Garth S

Saw this on Ebay, http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...RK%3AMEWA%3AIT. No idea if this is a 'record', but it's gotta' be close. $540 !!
If this trend continues, some of us may soon be driving 928s that have little to no market value - and be able to flog our Manual set for enough to pick up another project car/retire the mortgage/add a SC (or at least an electric "SC")/ ... Excuse me, but I'm leaving to and memorize every word - just in case I'll need the change for another Shark.

hacker-pschorr

I paid $475 for a complete set of gray manuals still in the original box - complete with some very nice notes on some pages.

Adam C

What is the story on electronic versions? Legit or not?

ViribusUnits

Not legit.

There are also not legit photocopys floating around.

I've got a few if anyone in intersted.

Adam C

I'm interested. Drop me a PM.

CWO4Mann

I have already checked and it would cost about $875 to have a professional scanning firm scan in the complete manual set, including diagrams, and so forth, then produce a Acrobat PDF document with a bare minimum volume search capability. It will cost about $1500 to have the PDF document punch down to individual chapter tables of contents. Cost of making a production run of 100 copies of the entire PDF on a CDROM will be $120. Total amortized cost per CDROM would be $16.20 each. Porsche of Germany's copyrights and legal department informed me in a telephone conversation that I made to them several weeks ago that there might be the possibility of a license agreement, but the CDROM would have to conform to their requirements, which would include hypertext drill down to individual words -- similiar to a well-written Windows help file. Cost of making a hypertext document of the entire manual would cost between $3000 and $5000 depending upon any complications. The licensing fee back to Porschewas not mentioned but would probably be on the order of 30% per CDROM produced. So, looking at a legal copy with all the bells and whistles comes to about $85 each plus the royalties to Porsche. International legal representation, travel to sort things out, and luncheons at the Adlerhof, first class flight on Lufthansa and a racing tour of the Nurn'gring bring the cost to about double of the base figure of $85 -- so, we are up to $170. Next, the fellow who takes on this job would need to be compensated and the usual business overhead paid which adds another 50% to the total or about $255. Shipping and postage woud be about $5 per CDROM. Bringing the cost of the CDROM to about $300 each. The only real advantage to this scenario is that the CDROM would be instantly available and you can do hypertext search -- use a digital projector on the wall of your shop and you can look at 4x5 foot illustrations of the 3rd gear synchros while working on same. Add voice control to your computer and you don't have to get grease on it, just say "Page Down". Quick Watson, the Needle!

dr bob

Joe Serio has a legit set for sale for less than $400, as of a week or so ago. Username is jserio, he's local to us SoCal928 guys.

Rob Roy

I bought my car for $800 - the WSMs were thrown in for free - so I almost got the car for free

Parnelli Joneser

I bought a WSM on CD-ROM on eBay right after I bought my car. It's in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 and fairly comprehensive. Although whoever scanned it didn't look at the pages. Things are a bit scattered but I've only found one missing page so far. I look at it on my home computer and can print pages to take to the garage but a friend sold me this early HP Ominbook laptop for $25. I needed some help loading the CD into this disc-only machine but since then I now have a garage computer! The manual just about filled the memory up, but who cares!


I sometimes take it over to my mechanic friend and let him study an upcoming job plus we can look at the manual together over the phone while I look at mine on my PC and he can point out what a dumbass I am for not intuiting the logic employed by the engineers who designed my car!

Red UFO

This is insane. You can print out duplex on most printers and the entire thing will cost 40-50 bucks from the CD pdf files. I'd say screw getting a license from Porsche and motordyne the **** on Ebay with bootlegs and say you got them from Japan or something.

JKelly

EVERY SINGLE TIME I reference ANYTHING in the workshop manuals I end up cursing the moronic idiot savants that put these things in order. The torque references over here, the step by step instructions up there, the other instructions that should have been with the step by step instructions over there, the reference pictures on another page back there...etc..etc. Please PM me if you have a good searchable CD Rom solution. Thank You

Just a small rant and a plea.

IcemanG17

I acquired mine CD for a very fair price (think $30) its a PDF format and works great, I also for the PET6 included in the price....really good deal....I'm trying to remember the guys name, but I think he's on this list!

Adam C

I'd buy it on CD in a heartbeat. Can someone dig one up or want to sell a copy? I can't even get a legit one even If i wanted. Made of unobtanium, apparently.

Steve J.

Meanwhile, there's a Chilton manual on eBay closing in on a hundred bucks with a few hours to go. I thought I set the record when I sold one for $76.

jim morehouse

cw04mann,
The process you mentioned is pretty much what I did when I transferred the FWSM to CD. Had it professionally scanned (the later wire diagrams needed special handling due to size), run thru OCR so it would be text searchable. The navigation part is the one I'm proud of though. Took the detailed table of contents that's in front of each volume and collected them into one file with each line item linked to the proper file/page. Preceded that w the one page List of Workgroups, again w each linked, but to the proper page in the table of contents file. Let's you locate near anything w two clicks. The organization of the manual leaves a lot to be desired but using this linked table of contents eliminates a lot of the hassle. Search and Find of acrobat reader work (OCR was about 95% accurate) but I find I don't have much occasion to use them.

Jim
jim928@ptd.net