C.D. Manual is a P.O.S.

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pdonnell

New member
Just got the C.D. manual for my '04 4Runner and what a P.O.S. it is. Theres no index in it to quickly go to the .pdf document. Basically, you hunt around for whatever your looking for by clicking on folders then sub-folders then given .pdf options ranging from one document to 25 documents (all numerical titled?). You have to guess which document (.pdf) has your info. Otherwise your wasting your time opening documents in search of what you want. The other option is to install Adobe Acrobat 6.0 (which comes on the C.D.) and uses its "search function". The lousy thing about this is you can cook dinner and have dessert before it shows "all" .pdf documents that has your word in it. Whereby you go on another hunting trip looking for what you really need. Amazing the number of areas the word "brakes" are in various sections of the repair manual.
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The C.D. is basically $25 (with shipping) crap. $139 was better spent getting the two manuals on ebay. Much less convoluted and cumbersome in using. And it doesn't take all fricken day to find something.
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Without an useable .pdf index the C.D. is 76 megs of data and is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Don't get it.
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My $.02 worth.
 
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I've heard the same thing from others.

Is this a CD (copy) from a real Toyota disk, or something that someone created themselves?
 
The label on it appears to show its a bonafide Toyota C.D.
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I've heard a service Mgr. tell me the wrenches go over to a computer to look up how stuff is assembled now. No more thick manuals. Therefore, I think there is another software program that works with this ESM. Electronic Service Manual. The CD says Copyright 2003 Toyota NA. This disc is intended for internal use only and may not be reproduced.
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Theres no way this CD is a stand alone data file at the dealerships. Which explains why its so convoluted to use. Even with Adobe Acrobat.
 
Must be their method of copy protection. Guess someone needs to take all the data, and build a table of contents, then re-sell it. I'd pay more than the $25 to get a CD that was easily accessable.
 
I warned everyone about the poor organization of the disk. I spent MANY hours combing through mine to rename things and finally broke down and coded up a few scripts to help rename each file to something more meaningful (page number). This renaming combined with the index section of the manual (you might want to print that part out for quicker reference) makes it pretty easy to find whatever you need.

Also, I agree this isn't something the shop guys actually use as is. I believe it's the pre-press version of the paper copy that Toyota would send to the Print Shop for final publication. Even so, I'm not sure how the printer would reassemble the manual in order, without a boat load of labor. Perhaps the files names were shortened (during the piracy phase) to make them 8.3 compliant.
 
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Rando,
Printing out the sections does make it easier to click on the section folder. HOWEVER, there are still sub-folders you have to hunt around with to find what you need. AND if you click on the right sub-folder you then have (in most cases) many .pdf documents (icons) to click on. Which means you're still guessing.
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I don't mine the directory. Its all the sub-folders you encounter once you click on the chapter. And to add insult once you click on the sub-folder you have many (in some cases very many) .pdf icons to click on. Just takes so long to use its not worth it. Not in the least.
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Just got Books 1&2 on ebay for my '04 an that was worth it.
 
pdonnell said:
Rando,
Printing out the sections does make it easier to click on the section folder. HOWEVER, there are still sub-folders you have to hunt around with to find what you need. AND if you click on the right sub-folder you then have (in most cases) many .pdf documents (icons) to click on. Which means you're still guessing.
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I don't mine the directory. Its all the sub-folders you encounter once you click on the chapter. And to add insult once you click on the sub-folder you have many (in some cases very many) .pdf icons to click on. Just takes so long to use its not worth it. Not in the least.
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Just got Books 1&2 on ebay for my '04 an that was worth it.
Click to expand...

Like I said, I renamed the files and thereby eliminated the directory hierarchy.
 
Many of the directories you renamed have subordinated folders in them. Chapter 76 has 16 sub-ordinated folders. Did you rename these? And each of the subordinated folders have many (up to 20) .pdf icons that you must click on. So while you may be in the right chapter of the manual, you must guess which sub-folder to click on and then guess again which .pdf icon relates to what your looking for. If you guess wrong its back to guessing which sub-folder to click on then guessing again what .pdf icon to open.
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I had a CD manual for BMW motorcycle and the whole thing opened with Adobe Acrobat. It was one big 26 meg .pdf document. When you click on a chapter it brought a sub-directory of what was covered. Then you clicked on that and you were at the page you wanted to be at.
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Isn't this the way it should work? Didn't see it disclosed in the ebay auction.
 
The person that was selling the CD on e-bay is not there anymore. Is there anyone in this forum with a CD willing to send me a copy. I will pay you the cost of the CD plus shipping. In a way is better with the CD because you can print what you need, it takes less space and you can always share some of the sections of the cd by sending the individual files to whoever needs them.
 
You can download the whole manual with a one day subscription at http://techinfo.toyota.com .

Then print the manual, it takes about 600 pages if you print on both sides. It is in PDF format.

The manual has a nice index for find things.

I probably shouldn't of mentioned this as Toyota might catch on and withdraw the offer.

The guy on E-Bay just downloaded the files a put them on a CD and sold them.

Cliff s
 
You know, if somone has the time and patience to do it...

Obtain a copy of Adobe Acrobat (full version, not just the reader0. Then, using all the .pdf files append one to the other until you have one mega-file.

I think that's what I'm going to do with a 3rd gen T4R manual.
 
I finally found someone else selling them on e-Bay from Greece. It doesn't appear to be a legitimate Toyota CD because the introduction page looks like it was scanned but the quality is excellent. The only thing is that you have to arrange the pages to match the pages on the indexes in the manuals with Adobe Acrobat Professional Edition so that you can find anything in the manual quickly. I copied the files to my hard drive and did just that. The manuals are about 55 to 60 MB in size and the bodys hop is about 10MB. I have two repair manuals and a body shop manual for $20. The guy shipped them right away, it took a few days from Greece to NY on regular mail. They are definitely worth the money. I've found basically everything I needed so far by using the index on the manuals and going to the page using Acrobat.
 
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No, I got volumes I & II and a "fundamental body repair procedures" manual, I'll trade any of the manuals for the electrical manual though, I don't have it!
 
If anyone has a CD that is not organized and
wants me to organize it properly, I'll be glad to do it for you at no charge, just send me the files by e-mail. I'll make you a CD which you can use the "go to page" feature to find the pages you need.
 
I downloaded a ton of files for the 2000 4Runner, there's about 80MB of them. I found a program called PDF Merge which will let me combine as many PDFs in any order together into one. The demo version leaves a link to the Merge program website, though I think I can Acrobat it out.

What I can't believe is that the main Service Manual is 500+ pages and comes out to less than 4MB in size. The collision manual is 13+MB (combined).
 
is there a simle way to download off of techinfo.com or do you have to open up each file seperately and save them all?
 
That's what I had to do. When you do, you have to search in the subsections for it to show all the content. If you simply look at the Service Repair Manual, it'll show 200 documents. That's not the complete manual. At the top of the page when viewing the Service Manaual, for example, there's a drop down to select different sub-sections such as Electirical, starting, HVAC, suspension, etc.

Yeah, it's a pain...
 
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