This may seem hard to believe, what with scant room for improvement, but lately I've been on a quest to better myself. For starters, I've canceled my wrestling magazine subscriptions and have moved on to a higher class of fiction. Thanks to the classics of literature, I've visited the deserted island of Robinson Crusoe. Jules Verne (no relation) sent me on a journey 20,000 leagues under the sea. Also from the fiction category, I found myself transported to a parallel universe after perusing the latest Jeep Service Manual. This was not some world full of humans, but it was populated by lawyers instead.
If you've looked in a service manual lately, you'll know what I mean. For my old Jeep, I have an equally ancient service manual. Manuals from that era were fairly thin but packed with plenty of pertinent technical information. The authors appear to have been mechanics, engineers or other technically minded folks. They are much bulkier today. (I'm referring to the manuals themselves, not necessarily the writers.) Despite the extra pages in a new manual, there is little increase in technical content. The added bulk comes mainly from irritating legal warnings to deflect blame should you decide to do anything stupid.
This eye-opener occurred when a good friend asked for help working on his Cherokee. A new vehicle like that doesn't have much in common with my old rig, other than some basics like four tires and the Jeep logo, but that didn't stop my friend from thinking I could help. (I showed him...) We made a valiant effort, but I'm not sure how much credit can go to the service manual. Luckily, we read the warnings first because we had been planning to start a bonfire for warmth while changing the fuel filter. Afterward, we were going to test run the engine in a closed garage. Don't worry about us, however, because we knew to open the door to let the welding fumes escape while fixing the leak in the gas tank.
The preceding, of course, is industrial-strength satire. We never came close to doing any of those dangerous things. Safety was never an issue because, as usually happens when two guys get together to work on a Jeep, we barely accomplished anything. Nevertheless, we still possessed good judgment. OK, I'm excluding my fashion sense, but we weren't about to do anything dumb enough to become the lead story on the evening news. The authors of the service manual sure didn't give us that much credit, however, so we had to wade through warning after warning before even touching a wrench.
While lots of ink is now devoted to warnings, the small amount of remaining technical content has taken a cruel and mocking tone toward me. (This is further proof of a well organized, worldwide conspiracy against yours truly.) Consider my experience with an oil leak on my pickup. Since this is a magazine about Jeeps, I won't mention the brand name, but the letters on the tailgate could be rearranged to spell DORF. With oil leaking from the rear main seal at a prodigious rate, the truck became eligible for honorary Jeep status. The leak grew so bad that even the owners of British sports cars were laughing at me. I figured that I'd simply drop the oil pan and snake a new seal around the crankshaft. Much to my dismay, the manual said the seal was a new one-piece design, not the old but easily replaced split style. There was a brief glimmer of hope, however, when the manual cheerfully said access was possible without removing the engine. How could that be? It was simple, at least according to the manual, with only three words devoted to the subject: remove the transmission.
Somewhere around this time, I considered tracking down the author and slapping him around. You can't just include one miniscule comment to remove the transmission and leave it at that. Manuals should be much more realistic, detailing all of the real-world ramifications. Since I'm going to waste hours on end futilely attempting some shortcut that won't work anyways, why not include a warning along those lines? I'd probably pay more attention to that instead of some caution not to drink used motor oil.
Maybe I'm overreacting to the sad state of present-day service manuals. After all, the skinny manual for my old Jeep wouldn't have been much use in this situation. The transmission jack wasn't quite tall enough, but the legal department warned me not to use cinder blocks or pieces of wood to make up the difference. Fortunately, the extra thickness of the new service manual worked out just right. -Dr. Vern