Which car repair manual is best?

An online car repair manual is your best choice when working on your car

Printed car repair manuals are obsolete. Most carmakers don’t even print them anymore. Your best bet for getting a subscription to a professional shop manual like like alldatadiy.com or eautorepair.net. Those shop manuals provide step-by-step guides with diagrams, torque specifications and manufacturer service bulletins.

Yes, you’ll have to pay for a professional car repair manual, but it’s worth it

The people who post repair videos on youtube are well meaning. But many times they’re showing you a hack way to do the job. They skip past critical information like torque specs and alignment settings. Tightening some parts without a torque wrench can cause major part failure, costing you a small fortune down the road. They kinda skip that part. I mean, nobody ever comes back to re-do the video and say, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about this!”

A professional shop manual will give you all the torque specs, step-by-step instructions for disassembly and re-assembly and they’ll provide diagrams.

You also need the most current technical service bulletins

Look, car makers make mistakes. They under-design parts. They mess up the software. They mis-route wiring harnesses that wind up running against the engine and shorting out. When car makers discover those mistakes, they publish a technical service bulletin to give techs everywhere a “heads up” that when you encounter a certain issue, chances are they’ve already identified the fix. Having the service bulletin can save you a LOT of money.

Here’s an example: Almost half of all technical service bulletins describe engine and transmission performance issues that can be fixed by installing a software update. I get it, you can’t install the update yourself because you don’t own a $3,000 scan tool. But most pro shops do and they charge about $150-$200 to do the update. You’ll waste far more than that in time and parts trying solve the problem yourself, only to find out that you still need a software update.

Technical service bulletins also correct mistakes in the printed versions of their factory shop manuals and they update procedures when techs find easier ways to do the repair. Printed shop manuals can’t give you those updates.

Factory shop manuals are the best

If you have an older car, I strongly recommend going on ebay to buy a genuine factory shop manual. They’re simply the best. They not only give you step-by-step instructions, but they also explain how the systems work so you can diagnose them. They’re worth every penny. BUT, there’s still a better way to get repair information.

Buy an online subscription or try to find a free source

Many public libraries offer free in-library access to professional repair manuals. Libraries usually offer either Alldata, Eautorepair, Chiltons, or EBSCO. EBSCO is the least helpful of them all. However, it does offer TSBs and some wiring diagrams. I’m not a big fan of Chiltons, but if it’s free and you have no other source, it’s worth a try.

Call your public library and ask if they have online access to an auto repair shop manual service. Then log in, find the diagrams and print them on the library printer. Total cost? Maybe $2 for the printer/copy machine.

Here are the pros and cons of each one type of car repair manual.

Alldatadiy.com and Eautorepair.net have wiring diagrams, step-by-step repair guides, torque and fluid specifications, body trim diagrams, and service bulletins. Both services offer OE wiring diagrams and more user friendly diagrams that allow you to trace the entire circuit so you don’t have wind your way through a spaghetti maze on the OE diagrams.

Factory wiring diagrams are much harder to read because each manufacturer uses their own special symbols. Worse yet, factory wiring diagrams don’t include the locations of splices and grounds on the same page as the diagram. So you have to go to the component locator section and find the sections for power distribution, ground locations, splice locations, etc. It’s cumbersome.

© 2012 Rick Muscoplat