I just got a full set of 5 shop manuals for my 1979 Fairmont Squire on CD and the Ford Electrical and Vacuum Troubleshooting Manual (EVTM) in paperback. The freight on the CD manual was postage. The EVTM freight was about $10.00 for an $8.00 48-page manual (oversized for standard envelope.) The 'manuals' are huge acrobat PDF files. I copied them to the drive, added desktop links to each one, and that's that. The big books for Ford cars included all models until 1981, then they split them up. Andy lent me his 1978 paper manuals to do my resto, and they are well organized for the most part, but it's a pain to manually dig through for Fairmont or Mustang or ... The PDF's are searchable. The original indexes click through to the section you want. I thought I'd prefer the actual manuals vs. the CD verions, but they are exactly identical and totally printable for the page you want. The company that does the CD's is offically licensed by the company (Ford, GM, Mopar, etc.). So far, I like them. Prices are a bit stiff depending on the year, make and model. Some manuals aren't available any other way. EVTM has to be paperback. You need it handy when you're under the dash. They've got them too: http://www.faxonautoliterature.com/home_one.cfm or this more direct page: http://www.faxonautoliterature.com/gateways/Makes/car_Makes.cfm
Yet again, good stuff Norm. I think I'll grab the chassis and electrical on paper back. I mite get this also...... http://www.faxonautoliterature.com/product.cfm?p=37&cs=products.cfm?vt=1007&mk=6270&yr=1983
Oh yeah! That's awesome! While you're waiting, you can cruise through this: http://www.coachbuilt.com/
I have both CD manuals and paper manuals. Use the paper manuals when looking for info. etc and make a print from the CD when I have found the correct page(s) with info. Then I can spill oil and grease onto the printouts when working on the cars in the garage and NOT destroying the paper books I bought my CD manuals from www.detroitironis.com
I will have to vote for the paper manuals. If I did go CD, I would make a backup copy and save the original in case the copy got damaged.
I'll get a paper version eventually, but the CD saves me a lot of time finding Fairmont-specific info.
