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Computers anyone?

92U 3406

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2017
Messages
3,172
Location
Western Canuckistan
Occupation
Wrench Bender
Yeah but not all pdf's have that. Like some free online stuff. And I suppose using a free pdf player won't either.

I can find things so much faster in a nice thick paper shop manual. Its scary and sad that a person would need to depend on a battery to use a shop manual, especially way out in the woods hundreds of miles from anything. And besides all the blue light from a display is bad for your eyes, just look it up.
I have a love/hate relationship with shop manuals. Some are so poorly written they're almost not even worth looking at.

I was trying to chase an electrical issue with a sensor last week and all I had was a paper manual. Found the sensor on the schematic and for one of the wires all it did was list a connector and pin number. What it didn't mention was on what page I would find the other half of the circuit. 10 minutes of flipping through the pages I finally found the rest of what I needed. Very inefficient.
 

Coaldust

Senior Member
Joined
May 9, 2011
Messages
3,354
Location
North of the 60
Occupation
Cargo Tanks, ULSD, RUG, Methanol, LPG
I agree. The quality of written service info has degraded exponentially in the last 10 years. Almost worthless. Now, it’s all based on interactive flow charts. If the problem doesn’t fit the pre-determined narrative, too bad.
 

Truck Shop

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2015
Messages
17,027
Location
WWW.
Well all of the above is correct times have changed. When growing up in a rural environment
it was common to see fathers on roof tops turning the 6'x6' tv antenna that looked a set of
bed springs---all for the sake of their boomer children to set and become idiots watching the
Munsters, Gilligan's Island or the Adams Family. Wonder how many dads fell of the roof.
The good ol days.
 

92U 3406

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2017
Messages
3,172
Location
Western Canuckistan
Occupation
Wrench Bender
At least with the online portals manufacturers are using now incorrect or outdated information is corrected regularly. With a 30 year old paper manual there's no guarentee that the specs and procedures are even relevent anymore.
 

funwithfuel

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2017
Messages
5,605
Location
Will county Illinois
Occupation
Mechanic
While I agree that the 'novelty' of relying on a battery is not great, what's worse is internet reliant parts and service information. It doesn't do much good underground. If you don't have it saved or know it from memory, you're SOL.That said, I can't justify carrying volumes of service literature on the truck to have it ruined by moisture, pages stuck together, coffee, grease etc. A good laptop, maybe 3 pounds. That same information on paper, I'd be overweight. While it certainly is the devil in disguise, it's here to make things better. It's how we choose to use it that makes the difference.
 

aighead

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2019
Messages
2,567
Location
Dayton, OH
I have a 2017 Civic Si, that has been tuned to increase the power a bit. I've read (on a computer) that sometimes that has caused the problem below and sometimes it it happens to untuned cars.

I fire the car up and a couple times now all the dashboard warnings light up and every computer "helper" on the car errors out. Steering assist, traction control, ABS, Hill assist, charging system, etc, like literally every light on the dashboard. These warnings cycle through in a big warning string right in the middle of the dash, which is very distracting (and they come with a nice 'ding' every time too). Well, the first time it happened it freaked me out, even though the car continues to operate completely normally, no loss of power, no weird noises, anything. I took it to the dealer and they looked at it for a while and said "uh, we think your injectors need replaced" (turns out this is a common excuse and they don't really know why it happens) and though the car was tuned they supposedly replaced the injectors and gave the car back.

It was fine for a couple years but all the lights lit back up a few days ago. Again, no noticeable issue with the car in any way (other than the warning lights apparently kick out the ability for any of these assists to work properly, so brake hold is a no go, even turning the car off was tricky sometimes) and I re-read up on it, to find that lots of people had the problem and going in through the tuning software and clearing the errors also cleared up any of the issues.

All that to say that all the computery crap in our cars seems like nonsense and I'm really considering going back to the old times with a vehicle as well. If it weren't for poor gas mileage I'd buy an old beater truck and throw a new engine and all new brake and fuel lines in and gittyup.
 

Old Doug

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2013
Messages
4,553
Location
Mo
All that to say that all the computery crap in our cars seems like nonsense and I'm really considering going back to the old times with a vehicle as well. If it weren't for poor gas mileage I'd buy an old beater truck and throw a new engine and all new brake and fuel lines in and gittyup.
I drive a 1982 Chevy pickup and have a 84 I am trying to fix up . I don't drive a lot of miles so I don't think the mileage is that big of a deal but on a car it does . I hope I can always own a pickup of about that vintage . I don't have one right now but I wish I did but I have had pretty good luck with the cars I have owned not a lot of problems with the computer side of them.
 

CM1995

Administrator
Joined
Jan 21, 2007
Messages
13,397
Location
Alabama
Occupation
Running what I brung and taking what I win
Love a searchable PDF over paper any day of the week. Some project manuals can have up to 2-300 pages of specifications from general conditions to site work. Being able to digitally search a phrase saves a ton of time bidding jobs.
 

TomA

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2012
Messages
145
Location
Mariposa, CA
When the year 2000 came I said I would never buy a new vehicle newer than that. Since then I have reduced that to 1995. With OBD II everything became too complex to provide reliability. I currently drive a '92 F250. It depends on a computer which worries me but I have had several of this era and they have proven reliable.
 
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