genuine workshop manual $1200..

went down to Nissan today in essendon and brought genuine filter $57 and new o-ring $4.90 and thought I'd ask for a workshop manual and bloke looked at me with his eyebrows raised and made a phone call and replied to me with a $1200!! my reply was f... that, could somebody help me get my hands on a DVD manual???? i seen them on ebay but are they OK to use?? i don't want buy it and its got a copy of kung fu warriors movie on it from china thanks

Seems they haven't gone up in price much since the old man priced the 97 Pathy manual.

There is one for download in the D22 section which goes up to the 09 it will still cover a lot of the 10 model so you can use that

petes navstr said:

went down to Nissan today in essendon and brought genuine filter $57 and new o-ring $4.90 and thought I'd ask for a workshop manual and bloke looked at me with his eyebrows raised and made a phone call and replied to me with a $1200!! my reply was f... that, could somebody help me get my hands on a DVD manual???? i seen them on ebay but are they OK to use?? i don't want buy it and its got a copy of kung fu warriors movie on it from china thanks

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That reminds me...

Your manuals CD is still coming!

Dion said:

That reminds me...

Your manuals CD is still coming!

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thanks dion i appreciate that so is that the manual on disk is it, so when i have a problem put it in computer and find page i need and print it?

They sure don't want anyone to do their own servicing do they?? I know for all of my commodores and other holdens in the past I always had a Gregorys workshop book for each car, only cost around $40.00 each.

I think these are still available, but I've never seen one for the Navaras, except the ripoff genuine Nissan one.

It must be just me, but I do find it hard to track down the info I need on the disk version, revision A, Revision B2 etc etc etc etc.

Haynes (taken over by Gregory, if memory serves) either couldn't the workshop manual from Nissan or didn't want to pay for it.

I asked my dealer the same thing and they said it was about $1,100 or so and when I asked why it was so expensive, I was told that Nissan were probably trying to discourage backyard mechanics from butchering the vehicle in their attempt to follow the manual, because there are some illiterate people out there that could easily try fitting the fuel pump outlet to the tyre valve and install a spark plug in the rim.

I had little ammunition to argue that point, so I left.

In the defense of all car makers (because it's not just Nissan doing it) it's not just that they are greedy and don't want you doing your own servicing, it has more to do with the fact that a manual of that size does cost a fortune to produce by the time you pay for the person who wrote it, the person who produced the information, proof readers etc etc the costs blow out of proportion.

Sure it can be argued that if they dropped the price they'd sell more and recoup the costs but any car is the intellectual property of it's creators and their reluctance to let every Tom Dick and Harry at the information is worth quite a bit of money to them and not really any different to Sony not offering all buyers the schematics to their latest flat panel tv's.

Another reason it's priced like it is is because many of the buyers would be mechanics and therefore make money off the knowledge they gain from it. If you invented something today and sold a thousand of them tomorrow you'd want people coming back to you to have it fixed or maintained and not go to the bloke down the road, but if work got too much for you and the bloke down the road approached you to take some of it off your hands you wouldn't just give him your knowledge for nothing.

I don't necessarily agree with the price and wouldn't pay it myself but I understand their pricing structure.

I have a digital copy if you send me your email...and any1 else who wants it

You'll email 120meg? sheesh glad that's not my email account. The D22 one is available here and has been for ages, I'm not sure about the D40 one and as it's probably illegal I wont store it on my server but there is a US server that has it and the Frontier manual for free download.

yea fail on that email...

AU D40.rar

KraftyPg said:

In the defense of all car makers (because it's not just Nissan doing it) it's not just that they are greedy and don't want you doing your own servicing, it has more to do with the fact that a manual of that size does cost a fortune to produce by the time you pay for the person who wrote it, the person who produced the information, proof readers etc etc the costs blow out of proportion.

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Who is the manual produced for?

If they have to produce it for their mechanics to work on the vehicle, then extra sales are just money in their pocket.

My 2c is that they really want to restrict who can do work on their vehicles and is thus an anti-competitive action.

Well first and foremost they'd produce it for their own mechanics and given that dealerships are franchised they probably make even the dealers pay for them, but seriously how is pricing it at such a high price going to stop people doing work on their own cars, thousands already do work on their cars without the manual and the manufacturers know this. If it was all about stopping people and anti-competitive action then they just wouldn't make it available to the general public at all.

The world is littered with examples of the same sort of behaviour and there is little up roar in other industries. I know in my industry alone (and there will be other industry's the same) I have paid thousands of dollars for manuals for software and hardware, some over the counter some only available to developers with all the nuts and bolts on show, and in some cases these manuals have been worth 25% of the software cost. $1000 for a book on a $30K+ car is small change compared to 25% of a $1200 software package.

As a business the I understand that the money spent today on reference material is a small investment in the money I can make tomorrow with the right knowledge behind me, a mechanic is the same, they make the investment in a manual for a car and they make money tomorrow with that knowledge.

When it comes to showing your nuts and bolts it makes sense to try and limit the product to those who are serious about it and in many case those who are serious stand to make a profit from it so charging them a fee for the privilege is reasonable. In this case it's also fairly mute too given the number of places you can get these manuals for nothing or next to nothing, there is many other industry's where people are competent enough to repair things but the literature isn't freely downloadable like these manuals are so paying a fee is the only way..

KraftyPg said:

Well first and foremost they'd produce it for their own mechanics and given that dealerships are franchised they probably make even the dealers pay for them,

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Correct, but the dealers know that they will recover that investment and it is just a very small overhead.

The question is whether local small businesses/garage can afford the investment. That is who it is really attacking.

I know in my industry alone (and there will be other industry's the same) I have paid thousands of dollars for manuals for software

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And your customers have their balls screwed to pay for it. Need a book to solve a problem for a customer and ka-ching +1 hour on the bill.


However, you really are not thinking outside. For decades, the electronics industry has had reasonable cost access to service manuals. They knew that it was better to allow every service guy to be able to repair their gear as it lead to greater sales. Why should the Nissan be any different unless they are just fragrant arseholes.

We could argue this for months and still be stuck on the same point. Bottom line is I might not agree with the price but can see exactly why they charge what they do and in their position I'd do exactly the same. Doesn't make me more right than you however the continuation of such a topic will no doubt make us both look stupid, who's more stupid does however remain to be seen.

I'm just continuing this for my own thoughts, so hopefully this does not make me look "stupid".

As I thought, places like SuperCheap Workshop Manuals - Supercheap Auto

do still carry the gregorys manuals, and they are great for tearing down engines, wiring, transmissions etc, everything is there apart from part numbers. Even Toyota put them out for Hiluxes etc up to 2007 models. Of course maybe not all car makers supply the details to "Gregorys", but those that do, these manuals are fantastic. (Can't see a Navara one though)

And all for $44.00, bargain. Hope this helps,

Heres the Haynes/Gregorys site http://www.haynes.com.au/category54_1.htm

Not taking anything away from Gregory's because they used to do a great job (probably still do) but for $60 odd bucks, depending on the book, you can only hope to get a fraction of what is in the ESM. The D40 Engine Mechanical section of the ESM alone is 290 pages and the Engine Control system is 1390 pages, so just by page numbers alone there has to be a lot more information on the ESM.

petes navstr said:

went down to Nissan today in essendon and brought genuine filter $57 and new o-ring $4.90 and thought I'd ask for a workshop manual and bloke looked at me with his eyebrows raised and made a phone call and replied to me with a $1200!! my reply was f... that, could somebody help me get my hands on a DVD manual???? i seen them on ebay but are they OK to use?? i don't want buy it and its got a copy of kung fu warriors movie on it from china thanks

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FARK!!!!!

thats double the price they quoted me.


as mentioned theres one on here for download or get them on scambay for a few dollars.

KraftyPg said:

Not taking anything away from Gregory's because they used to do a great job (probably still do) but for $60 odd bucks, depending on the book, you can only hope to get a fraction of what is in the ESM. The D40 Engine Mechanical section of the ESM alone is 290 pages and the Engine Control system is 1390 pages, so just by page numbers alone there has to be a lot more information on the ESM.

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for the serious mech, the gregorys are pretty useless....

the 1200 buck quoted at Essendon Nissan is just profiteering by them to the "dummy" public.
They quoted me a while back around the 490 mark and i saw it on the screen,

Yes that would be with the dealers %, but thats buissness,
and anyway Nizzbits can give us a current price if we ask.
Though i would not pay that (490) for a disk, i would pay that for a paper book version for my vehicle.

When my old man priced the Pathy manual years ago it was a bound copy with the disc included, these days I have no idea what they provide as the cost is out of the reach of most people but I suspect like everything else it's a higher price for the least amount they can get away with, and like parts each dealer will be different dependent on demand.

KraftyPg said:

There is one for download in the D22 section which goes up to the 09 it will still cover a lot of the 10 model so you can use that

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Call me a newbie, but have you got a link ?

Cheers,
James.