L Series shop manuals

I finally broke down (financially, not mechanically) and bought the set of
shop manuals for my '01 LW300. I was warned that the cost would be about
$140 but totally surprised when I saw the big box of manuals weighing about
20 pounds! Guess I've got a lot of reading to do now...
Too bad they don't come on CD ROM. There was some buzz that the manuals are
all available online through the GM/Saturn website but you have to be logged
in as a Saturn dealer.

Also a shout out to Mark W. of Saturn WP. Mark had posted a while back and
asked me stop by and say hi if ever in the area which is what I did.

Oppie
(aka Bob Oppenheimer)

 

Wish you said something before doing that Oppie... They do come on
CD's. Look on ebay for "GM eSI" and try to find the latest version you
can. When I bought mine, some time ago, the version I got was older and
didnt cover Saturns yet. But I only paid like 5-10 bucks for mine. It
sure beat the 90 bucks I spent on my previous cars 3 manuals.

 

I had searched a bit and didn't come up with eSI (electronic Service
Information?). Also found very little for the L-Series with the exception of
a few manuals sold a-la-carte that cumulatively cost more than going to
Saturn.
Are these eSI discs original GM or third party? I had looked at the Haynes
manuals (which have been better than the Chiltons' for the most part) but
they don't have one yet for the L-series yet. They said that they are
working on one... but that could just be marketing speaking (been there,
done that, bought the Tee-shirt).
Oppie

 

Yes, electronic Service Information.
service.gm.com is the online link that dealers use.

Well I just went to ebay and typed GM ESI and got 10 items. 8 seem to
be the actual GM eSI disk. Prices range from 24-50 dollars. These are
either copies of actual GM supplied disk or outdated dealership disk.
Not all the shops that pay for GM's service information have computers
hooked to the internet, at least not every computer so disk are
supplied. That may change in the future though...

You might be interested in this link if you dont have it already.
http://service.gm.com/gmtechlink/
I have yet to make it a habit of checking that monthly but its packed
full of info. To me its fun to read.

 

Oppie"

I wish I had known that as I could have hooked you up with my set which is
collecting dust on my shelf. They are early versions and probrably have some
changes but I have no real use for them anymore.

 

Thanks for the offer anyway. Reading the manuals can be confusing enough
even if it is for the correct year. Working from a manual for another year
can be very frustrating.
I found that Helm Inc www.helminc.com sells the manual on disk for $300
which would be nice since it is searchable and allows you to print out a
copy of work instructions that can get dirty. What amateur mechanic would
spend that much though?
Oppie

 

One car, one cd manual, 300 bucks??? Thats nuts! I dont think they
thought to price these in the range of the average consumer.

 

Yeah, for that price, I figure we should get at least three people to go in
on buying a disk and knock off copies. 'course that DOES violate a slew of
copyright laws...

Remember when movies first came out on videocassette? A movie ran $80 to
$100. At that point, it was well worthwhile to make illegal copies. Now the
costs are so low to buy movies on DVD or tape, that it isn't worth the time
to make a copy and loose quality (on tape at least). You would think that
the same rationale would apply to the shop manuals on disk although they do
not have the broad market that movies on DVD enjoy.

Speaking of violating copyrights, I've been lurking on
and found all sorts of manuals posted.
Most of the posters use a terribly long subject line with some stupid
political prefix and the manual name at the end. Helps that I have my
monitor set at 1600x1200 resolution so I don't have to scroll too much (I do
computer aided design). Most of the manuals are posted in multi-part and
have to be re-combined. Most are in PDF or compressed using WinZip or
winrar. Some use yenc encoding rather than mime.

 

Hell the illegal part is what drives prices down IMO. They say it
drives the prices up but thats a bunch of bull. If they raised prices
anymore they wouldnt sell what little they sell now. If they lowered
prices people wouldnt bother making copies... Personaly anything over
$10 for a dvd is to much and anything over $5 for a cd is to much. I
have very few CD's and when I totaled them up I start wishing I had my
money back on them. Places like SharperImage sell 1000 cd holding racks.
If someone was a good citizen/RIAA slave/moron they would have $15000 in
cd's once its filled up...

Thanks for the link, would of never thought to look there. Yencs not a
problem for me. Still though my GM eSI disk got me pretty well covered.