When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I've searched using the tool (it seems kind of... nonfunctional) and haven't found it. What does everybody like for a shop manual?
In the past I got a CD ROM manual for a Bimmer I owned, and it was like being killed reading that thing. Plus, apparently BMW only writes stuff up for their shop technicians when they can buy the overpriced "BMW Specialty Tools," which are needed because no person who is not a BMW technician should ever open the hood on his Ultimate Driving Machine.
Will the Chevrolet shop manual set be like this? I noticed some on the Fleabay that were nearly a dozen strong and $200~ish dollars. Hopefully we can get the job done for cheaper?
The big reason why I ask is because so many of our threads are from 14 years ago and there are no pictures to see what kinds of repairs are being done, or Photobucket has screwed us by cutting off access to our pics, etc.
The set of books will have the information you need to work on the car. I prefer the paper version of the FSM. Sometimes it can be a PITA to have a laptop or tablet sitting on the car somewhere that it could be knocked off or have the battery run dead when you are working on something and following the pages on the screen.
FSM's for your year of C5 will occasionally show up in the C5 Parts For Sale section.
There are ways to download the FSMs and even some eBay sellers online offer DVDs of them, but do realize these are not authorized outlets and further some of these items that I have came across actually lack some of the more detailed items the FSMs have like a full set of wiring diagrams. That's one of the good things about the physical FSMs.
The FSMs and their reproductions are over $200 because most of the approved vendors that sell the re-pros have the license from GM to do so, which they undoubtedly have to pay a further licensing fee for on top of the actual product. Considering that early C5s have three volumes and later editions expanded to four I personally don't think that having to spend over $200 for licensed material that is literally three to four large volumes is a lot of money...
Warning... it's a huge file. Close to 1G. Should be enough in there to help you through most issues. As mentioned by others, this forum can fill in any blanks.
The C5 paper manuals are very hard to read as they were printouts of the electronic tech manuals used by the dealer mechanics. When you read them you will see faded print where the hyperlinks were located in the electronic manual. The problem is you don't know where the hyperlink went to in the electronic manual so don't know which of the 1400 pages to go to. The best manual you can purchase is the electronic version since the hyperlinks are active and take you to where you need to go. The schematics are only partials that address a specific diagnostic. Paging through those in a paper manual is a huge PIA because the page references are missing a lot of time in the paper manual.
Here are some screen shots that I had posted on Photobucket showing how the electronic manual works.
This application covers every car and truck made by GM from 1997-2009. It was taken from a dealership that went out of business in 2009. Total package size is just short of 8GB and the application runs in a Virtual Machine on your Windows PC. I know it runs with Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 including the latest iteration.
03-11-2018, 10:55 PM
Best shop manual for C5?
The set of books will have the information you need to work on the car. I prefer the paper version of the FSM. Sometimes it can be a PITA to have a laptop or tablet sitting on the car somewhere that it could be knocked off or have the battery run dead when you are working on something and following the pages on the screen.
