rev up your engines, today I'm talking about the best do-it-yourself repair
manuals, but before I do we have to mourn the passing of John
Haynes, the man who started the Haynes manuals, he passed away recently about a
month ago at age 80, he loved working on cars, he went from a young man who made
his first book, sold it out in a few weeks and
ended up selling over 200 million of these Haynes manuals, now John had a great
idea, his books are based on a complete tear down and rebuild of each individual
model, yeah that's a lot of work just look I've been fixing cars for 51 years,
that's been a lot of work but you know why not share it with the world to help
people out, now being an Englishman his idea of DIY is often about his in-depth
as you can get, look at this I mean they're showing you how you can pull an
engine out of this Toyota Matrix and rebuild it,
that's what amazes me about these Haynes manuals, he was a true Englishman, when an
Englishman says, oh I'm an amateur well let me tell you they're amateurs are
sometimes a hundred times better than an American professional, I swear some of
the Englishmen I met you could give them some scrap metal and a few pieces of
electronics, throw them in a shed in their back yard and about six months
later they come out with a rocket ship that will go to Mars, now I was worried that
this was gonna be the end of Haynes manuals
now that John's gone but his son has taken over the company and he's
following it up they're gonna continue to be making these things, cuz really these
books are awful lot of work, not only simple stuff like brake jobs, but
look, they got the whole wiring diagrams of the vehicles in them too, you want to
get serious about finding electrical problems, and just like everything else
these days they're going on the internet too, I talked them at the company and
they said, oh they're continued gonna make the books but they also have the
online version, so it's like 29 bucks for the book and 20 bucks for the online
version, all right pretty good deal if you ask me, the only thing I've really
got against Haynes books is this, it's so much work to do
of course they can't do it for every car out there, so there's cars out there that
they don't have any books for yet, I was kind
of curious about how they went around figuring out which books to make and how
many to print up, and hey I said well you know they study the markets of how many
people have certain cars and how many they sell in certain areas, so how many
books they should print out, because if you look at the book it's got lots of
pictures in it and with all those pictures hey at least with present
technology they can't just print these things on a machine automatically on demand,
my book how to buy a used car that thing doesn't have any real
pictures on it, so it can be printed out fast on the machine you can buy one
where Amazon prints it up somewhere in Kentucky someplace, but this thing no
it's got to be published by an actual publisher, but as I said you can get them
online too, only I asked him I said you guys gonna stop making these and just go
online, they said no because a lot of our customers they want the book so
when they're working on a car, like this matrix hey, take a look at the picture
they look at the car, they can see it right in front of them, where it's not on
a computer screen, books are really handy when you're working on cars there's no
arguing that granted you can get on online one and print
out the pages you want but hey really when you got a book you know there it is
and if something happens throw it in the trunk so if you need a reference if
something breaks down the road, there it is in the trunk and you can look through
it, now as you can see here it's a lot of work making one of these manuals, these
guys are taking the matrix apart, body, the engine they're giving you some serious
information here and really it doesn't matter if you're an American DIY that's doing
a brake job or you want to take the dash apart, or if
you're a British DIY and you're gonna take the whole car apart and put
it back together again like he did, let's face it John
didn't sell over 200 million books for nothing, he's got a very good system here
that helps people out, now I never personally met John, so I can't say what
his real personality was like, people are saying Scotty oh people like watching
you because your personality, well maybe yes maybe no, I mean people are always
friendly to me when they ask me questions, they
smile and say hey Scotty aha, but then invariably comes the, hey I got a
question about my car, and I say go ahead ask it I'll answer it for you
people want to talk to me because they want real answers about their cars, and
these Haynes manuals they give you real ways of fixing your car, yeah sure maybe
you're not gonna be taking the engine or transmission apart, it's gonna cover
anything that you're interested in, in this case hey the antenna there
kept hitting a tree, well you wonder, how do you get that whole assembly off not
just the little top and the whole thing, hey he's got it in his book, to replace the
antenna base remove the rear upper quarter trim on the driver's side, then
remove the rear headliner retaining fasteners, the headliner will drop down
enough so you can access the one nut securing it and get it off, you can't get
more clear and concise, he didn't waste any words, he didn't waste any of your time
he even told you the trick was, you can just drop it down some to reach in
you don't have to take the whole headliner off, there are so many jewels in these books,
maybe John's looking down on us saying hey I'm still helping people out, and I
wish his son good luck on continuing making these things, I hate to see good
things go away, and since this is mechanic Monday I'm giving away a Haynes
manual, to have a chance to win just place a clean non offensive comment on
the youtube comments below, and a winner will be chosen randomly by computer to
get a Haynes manual for their vehicle and of course put your vehicle make and year,
so we can make sure that they make one for your car, so if you never want
to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!