The Completly Portable Service Manual! And It's Free!

[StevieB]

Had a great idea! Down loaded repair manual for my bikes (Bandit and Kat, haven't found a down-loadable one for the Vulcan, yet) and then saved it to my yahoo briefcase. Now, If I break down somewhere and want to/need to do repairs myself, no matter where I am, I will have access to a repair manual, as long as I can get internet access.

Think I will burn them to a cd-rom, too, and put it in my under-seat ziplock bag.

[JohnE1000]

Genius..

[Mojoe]

you can get the same result by emailing it to yourself in hotmail. the question is......how often does one break down within a short distance of internet access?

I guess the days of "knock knock...excuse me sir, may I use your phone to call a towing?" has been replace by "excuse me sir, can I use your computer to access my repair manual and your printer to print it out please?"

if you REALLY want the info available if you break down, why not just print out the chapters you would most likely need and stash them on the bike somewhere? stick it in a ziplock and duct tape it to the inside of your fairing if you have to.

[StevieB]

Sure, great idea, but you never know what you will need. We do PM so we won't need to do ANY repairs on the road. Or, that detail gets left out of our pre-trip checklist. Or ziplock bag gets damaged and pages get wet.

Internet access is easy to come by. Any public library will have it, no matter how far into the hinterland you are, and 99% will allow you to download something as a guest.

[Anonymous]

Well, all the repairs I COULD do on the road, I've already got stored in my mind anyhow...so I would argue you don't really need a manual on your bike.
I don't even keep the one that came with the bike on it.

[The CyberPoet]

Well, all the repairs I COULD do on the road, I've already got stored in my mind anyhow...

+1

But if you have access to a modern laser printer (esp one with duplex options), you could print a miniture version of the same manual on very thin paper. As long as you can read the print (mostly a function of the resolution of the printer), you could really mini-size the whole thing, small enough to travel.

Or you could do the thing a lot of us do, and carry a business card with a bunch of member numbers on it -- if you get stuck, call me or Jimmy or Sin, etc... One of us will have access to a manual.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[tdrcomm]

I've got Jimmah, Cyber, Mojoe, GixxerKat, Black Peter and Sin on speeddial so I figure I got most of the lower 48 and Canada covered

Just can't get in trouble in North Dakota or I'm freakin' outta luck.

You might want to try using a PSP. Download the .pdf to that and shove it under the seat. At least if you can't fix the problem, you can play games until help arrives.

[WildKat]

you can get the same result by emailing it to yourself in hotmail. the question is......how often does one break down within a short distance of internet access?

I guess the days of "knock knock...excuse me sir, may I use your phone to call a towing?" has been replace by "excuse me sir, can I use your computer to access my repair manual and your printer to print it out please?"

if you REALLY want the info available if you break down, why not just print out the chapters you would most likely need and stash them on the bike somewhere? stick it in a ziplock and duct tape it to the inside of your fairing if you have to.

Yep I already keep a map of the tri state area in a ziplock bag taped under my seat, along with an emergency calling card, my bike manual and few other misc items. Between all that my tools Im pretty set if I need to do anything..however printing out some important chapters in a more indepth manual is a good idea