I am in the process of getting the assorted service and part manuals for the bus. I am in need of some opinions (no shortage of these around here...right?) on whether or not to get the manuals on CD or in hard copy format. I would like to have them on CD if the resolution is good enough to adequately see the fine details of drawings etc... For those who have the CD version, are you pleased, displeased, so on and so forth.
Buddy,
If I were you, I'd stay away from the manuals on CD.
I have copies of a few of them and the scans of pictures and diagrams are extremely poor. You will also find that many times pages and diagrams are missing.
I have a copy of the ($125) 102B&C MCI manual and when I was looking through it, the electrical diagrams are for the 96A and the MC9.
The copies of the ($80) PD4103 Maintenance manual and ($25) PD4103 Operators Manual are so bad that the photos of the dash board, drivers panel, coolant circuits, A/C circuits and, well, just about anything else are either completely black or otherwise totally unreadable.
To me they were way overpriced for the value recieved.
You would probably be better off to watch on eBay and bid on the real thing. Most of the original GMC manuals are going for $20 to $50.
Just my pair of pennies worth of advice.
Dallas
For the prices charged, I would expect MUCH better quality than what is offered with the CD
I personally like to work from a book, but thats just my opinion. If I am going to work on something I make copies of the pages. That way I do not destroy the $125 book.(could not find an original on ebay) It would also be easy to print pages off CD.
Brandon, I considered getting the manuals on CD for my 4107. After looking at some of the other maintenance manuals in my library, I decided to get paper copies of both the manual AND the parts book. Found both through internet auctions. In addition to concerns about scanned illustrations, as noted above, it's also important to know that the organization (at least, of GM manuals) may seem somewhat illogical at times. So, instead of searching through the CD, I can flip pages until I see what I'm looking for.
Why is the parts book so necessary for a decades-old bus from a bygone manufacturer --- the exploded drawings and illustrations show where everything is, and how it's put together.
I also ended up buying a second manual, that way I can keep one in the coach at the RV storage area, and one at the house. I can easily bring the manual into the small library with one seat, but I sure wouldn't want to bring one of the notebook computers in there.
Arthur
Well I just have to put my 2 cents in here with a penny for your thoughts - where did the change go?
Our (Coach Information Network) CDs (and hard copy manuals) have been available for quite some time and we have never had a complaint about the quality.
I am not saying that they are perfect (who is?) but they are the best quality available from (in many cases) manuals that are no longer in print.
There are some cases that the manuals available were what were issued by the manufacturer and although issued for later coaches were covering earlier coaches as well - but that is what the manufacturer issued.
If Dallas (and others) purchased CDs or manuals from us and were unhappy, and could find better quality manuals, they never told us because we would have refunded their money because we stand behind our products 100%.
We made the CDs available because many of our customers were complaining that when they were working on their coaches the manuals became dirty and dog-eared and they didn't want to purchase new manuals just to replace those dirty pages. The CDs allow you to print and reprint the pages that you need while you are working on your coach (and it saves trees).
I response to Runcutter (who posted while I was assembling this post) all of our manuals on CD have bookmarks so you can find the individual sections just like as if you had the printed manual.
Buy the CD and print a few hard copies for safe keeping or use 'in the grease' - best of both worlds - JMO
I like the idea of the CD version for printing out copies of only what I need and not having to worry about losing them or getting them filthy. My main concern is the quality of the scematics, diagrams, photos, etc... I have read some complaints to these very things which makes me wary of them. It would also be helpful if you could download the files from the provider after you have paid instead of waiting for them via the USPS.
The manuals on CD are usually too large to download for most people.
I got mine from CoachInfo and am very pleased with the quality and with the Adobe format it makes
it easy to quickly get through and find the page that you want. I usually just print the pages I need
and the zoom feature works nicely. They scanned "clean" manuals.
No they are not perfect, But neither is a 3rd generation photocopy. Which some of the people doing some CD's are working from, There's nothing like an original manual, But many are already so old that they wouldn't scan cleanly and many others are just not around anymore except by some fluke of nature.
Also, on Many MCI coaches, There are manual sections that look the same. That may be due to many of the circuits being the same between different production models. At least MCI stayed fairly consistent across a number of coaches, Can't say that for others.
Enjoy....
Here is an example of the average parts diagram quality in the CD manual that I have for my bus. As you can see it is good. I am quite happy with my CD manuals.
It was still that sharp at twice that size on the screen. I reduced it in Photoshop for posting here to avoid server or browser side resizing that might affect the quality.
HighTech,
Where did you purchase your manuals? That is the type of quality I am looking for. Thanks for posting that.
They came from Coach Information Network.
I would imagine the quality is also dependent on the age of the hardcopy manuals that were scanned to make the pdf version. Mine are for an '82 RTS.
Also, dark photos and negative image (light on dark) line drawings don't scan as well as a positive (dark on light). I've noticed that a lot of engine and part's manuals from the 60's-70's seemed to use images like that. Perhaps that accounts for the poor image quality observed by Dallas.