Rating:  Summary: An imperfect must-have Review: No, it's not perfect, but it's an absolute must-have for any "enthusiast" owner of one of the cars that this book covers. It is much better than the available competition. The only real alternative to this book is a complete set of manuals from VWoA that would cost over $250.
Rating:  Summary: DIY people, great book to have! Review: Since our VW dealership is uncapable of working on our Jetta and most all VW's, this book has helped us tremendously. Many other people have run into the same problems when dealing with a VW dealership. So, like most others, we have decided to work on our own VW. It is a must have for any VW owner! We were very dissatisfied with the shipping and had to wait forever for this book. But, you can't beat the price and it is worth the wait.
Rating:  Summary: The Bible for VW Maintenance and Repairs Review: This book is the bible for third generation Jetta, Golf and Cabrio maintenance and repairs. With hundreds of pages covering a wide variety of topics, it is definitely well worth the money. It has already saved me big $$$ since I got it. If you use this manual and buy your parts online (from auction sites for example), I'm sure that you will be able to save a lot of money as well!
Rating:  Summary: Excellent book, but still needs more detail.. Review: This is an excellent repair and maintenance book. However, when attempting to service my brakes, it fell short of giving a full explanation of what needed to be done. All I really wanted to do was to was replace my brake pads, but the caliper drawings were confusing and it referenced one-time-only use on the bolts holding the caliper, which is not true. A little lock tite on the bolt and you're good to go. The replacement bolts are just new bolts with lock tite already applied, and, as long as the bolt is in good shape, there is no need to replace. This should have been referenced. It also did not reference the requirement to use a special caliper piston tool on the rear calipers, since the rears need to be twisted because of the e-brake.Overall, however, this is a great book and a must-have for any 1993-99 Jetta, Golf, or Cabrio owner.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent book, but still needs more detail.. Review: This is an excellent repair and maintenance book. However, when attempting to service my brakes, it fell short of giving a full explanation of what needed to be done. All I really wanted to do was to was replace my brake pads, but the caliper drawings were confusing and it referenced one-time-only use on the bolts holding the caliper, which is not true. A little lock tite on the bolt and you're good to go. The replacement bolts are just new bolts with lock tite already applied, and, as long as the bolt is in good shape, there is no need to replace. This should have been referenced. It also did not reference the requirement to use a special caliper piston tool on the rear calipers, since the rears need to be twisted because of the e-brake. Overall, however, this is a great book and a must-have for any 1993-99 Jetta, Golf, or Cabrio owner.
Rating:  Summary: Typical (lousy) Bentley Manual Review: This manual is typically useless for real auto repair. I purchased this hoping to see some improvement in the information but was disappointed again. My car has a manifold over top of the spark plugs. I thought there might be some helpful information on what to do. Fat chance. The manual contains only cursory information on that. I looked at the rest of the manual and found the same satellite view on most repairs. Volkswagen cars were orginally built to be repaired by their owners but increasingly this is not true. One might blame the dealers. They don't profit enough from the original purchase so they create helpless customers dependent on the service garage with the manufacturer's support. I purchased the '82 manual for my Rabbit. Same thing there. What the manual lacks in detail can be very costly and time consuming. In my case it was the water pump. The manual was completely oblivious of that major differences I encountered with my car which had air conditioning. I could tell you a lot more about how poor this manual was but I'll save that for another review. Summary: Don't buy this manual unless you are very experienced in auto repair yourself. You will be seriously dissapointed by the lack of details and frustrated by the poor quality of the information. Robert Benley should be ashamed to charge so much for so little. But then, I was the sucker, eh?
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