Factory vs. Cyclepedia service manual

[Kris]

Anyone have experience with both? I need to buy one ASAP because for some odd reason I have a '99 220 and I have a '89-'94 Factory Service manual. :bang: Not sure how that happened.

Anyways, is it better to subscribe to Cyclepedia for $24.95 for a year or buy the Factory manual for $50? Any and all help would be great. Thanks :cool:

 

[reepicheep]

The 200 factory manual has been pretty good. I like the way the torque figures are on the exploded parts diagram, and they have good descriptions of common tasks.

They also sometimes skip completely over some not so obvious things though. Nothing major, but it gets annoying.

More annoyingly, they reused pictures from pre 95 models for some of the pages. So things in front of you don't always look exactly like the pictures in the manual, which adds to some unnecessary confusion.

All in all though, the factory manual is pretty good. No idea about the cyclepedia.

 

[Kris]

Thank for the feedback on the Factory manual. It doesn't appear anyone else has any ideas?

 

[glad2ride]

I would go for the factory manual. I have used both. Both are good, but having it all in front of you in the work area is a lot better than having to print out the relevant sections from the Cyclepedia site, especially if you have an inkjet printer.

 

[Kris]

I would go for the factory manual. I have used both. Both are good, but having it all in front of you in the work area is a lot better than having to print out the relevant sections from the Cyclepedia site, especially if you have an inkjet printer.

glad2ride,

Do you happen to know how many pages the Cyclepedia manual is? Could you just print it out and put it in a binder? Do you have to 'sign in' to Cyclepedia EVERYTIME you want to look at the manual or can you download it to your computer and use that? (I have a OLD laptop I use for documents only in the garage, not connected to the Internet) Thanks for the info :cool:

 

[glad2ride]

I can't remember how many pages it is. It is in a non-easy to download and redistribute format (not saying you would do it, but lots of bums want everything for nothing). Good for them!