Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #454413 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 334 pages

Customer Reviews

A complex car made less complex!
As cars get more sophisticated, manuals for the home mechanic have to deal with the increasing complexity of maintenance and repair work. This manual makes a reasonably good compromise between covering only the most common operations, or doing an extensive coverage of every device in the car. As a result, the book contains most of the required information, but sometimes requires a lot of searching from the reader.
The home mechanic with previous experience of the Haynes manuals and car repairs will be able to carry out all but the most complex repairs. This edition is true to the usual qualities of other manuals in this series: a good number of photographs help find components and are much better than words in explaining some of the more complex steps. It also puts the right level of emphasis on the potential difficulties in the most critical repairs, such as those on brake and steering systems. However, unlike other versions in this series which grade difficulty on a 1-5 scale, such information is not available in this one.
The high complexity of the electrical system, and the difficulty of identifying component failures without access to the manufacturer's diagnostic tools remain one of the major obstacles to the home mechanic. Even though some of these diagnostics can be done with a simple meter, this information is not provided in the book. It would be a useful area of improvement in a future edition.
In summary, if you own a Volkswagen Passat or Audi A4, this book is an investment which will pay back for itself in half an hour of repair time!

not as good as it looks
firstly, this doesn't include any diesels, not clear from the cover.
secondly, it's not very thorough or well presented. it is actively wrong in a few areas I have discovered.