repair manuals

[jedco]

hey everyone- new member saying hello and asking a ?. just bought a 200 outback, and am looking for a haynes shop manual for it. have one for my now deceased '94 legacy, but don't seem to be able to find one for my current soob. any suggestions on where to look? thanks

[Wayne Boncyk]

Hi! It has been my experience that the Haynes manual for the Legacy/Outback have not been as helpful as I would have wished. I have a '96 Outback and I've gotten more useful info from the others on this forum than I ever did out of the Haynes book for my year's Sube. One of the most valuable pieces of information that I got here was a pointer to the Subaru Technical Information System (STIS). Here's the URL address: http://techinfo.subaru.com

 

From there, for a subscription fee ($20 for 72 hours access), you can download PDF files of ALL the subaru documents related to your car, including their complete factory service manual, all the TSBs, a copy of your User Manual, etc. This is a great resource for anyone who is generally familiar with working on cars, provided you have a high-speed internet connection. Some of those PDF files are pretty big. It isn't perfect; one of the things they do is to split the manuals up into dozens of individual PDF files, so downloading is tedious, but it gives you far more data than the Haynes book, and a 72 hour subscription costs less than 1/3 of the cost of a printed service manual. The Subaru factory manuals are very well written!

[jedco]

Thanks Wayne - I will give that a try...

 

 

Hi! It has been my experience that the Haynes manual for the Legacy/Outback have not been as helpful as I would have wished. I have a '96 Outback and I've gotten more useful info from the others on this forum than I ever did out of the Haynes book for my year's Sube. One of the most valuable pieces of information that I got here was a pointer to the Subaru Technical Information System (STIS). Here's the URL address: http://techinfo.subaru.com

 

From there, for a subscription fee ($20 for 72 hours access), you can download PDF files of ALL the subaru documents related to your car, including their complete factory service manual, all the TSBs, a copy of your User Manual, etc. This is a great resource for anyone who is generally familiar with working on cars, provided you have a high-speed internet connection. Some of those PDF files are pretty big. It isn't perfect; one of the things they do is to split the manuals up into dozens of individual PDF files, so downloading is tedious, but it gives you far more data than the Haynes book, and a 72 hour subscription costs less than 1/3 of the cost of a printed service manual. The Subaru factory manuals are very well written!

[forester2002s]

A piece of advice when downloading from the Subaru site:

 

- There are literally hundreds of individual files to download.

 

- All of the downloaded files have incomprehensible file-names (e.g. MSA5T0222A21517.pdf).

 

- As you download, add a text description to the filename (e.g. 'MSA5T0222A21517 Engine Oil.pdf')

 

- As you download, create the relevant folders (e.g. 'Engine Section'), and also sub-folders (e.g. 'Lubrication'). and put the downloaded files in the right place.

 

This is a lot of work, but worthwhile in the end. You end up with an excellent manual.

 

Wait for a rainy day; fill the coffee pot; and be ready for an extended stay at the keyboard.

 

You must have broadband to do this; don't even try it with dial-up (it would take you days!).

[Wayne Boncyk]

Sound advice, sir! Also, keep in mind that STIS limits you to 20 downloaded PDFs per hour. A sneaky thing to do if you need more than 20 but less than 40 is to start your downloading near the end of an hour (since they track usage by clock time, rather than total elapsed time). Then when you've reached your 20 limit, you only have a few minutes to wait until you can do the next 20.