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Do they give you a 55 gallon drum of Crisco with that service manual?

hosspuller

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2014
Messages
1,869
Location
North Carolina
Another vote for paper... I bought Deere downloads, Then printed them out on my home computer laser printer. Luckily, it's a duplex (prints both sides) Even so, I have to limit the printing to 100 pages (50 sheets) or the printer gets too hot.

I find tracing circuits easier on paper than multiple computer screens. I lose track on the screen, whereas I put my finger on the page while I look at the next sheet. I'm old and can't remember S...t... you know CRS syndrome :rolleyes:
 

John C.

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,865
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
I do that to. I end up using a pencil and ruler most of the time because my eyes are getting so bad with the small lines. I plan on finding a pair of 4X reading glasses in the near future for it.
 

Randy88

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
2,149
Location
iowa
Some of us blind bats just have the pages enlarged 5 times and forget the glasses completely, then use, [heaven forbid] scotch tape to tape the pages together so they continue on for the full harness to be viewed at one time.

I'll have to admit, not one single time in all the years I've worked on machines, did the batteries go dead on a paper manual so I couldn't view it in the field, lol.
 

1693TA

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2010
Messages
2,687
Location
Farmington IL
Occupation
FAA Radar Engineer, (Retired)
I found guy in Russia online that had a plethora of manuals for about $20.00 each download. I got a factory Hyster manual for my H110E, Case 1845C, Case 780CK, and a couple for Detroit Diesel. All manuals were Parts, Service & Maintenance, and Overhaul. These are all factory service manuals. Once I had the links, they were downloaded, stored, and printed at leisure. I think that's the way to do it and not have to store a lot of paper copies. I usually print off only what I need and don't worry about the greasy shop atmosphere.

I went looking and cannot locate him nowadays but I'll keep trying.
 

chidog

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2021
Messages
771
Location
kent, wa
The moral of the story is, before laying down the thousands of $$$$$ for any sort of high cost item, demand the shop manual be included.
Personally I can't stand a computerized manual of any sort, too slow finding a page you want, and can't have it laying open to look at it.
Oh the good old days with high quality photos and not just a line drawing of the part your working on. In those days the proud manufacture was thrilled to do more advertising of
their quality products by producing a quality shop manual. If all the manufactures would stop redesigning or ruining a good design and instead put that money into customer service
like a quality shop manual they would again gain respect of the people that keep them all employed.
 

John C.

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,865
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
I agree with most of your post but "high quality photos" in a service manual?

The best manuals that I've used were the Cat service manuals of the sixties and seventies and that was only because of the quality of their descriptions. All the photos were black and white grainy fifth and sixth generation block prints taken with too little light and crappy resolution so poor that many times you had no clue as to what they were showing. The Japanese made great line drawings but explained things in engineer speak that had been translated to English. The Europeans wrote manuals and did the same types of pictures as Cat but left out so many details that tearing something apart was like being blind folded and dropped in the woods and left to find your own way out. They would build something and then modify it twelve times and never update any of the manuals. That's if you got a book from them in the first place. A lot of times they are just shrunken copies of the engineering prints.

These days I'm just happy to get any information at all from any manufacturer. Most of the time I expect to be disappointed.
 

JD955SC

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 13, 2011
Messages
1,349
Location
The South
I agree with most of your post but "high quality photos" in a service manual?

The best manuals that I've used were the Cat service manuals of the sixties and seventies and that was only because of the quality of their descriptions. All the photos were black and white grainy fifth and sixth generation block prints taken with too little light and crappy resolution so poor that many times you had no clue as to what they were showing. The Japanese made great line drawings but explained things in engineer speak that had been translated to English. The Europeans wrote manuals and did the same types of pictures as Cat but left out so many details that tearing something apart was like being blind folded and dropped in the woods and left to find your own way out. They would build something and then modify it twelve times and never update any of the manuals. That's if you got a book from them in the first place. A lot of times they are just shrunken copies of the engineering prints.

These days I'm just happy to get any information at all from any manufacturer. Most of the time I expect to be disappointed.

and now Cat has the same crappy photos uploaded on SIS. Newer stuff MIGHT be better but usually isn’t unless they start showing 3D cad drawings then it’s usually better. And the descriptions have gotten a lot worse. And now they’ve really made it bad and gone to pictographs for the newer stuff that you have to have a legend like a map to decipher that is the most infuriating of it all.
 

Randy88

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
2,149
Location
iowa
The last cat manual I used they mixed up the metric and SAE data, meaning 250 newton meters ended up being printed 250 foot lbs, quite a difference in torque specs when it all said and done. I got so upset over the deal I traded off the machine and tossed the manual in the trash, simple way to solve that issue entirely.

I'll second that whole needing a road map to even read the manual thing. Its pretty bad when I have to call to ask someone else, "hey where is the section on engine removal located at in the manual" did they stick it under or along with fan belt removal or tire rotation??

The computer versions I use sticky notes to remember where stuff is located at and under what heading and it usually takes a few hours to study the thing to ever find what I need, then sticky notes to the computer screen to know what section and page the thing is I need.
 

emmett518

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
I think part of the difficulty is that the people who create the manuals don’t actually work on the machines, and as a result, don’t realize what should be included.
 

Randy88

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
2,149
Location
iowa
The manuals are written when the machine was built, or as they are built, then once those machines are in the field being used and needing repairs. With the modern age technology of computers and cell phones, most techs can access anything they need while right in the field, directly to the manufacturer and get an answer back almost immediately when the manual is either wrong, or incomplete. Once a mistake is noted in the manual, that update is given to those answering the questions in tech support, not updating the manuals. So after a dozen years later and once out of warranty, and the rest of us idiots buy these machines and try to fix them and work on them ourselves, or work on a different brand of machine we don't have a franchise for, tech support is almost nonexistent and the manuals are so lacking its not funny. Very poor manuals are another way to require OEM to continue to work on the machines they sold. Now this all depends on the manufacturer, some are very good at providing tech support, others are so bad, to say they suck is an understatement and every area of the country and world is different. As they say color sells many machines, the support and service sells far more, and that's dealership dependent. So when some brands sell great in one area and nobody will even consider that brand in another, it gets down to the service side of the equation, and yes service manuals are part of that equation.

Lately [I've done it many times] I ask to see a service manual for a machine I'm considering buying, if nobody can provide one for me to even look at and read, chances are I'm not going to buy that machine no matter how good of deal they intend to give me. Thats because I'm going to be the one who ends up fixing it myself at some point down the road and I want to know, when I do buy a used/new machine I can also buy a descent service manual that does me some good. I've pretty much weeded out the manufacturers who manuals suck and tech support is nonexistent, you know, being told to just call the local dealers and have them fix it, constitutes tech supports that sucks in my opinion, but since that changes from year to year, I also need to know who's getting better and who's getting worse.
 
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