230RN]

^ You owe my company a new keyboard, screen, and desk chair.

I should have gone to the little boys' room before I sat down to "work."

I'm not signing this one so nobody will know who posted it.

[White Horseradish]

LOL.  I don't think that cars are any more difficult to work on than they were 20 years ago, but they look more intimidating underneath the hood- which only deters those who wouldn't mess with anything under the hood 20 years ago anyhow.

20 years ago - no. 30 years ago they were definitely simpler. The major factor in making cars worse to work on was the proliferation of front wheel drive cars that have the engine and transmission assembled onto a subframe that is attached to the car from underneath. This is great for manufacturing, but a major pain for repair because what is accessible without the body in the way becomes a royal pain with the fenders and the firewall in close proximity.  Case in point - the rear three plugs on transverse sixes.

[Tallpine]

30 years ago they were definitely simpler

I can almost climb under the hood of my 1976 pickup and take a nap beside the engine 

[White Horseradish]

I can almost climb under the hood of my 1976 pickup and take a nap beside the engine 

I have climbed under the hood of my 92 3/4 ton. Didn't take a nap, had to get to the oil pressure switch. :)

The vehicle where you could climb in and close the hood was a 70's full size pickup with a straight six. All kinds of room there...

[Monkeyleg]

When working on most anything in the engine bay on my XKE, I could sit on one of the front tires. Nice having the entire front of the body tilt forward.

[Phyphor]

The worst part is even if you rebuild an engine or transmission, the Haynes/chilton manuals aren't going to be anywhere near as good as info you can get off the internet.

 I found these manual useful 15 year ago, but now with some careful searching, you can find people who have not only had and fixed the same problem, but they posted carefully taken color pictures and instructions to go with it.

Hmm, I used the old Haynes automatic transmission rebuild manuals for both GMC and Ford transmissions (Ford C4 and GM TH350 trans, before computerized trannies, since none of the books cover those.)

I do agree that shop manuals are far better for vehicles, though....

[French G.]

When working on most anything in the engine bay on my XKE, I could sit on one of the front tires. Nice having the entire front of the body tilt forward.

Glad it was comfortable, probably designed that way for the amount of time you'd be under the bonnet to keep that Jag running. 

[brimic]

Case in point - the rear three plugs on transverse sixes.

Very easy to change, at least in my car with the Buick 3800- remove engine mount brackets, push car forward while in park to roll the engine forward- giving you a lot of room to work with. I've had several RWD vehicles taht were much more difficult to get the rear plugs out of.

I'm very fond of later model serpentine belts as well. stick the right socket on a breaker bar, lean on the tensioner and slip the belt on. Gone are the days of seperate PITA fan/AC/water pump belts.

[French G.]

 

I'm very fond of later model serpentine belts as well. stick the right socket on a breaker bar, lean on the tensioner and slip the belt on. Gone are the days of seperate PITA fan/AC/water pump belts.

The Mercedes engineers who imagined up my wife's c280 krautenwagen very thoughtfully made the belt tensioner to be operated by the lug wrench. Of course they included no belt diagram under the hood, but I has duct tape and a sharpie marker. This is the same car that has an interlock so that the wipers will not work with the front door open. Again, quite thoughtful. So why is it that when I change the oil it shoot all over the damn subframe? Really, we couldn't have designed that a little better?