Message board of a car repair manual publisher - It's like what you'd expect

[Stephen Tashiro]

I'm not a fan of the printed car repair manuals sold by publishers such as Haynes and Chilton. However, if you don't have the factory service manual, the aftermarket manuals are all that's available and better than nothing. While looking for directions about how to replace the ignition switch in a 1987 Chevy S-10 this morning, I happened to find the message board at Haynes dot com. It reminded me of the printed manuals, except that it's not all you have on the internet and I'm not confident of the "better than nothing" part.

[Callan Campbell]

Most auto forums tend to be a mess when it comes to diagnosing something until real. hard, cold, facts are finally posted and UNDERSTOOD by the people reading them and applying them to their vehicle. For starters, it's hard diagnosing a car over the phone via a helpline even for dealers talking to a factory rep, let alone a stranger on the Internet, who's miles away from the hood of your car. So much to go wrong without being there in person.
So, when info is posted that's wrong or misleading about fixing your problem, it can go down hill fast.
As far as the detail level provided by Haynes, et al in their repair manuals, some of that is due to info being held back by a car maker, and some of it is the publishers decision to not go overboard with highly technical info that they feel might be misunderstood and lead to improper repairs by the general public buying their manuals.
As you're finding out, your own personal experience, that you could document carefully and post somewhere on the internet will probably ALWAYS have way more detail on what's involved for the given repair you're doing to your car at the moment. I tried a few months ago to see if anyone wanted STEP BY STEP instructions for replacing the heater core on '92-99 Mitsubishi Monteros since I'd just replaced the whole heater box because I could not FIND a heater core for sale for that year span of production on the old Monty-earlier body style yes, they were around, my body style, NO one had one.
Anyway, I even had pictures of the whole dash apart, with notes to supplement the FACTORY manuals that I also had, and long story short, no one took me up on it. Soooo, I deleted most of the pictures and said screw it.
Still love my hot new heater core though ,and a perfect new functioning heaterbox with all its new sealing foam and working flaps......I feel you pain, I really do