Service Manual Availability

[Jeff Lange]

For the FR-S: http://techinfo.toyota.com

Sign up, all of the manuals are there!

Jeff

[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by trackmagic

I'm going to tell my dealer to keep their owner's manual and give a $5 credit for it. I learn by random button clicks.

Service manual and owners manual aren't really a good analogy. Thanks for playing though

[jdrxb9]

This popped up today:

15-154-12 Technical Service Bulletin
2013 Exchange Component Identification and Procedures for the 2013 Subaru BRZ
link

Anyone know what is in one of these? (I don't really feel like paying $34.95 to find out.)
Hopefully this means the service manual will be up soon.

[Longhorn248]

I would pay $35 for the full service manual as long as I got to keep it and could use it whenever I wanted. Having to pay for every time I want to access it is ridiculous.

[Sportsguy83]

Its very funny how people try to "justify" getting around paying for things. Whatever logic you have to try and think it is ok to not pay, its really you convincing yourself to make you feel better, nothing more.

PDF copy is free, Distributiuon should be less than a cent.... Gentlemen, the company spent whatever amount of money putting it together, they can charge whatever they WANT for it. You keep the choice of paying for it or not. You put the value in it, if its too much, don't get it. But if you are going to infringe copyright laws, don't fool yourself, you are stealing. Not judging anyone, everyone here is free to do whatever they want. But be true to yourself.

[Lonewolf]

Originally Posted by sportsguy83

Its very funny how people try to "justify" getting around paying for things. Whatever logic you have to try and think it is ok to not pay, its really you convincing yourself to make you feel better, nothing more.

PDF copy is free, Distributiuon should be less than a cent.... Gentlemen, the company spent whatever amount of money putting it together, they can charge whatever they WANT for it. You keep the choice of paying for it or not. You put the value in it, if its too much, don't get it. But if you are going to infringe copyright laws, don't fool yourself, you are stealing. Not judging anyone, everyone here is free to do whatever they want. But be true to yourself.

I agree with you on all points, but two other related issues should be considered:

1) The repair manual is a vital tool to have in order to repair and properly service Subaru/Scion's very complex product. Why (other than to keep servicing profits to yourself) would Subaru want to limit access to this valuable tool by making the manual prohibitively expensive or difficult to obtain?

2) The cost to compile and create and the manual is recouped by the manufacturer from selling subscriptions to dealerships and independent service shops, or it is simply categorized as a cost of doing business...why does a profit on the manual need to be made when it comes to consumers?

...It always comes down to making money, which is the point of a business, but why not do it fairly while respecting your customers?

[NRGBalanced]

Originally Posted by 2000

I'm not a fan of the subscription based service. It might make sense for a large dealership, but for consumers like me, I think it's silly.

Since I'm not going to shell out $35 whenever I need to check something, I'll need to spend over an hour to download the 80 or so separate PDFs for my car. Then I'll need to make my own index HTML file because I won't be using their website to select the PDFs. It's a really clunky system designed to nickel and dime the user with their outdated business model, and it doesn't make for a good consumer experience.

Sure, the PDFs don't come out of air for free, but they need to make them as part of the development of the car. Maybe I'm becoming more socialist, but I'd rather have a $5 electronic service manual fee added on to price of every car and then just have them host the PDFs online for everyone at no additional charge. Amazon charges $0.12/GB for data transfer, so if the PDF was 86 MB (10 times larger than the 484 page owner's manual), it would be under one cent per download at today's prices.

If you do end up getting the subscription anyways to download all the service manual PDFs, you can use a utility to merge them all together. PDFsam (PDF split and merge) is a good one.

[OrbitalEllipses]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

I agree with you on all points, but two other related issues should be considered:

1) The repair manual is a vital tool to have in order to repair and properly service Subaru/Scion's very complex product. Why (other than to keep servicing profits to yourself) would Subaru want to limit access to this valuable tool by making the manual prohibitively expensive or difficult to obtain?

2) The cost to compile and create and the manual is recouped by the manufacturer from selling subscriptions to dealerships and independent service shops, or it is simply categorized as a cost of doing business...why does a profit on the manual need to be made when it comes to consumers?

...It always comes down to making money, which is the point of a business, but why not do it fairly while respecting your customers?

Pretty sure the cost is more for hosting and bandwidth.

[jdrxb9]

Originally Posted by jdrxb9

This popped up today:

15-154-12 Technical Service Bulletin
2013 Exchange Component Identification and Procedures for the 2013 Subaru BRZ
link

Anyone know what is in one of these? (I don't really feel like paying $34.95 to find out.)
Hopefully this means the service manual will be up soon.

Just to be clear - I will most likely gladly pay the $35 for access to the manual when it becomes available and will use my 72 hour access to download for my personal use what I feel I will need in the future.

I didn't however want to pay $35 just to find out what is in the document above since it is 'just' a TSB. Turns out if you use the search function and not just the 'whats new' page, you can get a 'description' pop-up.

 
Service Bulletin # 15-154-12
Pages: 5
 
Bulletin Description: This bulletin contains the illustration of the exchange
 component and the manufacturer as well as a description of the proper
 exchange procedure for the Audio/Navigation replacement and the Mobile
 Internet Wi-Fi Router (Autonet) for the 2013 Subaru BRZ model. The
 exchange program policy can also be found in Section 8.4.9 of your Subaru
 Claims Policies and Procedures Manual found in subarunet.

[Jeff Lange]

Originally Posted by Longhorn248

I would pay $35 for the full service manual as long as I got to keep it and could use it whenever I wanted. Having to pay for every time I want to access it is ridiculous.

Nothing is stopping you from getting an account for a couple of days, and then saving all of the information you want, for as many cars as you want. You'll then have access to it whenever you feel the need.

Jeff

[Sportsguy83]

Double post

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

I agree with you on all points, but two other related issues should be considered:

1) The repair manual is a vital tool to have in order to repair and properly service Subaru/Scion's very complex product. Why (other than to keep servicing profits to yourself) would Subaru want to limit access to this valuable tool by making the manual prohibitively expensive or difficult to obtain?

2) The cost to compile and create and the manual is recouped by the manufacturer from selling subscriptions to dealerships and independent service shops, or it is simply categorized as a cost of doing business...why does a profit on the manual need to be made when it comes to consumers?

...It always comes down to making money, which is the point of a business, but why not do it fairly while respecting your customers?

I really dont know exactly how the system works, but if the $35 gets you 24 or 72 hour access and allows you to download all copies, IMHO it is a fair price. You download it and print it at home as you need it.

I understand your point but as you said at the end of the day, its all about making money so its their choice how they want to do it. Fair or not, if we want a Subaru we have to deal with the good and the not so good.

[azian_advanced]

i just bought a 48 hr subscription on the techinfo.toyota.com site since it's cheaper than the subaru subscription at just $15 and since the BRZ & FR-S are pretty much identical for the most part.

i spent the last two days downloading the FR-S owner's manual, full service manual, electronic wiring diagrams, and some other documents. the service manual took the most time especially since i couldn't download them as a batch since the pages are all in html instead of pdf. i'll be compiling it into a single pdf and printing it out shortly. i haven't counted it but i'm guessing it'll be about 400-800 pages long! hopefully, i have enough toner in the printer for it.

would it be legal to share a copy of the service manual?

[Jeff Lange]

In case you want it and didn't notice, the owner's manual is also listed, but in a different section of TIS.

Jeff