History What do you guys do with old car books and manuals"

how about donating them to a book fair? nice tax deduction...

 

I had several Motors Manuals which covered the years 1935 to 1965. I gave them to the owner of a restoration shop. They only work on vintage vehicles. They found the manuals to be valuable in researching specifications and repair methods.

 

I love finding old books, found one at st vinnies for 4 bucks the other day that covers all suspension and alignment pre 1952. Is in pristine shape. That kind of info is getting hard to find anywhere besides the hamb for us younger fellers

 

Trade 'em for PLAYBOY!!

 

I've attempted to collect any and all OEM & sales brochures, trim and associated manuals, supplements etc, Fisher body, Olds/GM dealer manuals specific to my 1946 Oldsmobile (Canadian & US). It's taken a while however I now have quite a diverse group of rare period original documents that are stored away collecting dust for when I eventually get the car going. I even have a NOS dealer wall chart that needs to be mounted along with an original 'Sunvisor Hydra-matic starting instructions'.

 

Had to chuckle today.
Guy was on social media asking for help because his program wouldn’t load on his computer so he couldn’t fix his truck.
That wouldn’t happen if he had a book.

 

Just had a discussion with a buddy this past Monday. I said my house would burn for a good 12 hours. It is 120 years old.

 

gimme! gimme! gimme!


Does that answer your question?

 

I would be more than happy to take anything Ford related!

 

Couldn't help but notice , on the preceding motors manual index page ,of the 24 car brands listed ,only 8 (1/3) remain !

 

I carried a stack of mostly Mopar shop manuals (newest =1963) to a swapmeet a few years ago and a guy who specialized In Mopar manuals bought the stack. They came out of the back room of the high school shop I taught in and the first shop teacher I had in had had in high school had got them from a local dealer where he worked summers.

I have a batch of text books that book reps gave me at the an unlimited vocational teachers convention. Most are boxed up but I do use one for reference. All I snagged when the district closed the program is a 1946 Motor manual, early 60's interchange manual and an early 50's wiring diagram book. Most likely saved from the dumpster later.

 

Got them in a hope chest.

 

I have a pretty fair collection of GM Holden workshop manuals, almost complete from '48 to '91. I use mine routinely. I was lucky to grow up in an automotive family, and "played" with stuff for years. I was "that" person who would fiddle with a carburetor, changing jets and settings based on what others said and thinking I was tuning it.

As I got older, I realised how little I really understood. Too busy in life to go back to school, and the world had moved on... been a long time since the local tech colleges taught the basics of carburetors or gearboxes. Tried hard to learn from talking to people, and soon came to realise that the ratio of people like me (who thought they knew) to people who really did know was very, very high. Lots of chaff with the wheat. Must admit the HAMB has helped me find a better ratio.

I use the manuals to help me understand properly. I'm no Carbking, but I'm now confident enough in my knowledge to reverse engineer some of the weird stuff that comes my way (the last one was a set of 33/34 Winfield sidedraughts: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...e-fast-articles-please.1099406/#post-12470261 http://www.fbekholden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21042&start=30, and some local low-pressure mechanical fuel injection before that: http://www.fbekholden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21645). Similarly confident enough to do my own brake and gearbox work. The manuals give me a good grounding, and help to sharpen up the questions I need to ask here when I get stuck.

Cheers,
Harv

 

I love old shop manuals. About three years ago my boss was clearing out his Dads old wooden garage and asked me if I wanted the old books. I said absolutely. A couple of days later I was was thumbing through them and found an original Ardun color sales brochure that had been folded up in the pages since the 50s.

 

POST PIC`S.

 

Okay guys,
Here is what I have come up with:

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/books-manuals-videos.1253256/#post-14348402

This is a trial, more H.A.M.B material to come. SWMBO is on the warpath. My old office is going to be some sort of 'She Shed'. I have limited time to get this done.

 

I never took any pictures of it . It was printed in mostly red and black ink and if I recall it was about 12" x24" I gave it to Mike Herman at H&H . He said he had a repop hanging on the wall but had never seen an original...I said Merry Christmas.

 

"There must be youngsters out there who would love to have some of the information contained in them."

Problem is they wouldn't know how to open them without a program.

Anyways my books are staying here until I kick the bucket. Yes, they don't get used as much anymore with the internet out there but they come in handy when the internet isn't.

Like my cars, the estate will do what they like with them. I won't be here to tell them and I am not going to worry about it. I have more important things to worry about while I am still alive like what's for lunch and what car will I drive today?

 

a friend is looking for a shop manual that covers 50-55 International pickup trucks,...or at least 1955.
would you have anything?

 

I didn't read all 3 pages, so maybe I'm late here: I hope you can find some young mechanic who can use them. Published books like these are SO much better, complete, and more reliable that the internet. You get the constant questions on the HAMB, facebook, any automotive forum: "My car wont turn over, I cranked it for 2 minutes. It just goes click, but it tries to start. It ran at some point. A guy said it might be the distributor. A guy on facebook said it might be the gas cap." Then they get 100 guesses from people trying to help who range from expert to clueless. If they would find them selves a good manual, it would walk them thru the diagnostics step by step in a logical fashion. These books need a good home.

 

I'd never toss a hardbound but I did take a 50 year collection of car magazines to the recycler a couple of years ago, nearly a full pickup load, that was hard to do.

 

I used to work with a guy that had a son that worked for Ford. I bought a set of 1978ish dealership manuals for the pickups. I'll probably never own another one, but for a guy that has one, they would be their weight in gold.