haynes vs. chilton’s repair manuals (for Mazda)
filed in Misc Car Questions
Question: I’m looking into picking up a repair manual (for a ‘94 Mazda MX-6), and am debating between the haynes and the chilton’s. Anyone have an opinion of the two series in general, or even better the Mazda ones? I’ve looked at the Haynes in the store before, and while it seemed a bit “unpolished” it did seem to be very informative.
Answer: They both have their faults. Murphy’s law tells you that you’ll pick the wrong one for the job you need to do. For general maintenance, either will probably do the job, but if you have specific tasks, look over both to see which one is best for the job. I have a Haynes manual I bought for my nieces 84 Civic. It covers 84-91 all models and is often lacking in specifics for the early models. It just tries to cover too much in X amount of pages to cover anything very well. Carb info is severely lacking. If one of the manuals has a narrower range of years that include your specific car, I think I would choose that one. Before I moved to the USA (from England) I had Haynes manuals for most of my many cars, and always found them to be excellent. I did a number of major jobs, including complete engine rebuilds, Haynes had all the information I needed, lots of good tips and advice, and good quality photos of almost all procedures. Right now I’m in the middle of a cylinder head & timing gear job on my 1988 Bronco II, the only manual I could find for it was a Chiltons. While generally adequate, I find it’s not up to the standard I was used to with Haynes – the photograph quality is not as good, and there’s somewhat less detail in the procedures (example – for removing the timing cover, one step simply says “remove the crankshaft pulley bolt”. Now, that turned out to be a really difficult job because when you try to turn the bolt, you just end up turning the crankshaft. I suspect Haynes would have given more advice about how to do this.)
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