There are many ways to get online repair manuals for free. Just typing your car’s make, model, year, and a specific term such as a name of parts, you will see many websites, forum posts, etc… Some websites are created by auto repair manual companies and they cost you a subscription fee to use their manuals. But forum sites is usually free. By typing your car_model+forum, you will find the forum and you may find the answer you are looking for as well. You may not find the information you need but you can also post your question and wait for an answer from other forum users. This may be a little time-consuming way to do. But it is free. Even if you have a good repair manual, you should keep in mind that there are always forums to help your auto repair jobs.

What else? Some auto parts store offer online car repair manuals for free. Autozone.com is popular for free manuals. You will need to register (also free) to get access to the manuals. AutoZone has manuals of many models and years and you will have access to all of them after a free registration. The manuals are neat and easy to see and navigate. The contents are somewhat lacking of information as compared with paid online repair manuals. But again, it is free and no harm to you except you keep receiving promotional emails from AutoZone.

As a useful technique, there is an Image search to take advantage of. Most browsers are default to Web search. By changing it to Image search, you will have greater chance to find wiring diagrams, or pictures and illustrations. Needless to say, visual contents are helpful in finding the location of the part, estimating the difficulty of the overall procedure. Using Image search sometimes save you a lot of time when you try to get free repair manual online.

Online car repair manuals keep our planet clean. They don’t consume trees. That is why many publishers such as Chilton’s and Haynes tend to have more and more online car repair manuals. To use most online car repair manuals, you need to pay a subscription fee, monthly, annually, or even lifetime, depending on publishers. If you have no clue to choose which publisher is the good, look for a sample page in their websites. Most publisher’s website have sample pages. ALLDATAdiy.com has complete manuals of 2 specific vehicles as a sample. If your car’s models and year are the same as these sample vehciles, you are so lucky to use the manuals for free.

You probably know that auto repair manuals are very important when you work on vehicles. Before you start opening up the parts of your vehicles, it is wise to look up the procedure of the repair or possible causes of the problem in repair manuals. Repair manuals are great help to both do it yourself auto mechanics and professional auto mechanics. You can get exact information you need in no time by subscribing online car repair manuals. But what about a free repair manual online? You may have heard that you can get repair manuals for free. Or you see many phrases, such as free auto manuals download, car wiring diagram for free, etc…

It is true that there are many free repair manual online. One of places you can find free repair manuals is a library. You don’t have to go to the library right now. Because the library may not have the manual you are looking for. Libraries have their own websites. Visit the website first and type your car’s model and year. After you make sure they have the your car’s manual, go to the library and check out. But printed manuals don’t have as much information as online repair manuals have.

Because of the advance of technology, newer vehicles need more and more pages. Printed repair manuals of newer vehicles should be several times thicker than the manuals of older vehicles. The reason you don’t see such books is the contents of printed repair manuals are limited to basic information. They don’t have the information of new technology or detailed wiring diagrams. Of course, how much information you need depends on the level of your skills. If you do only routine maintenance like oil change and tune up, printed manuals are probably sufficient for you.

The drawback of printed manuals is that it’s hard to find pages you collect information from. Unlike online repair manuals, there is no search box to type names of parts you are going to replace or trouble code’s number you just retrieved by a scan tools and want to know the cause. After you manage to find the pages, make sure to copy the pages. Don’t take the manual to a work place and look it up while working. Soon it will be full of fingerprints on all pages. Remember they belong to the library.

Regardless of disadvantages, printed repair manuals are still around on the market. That is because they target on do it yourself mechanics who do only basic jobs. Again, they are enough for those who do only routine maintenance. If you want to own the manual instead of borrowing from library every time you need, you can find almost all cars’ manuals on the Internet. Haynes and Chilton are very reputable publisher of auto repair manuals for many years. You can also find used manuals as well as new ones with discount on eBay.