this is the very first page on every chilton i own (4)




and this is from a chevy eng overhaul book


Now i obviously dont have a scanner, had to use the camera, but still legible (mostly)

This should clarify it, for the non-believers.

From the Chilton'* 28200


And from the Haynes 19020


The indexes are are numbered and labelled the same in both manuals. Chiltons has a few more pages and photos appear clearer to me. Dialogs are the same. Get the Chilton'* if you have a choice. It is still crap compared to the hardcover manuals they published years ago. :?

i know the librarian from high school. when i checked out the books, i asked her how much the replacement cost was if i "lost" them. she said $25 and $5 for processing on each. from there she just put em in the system as lost.

I agree. I always associated Chilton'* with the wonderful, hard covered books that were huge and had every little detail you needed to know. Wonderful step by step instructions. They were expensive but I used to get one for any car I had because the first time you used them for anything significant, they paid for themselfs. To bad. :?

I see it as a by-product of the automotive industry in general. Cars used to be made to last. Any more, all car companies have figured out that to keep selling cars they need to build a car that works great for a while and then when something breaks, you throw it away and buy a new one. They call it "planned obsolescence." I call it building junk cars.
Chilton'* used to be the source that everybody trusted for automotive manuals in America, just like Haynes was in England. Now that Haynes has bought them, they are just whoring out the Chilton'* name to try to sell their crappy books.
I used to be into VWs and had a Haynes manual that covered all the old Beetles. It was easily as good as any Chilton'* used to be. It had clear pictures with very thorough descriptions and explanations. A friend needed some help with his Beetle recently, and I told him to buy himself a Haynes manual for it. I Looked at the one he bought and it had nowhere near the same content as my old one. Haynes and Chilton'* both have gone downhill.

BOP is a widely recognized acronym for Buick Oldsmobile Pontiac. It is most commonly used when referring to the transmission bell housing to engine block mounting bolt pattern shared by the three. Chevrolet (the splitters) had to be different and use their own bolt pattern.