[David Beale]

I'm hoping DanMan can tell us:
Dealer?
Online?

I always buy a shop manual for every car I buy. I usually don't need it, except for hints when I install my "extras" (ham radio, GPS, radar detector, etc.). Reason, of course, is these Toyotas, Nissans etc. are very reliable. Most failures occur in the first few thousand miles, then not until the car is "worn out" - when you see well in excess of 100,000 mi.

 

[hyperion]

OK, the manual for the prius comes in three separate books, each about the size of a telephone book. The set weighs alltogether 12 pounds and retails from Toyota for $407.00
They are occasionally offered on "E" bay and go for about $250.00 + shipping (about $18.00)
I bought the set for the 05 and it states for the 04/05 and I expect except for the "camera" there would be no change for the 06 which I have as yet not seen offered.
I'de let my set go for $225 + shipping.
By the way, the manual for the Lexas "h" is one book.
I was surprised about the price as my owners manual suggests that the service manual would be a good aquisition.

 

[DanMan32]

If you want the bound paper, you can contact Toyota, or see your parts department.

If you want it in electronic form, you can subscribe to Techinfo.Toyota.com. You can download any page you want, but even a chapter can have 5-10 PDFs for various sections of the chapter, and they have common file names.

I took the time to download all the PDFs, prefixed the filenames with a 'serial number' so they would be in order, then used a trial copy of Adobe Acrobat to assemble them to a handful of large PDFs.

I hadn't done that with 2006 though, and only have the wiring diagram for the classic.

 

[jamesfchumbley]

I took the time to download all the PDFs, prefixed the filenames with a 'serial number' so they would be in order, then used a trial copy of Adobe Acrobat to assemble them to a handful of large PDFs.

Dan, can you please tell us what the order is for all those little PDF files? They make sense when I open them and look at the page number, but the file names are meaningless!

Thanks

 

[DanMan32]

I would suggest downloading them in the order they are listed, and prefix the file with a serial number. Keep sections in separate folders.

For example, I have a separate PDF after assembly for each section.
With section 5- Diagnostics, I separated that into separate sections based on page 1-36.

So for example if you were downloading all the files for diagnosing the SFI system, which is pages 5-001 through 5-384 for the 2004 manual, I would have files like 001<whatever the real file nameis>.pdf, 002<whatever the next file name is>.pdf, etc.
This way, they will list in proper order and make assembly much easier.

I originally made the mistake of not adding serial prefixes to the file names and it became a big mess to get them in proper order.

 

[David Beale]

So about how much did it cost to get all that data from Toyota's site? Less than buying the dead tree manuals?

 

[DanMan32]

I was able to get all the needed files in 2 weekends, which was 2 access days. If you purchase your day access early in the morning, you have the rest of that day, and all day the next day until midnight.

I didn't do much else the first weekend.
I spent a good part of two weeks assembling the PDFs, but I didn't need access to TechInfo for that once I had the files.

 

[mrv]

You can get the publication numbers and information on ordering the dead tree edition (price, Toyota Publications number) from:
http://smg.toyotapartsandservice.com/pu ... id=&done=1

You could also take the above info and see if your favorite Toyota parts department can get them for you for cheaper.

Otherwise, if you have a decently fast internet connection, and the patience, it would probably be cheaper to get a 1 day subscription (try to get it for a Friday or Saturday, that'll extend for the weekend!) to:
http://techinfo.toyota.com/ (NHWxxL)
http://techdoc.toyota-europe.com/ (NHWxxR)

As a last resort, check eBay. The paper manuals come up occasionally. There are sometimes also indexless CDs that come up, that often are of questionable legality (did the person just download the files from techinfo, for example?).