Are the factory 2f and chassis manuals worth the expense?

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

I bought my set from Specter Off Road. Pricier than most places, but money well spent. The Haynes and Chilton manuals are ok as supplements. The SOR catalog is also good to use for reference. Good parts layouts.

My 2 cents ...
 
You can buy most all of them on E bay just keep looking. Buy every book that covers your truck. There are misprints and differences in values between some of the books so when in doubt about a procedure you can cross reference. Find another 60 to look at and ask questions! That is what is cool about this forum.
 
YES. And available from your Toyota dealer over the counter.

You do not need them if you have no interest in your truck's inner workings and do not plan to ever work on it yourself.

Even then, it's good to have so that you can provide to a mechanic who, most likely, doesn't have a set of manuals.

Just buy them.

Mike S
 
you can get just the wiring diagram for a 60 for about $10,
 
went to toyota dealer and asked him ( he was a little slow on the uptake ) about the manuals and the h55 tranny. THe manuals he told me were for techs only (wrong) moved onto the tranny question and he was asking me what vehicle it was for, so i told him it was for a 85 fj-60, then he wanted to argue with me I can t put that tranny into a TLC. Told him to visit this forum and have a nice day. Laughed all the way home!
 
They are on ebay all the time. Don't bother with the Chilton's, it's pretty crappy.
Good luck.
ERICH
 
Id say if your keeping emissons then the emissions manual is a must. Definitely get the haynes(its not to expensive and if your rebuilding the engine its a must). I bought the chassis (expensive!!) and i havent used it yet. thats my 2 cents.
 
if you can get a hardcover gregory's, that is one of my favorites, it just seems to make sense. I recently purchased a gregorys for my Hj60 from Spector and was really disappointed to see that it is softcover and printed on crappy paper. My older one (FJ) was printed on white paper with a hardcover, which is just a lot nicer book.

The FSMs are fantastic for detail, but don't tell you much about *how* to do things, they assume you are a mechanic. Still, a good investment.

Good luck
 
Sandcruiser has a good point. FSMs excel at factual info, others might be better for specific procedures. In addition to FSMs I have a couple Gregorys, specialty manuals, an old Haynes, email printouts, Toyota Trails...

I started off on the Haynes FJ40 in the early/mid 90s and it did me fine for a '74 FJ40, then a '64, until I discovered the old offroad mailing list, then LCML. Then this whole cruiser problem just snowballed.

The nice thing about the US Cruisers was that things sort of worked similarly. Adjusting valves isn't really that different in my '64 compared to my '89. Sure there's a lot more vacuum hoses and gizmos in the way, and I have to perform some valve cover contortions to get into it, but the feel of the valves set right is the exact same feel. Still sounds like a sewing machine.

At first I looked at the 62's compartment and thought maybe I'll just let the dealer do it, they probably know what they're going. After them telling me the cost and it would probably need shims, I said thank you and got out quickly.
 
A better question is are the other manuals worth having?? In my opinion the other ones that I've seen are not worth having. I used to have the Haynes and still have the Chiltons but once I got the factory manuals the rest are not worth looking at.
I am probably thinking that way because neither the Haynes or the Chiltons says anything about the 3B or other 'Cruiser diesels. Still the Haynes and Chiltons are very weak/non-existant on '60's info.
 
Back
Top Bottom