Topic: What bothers me

[750K]

Lucky, I'll trade you a worn out 630 chain and sprocket set for a factory manual?

I did not say "factory" manual.

A Clymers manual will do just fine.
It has photos and illustrations and they are NOT 72 DPI like your computer screen.

I have to disagree... the Clymers manual isn't close to being enough. It must be used with great care and as an addition to the Honda book! Clymers has some great drawings, I'll agree, but it's sorely lacking elsewhere...

The clymer is passable, it's all I have for my cb750 and it does the job for the most part. I picked one up for my kz1000 while I was waiting for the Kawi factory service manual and it's night and day how much more I get out of the factory Kawi book. Better pics and way more thorough descriptions and exploded view, I only use the kz clymer to double check torque values.

[LesterPiglet]

I've always found Haynes to be much better than Clymer.

[lucky]

...so if i download a copy of the clymer, will i be ok?   

If it has all of the photos and all of the illustrations.
It will still be low quality and all of that printing may cost more than a used Clymers' on Ebay.
Also the manual will be twice as thick if it is printed on one side.

[lucky]

Lucky, I'll trade you a worn out 630 chain and sprocket set for a factory manual?

I did not say "factory" manual.

A Clymers manual will do just fine.
It has photos and illustrations and they are NOT 72 DPI like your computer screen.

I have to disagree... the Clymers manual isn't close to being enough. It must be used with great care and as an addition to the Honda book! Clymers has some great drawings, I'll agree, but it's sorely lacking elsewhere...

Yes that is true.
But it does show in great detail how to adjust your floats.

So many people come to the forum and ask a lot about that.
There must not be any drawings on the downloaded shop manual, OR they cannot use the internet and find images of how to adjust the floats.

[flybox1]

thanks. 
i got the hi-res copy and printed it single sided color on 11 x 14 so the pictures would look better.





...i really hope you know i'm kidding   

[Dream750]

...but that binder is pretty cool.  thanks Dream!   

Flybox, your welcome. One of the good things about the genuine shop manual binders is they have 7 rings for “official” copies and the really original ones will also have the dividers. Since Honda shop binders are becoming more of a collectible, they are going up in price. Elan has a nice original example CB750 manual for sale in this thread:

http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=126832.0

[Lostboy Steve]

When beginners strip, break, damage, and lose parts and will not even buy a shop manual. Many of those parts are no longer manufactured.

A real shop manual... not online down loads.

You mean a real paper copy? I downloaded the pdf of a few different bikes and then printed them out and put them into a binder. I don't know if that counts or not. Honestly, for the most part I only need select information. In fact, I could probably just make a "cheat sheet" for most of the stuff. I was able to restore my 77 550 by using a pdf. The only real info I needed was clearance info, and torque specs. I had to re-do my pd carbs without anything because I couldn't find a great exploded view. I got through it. If you have a general idea of how things work, aside from torque specs I don't see the complete need for a manual. Obviously it will help. Back, before the internet it was probably a lot more difficult to get a manual for an older bike. I agree though, if you are a complete beginner do like I did to learn, lable everything, put all your nuts and bolts into dividers so you know where they go and make sure you torque everything with a decent wrench, not some harbor freight deal that may be off 10ft/lbs. Let's not forget Lucky that we cant fix stupid. Even a manual wont help that.

[Lostboy Steve]

It doesn't matter how many manuals you have if you don't understand what your doing and are easily frustrated.
You can't fix stupid out of a book
Common sense is the most important 'tool'
Unfortunately, it's severely lacking in majority of people (in my 11-1/2 yrs teaching -10,000+ students)

+1

Seems you know the owner of the shop I worked for 

You both beat me to it.

[lucky]

When beginners strip, break, damage, and lose parts and will not even buy a shop manual. Many of those parts are no longer manufactured.

A real shop manual... not online down loads.

You mean a real paper copy? I downloaded the pdf of a few different bikes and then printed them out and put them into a binder. I don't know if that counts or not. Honestly, for the most part I only need select information. In fact, I could probably just make a "cheat sheet" for most of the stuff. I was able to restore my 77 550 by using a pdf. The only real info I needed was clearance info, and torque specs. I had to re-do my pd carbs without anything because I couldn't find a great exploded view. I got through it. If you have a general idea of how things work, aside from torque specs I don't see the complete need for a manual. Obviously it will help. Back, before the internet it was probably a lot more difficult to get a manual for an older bike. I agree though, if you are a complete beginner do like I did to learn, lable everything, put all your nuts and bolts into dividers so you know where they go and make sure you torque everything with a decent wrench, not some harbor freight deal that may be off 10ft/lbs. Let's not forget Lucky that we cant fix stupid. Even a manual wont help that.

A PDF is a (portable document file) developed by large businesses to transmit large documents over the web at high speed.
Of course there are 3 levels of PDF's with different quality.
Web quality,Print quality etc.,,
It takes a special program to change the quality of  the PDF.

You cannot easily alter a PDF file with out all of the add on programs like(Pit Stop) etc.,.
You have to buy each one of those programs.
Some PDF's have security codes and can even open with a music file.


If you save a Photoshop file or illustrator or Freehand file as a PDF, then you will not be able to alter that file.

Artists do not like PDF's. IT will take a Photoshop file or vector file which could have 44 editable layers, and change it to 1 layer which then cannot be altered.
Business people like them because they do not know about Photoshop or  vector based programs.

I don't think people are stupid, I think they just do not have any interest in details.
They just want to use things and do not want to repair them.
A young man learns hopefully that if he breaks his bike, he will have to fix it.
Some dads just bought the kid a new bike instead of showing them how to fix the bike. So the kid learned that if something does not work or breaks, you just buy a new one.