Haynes Manuals

[peter306]

Walking through Chippenham this morning checking for books and in the Julian House charity shop there are Haynes Manuals for a Xantia MK1 and a BX, £2.00 each if anyone is interested

[white exec]

The BX one is excellent, with an accompanying one for the XUD engines.

Not long after, H all went downhill somewhat, when they started to chicken out of their renowned "complete strip-downs". Mind you, when it comes to a c-s-d of an XM, I can understand why they thought twice. It would never have gone back together again.

[van ordinaire]

Actually I think it was the c-s-d basis that lead so often to being told to remove something, as a preliminary, quite unnecessarily. I soon learnt not to blindly follow their procedure but having scanned through the relevant section for any snags, to keep the book by me for reference while adopting a logical, common-sense approach.

Where they really went wrong was replacing those wonderful exploded views with, invariably, poor quality photos (like nth generation photocopies) which were, literally, a waste of space because they showed nothing useful, even if it was identifiable.

[Gibbo2286]

Sitting on my bookshelf here I have Citroen BX, Peugeot 305 and a Subaru 1600/1800 Haynes manuals doing nowt but take up space.

[JohnD]

The BX one is excellent, with an accompanying one for the XUD engines. Not long after, H all went downhill somewhat,

Not only was the detail better, but the photographs and diagrams were as well. Also the printing was done on better quality paper. I still have the BX 908 manual and the 1379 book sitting on the shelf, together with about 10 other Haynes manuals.

[dnsey]

I politely suggested to them years ago that they could usefully start each section with a list of tools required for the job, which should have been easy to compile during their strip-down. I had no reply, nor did I see the idea taken up. My cynical half does wonder to what extent the c-s-d really continued after the earliest manuals, some of which actally showed the disassembly taking place.