My review of Faxon book, 1967-1969 Dodge & Plymouth Body & Electrical Assembly Manual

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67Dart273

67Dart273

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Better than nothing. The price isn't bad. I have never seen the mysterious non-existent factory assembly manual, so I have nothing to compare the print quality to. I will need a magnifier.

So far so good, and happy to get "that far."

THE DOWNSIDE

Faxon has seen fit, in order to protect their copyright?? to put watermarks ALL OVER THE PAGES, and certainly in and amoungst the text, charts, and drawing. "For an old man" this creates a fair amount of eyestrain.

Like I said, "better than nothing."
 
Photos, at the risk of violating copyright The contrast provided by the camera is misleading. My 72 year old eyes, see things more "difficultly"

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Well that’s super annoying!

I can understand some of that, but they seem to have gone completely overboard. Especially considering it’s not their original product, they’re just re-publishing.
 
Faxon spends money to obtain original manuals and have them unbound and scanned. Then they have to print and bind a copy for sale. Therefore they include the watermark in order to have you buy the copied manual. They have printed original manuals for sale as well as some of them in digital form. It is a small business and should be compensated for their expenses.
They were kind enough to give me a tour of their warehouse when I drove there to pick up original shop manuals for my cars. They are good people.
 
DFX 340 Duster said:
Faxon spends money to obtain original manuals and have them unbound and scanned. Then they have to print and bind a copy for sale. Therefore they include the watermark in order to have you buy the copied manual. They have printed original manuals for sale as well as some of them in digital form. It is a small business and should be compensated for their expenses.
They were kind enough to give me a tour of their warehouse when I drove there to pick up original shop manuals for my cars. They are good people.
Click to expand...

I understand that bringing these manuals to print involves time, effort and money. I even understand the watermark to an extent, especially in digital form because it’s so easy to share.

But if you lay out the cash for the printed copy, they shouldn’t literally ruin the manual you’re buying by putting 8 watermarks on every page over the top of the content you bought the manual for to begin with. Again, I understand some watermarks to protect their copyrights. But they’ve nearly made that manual unusable.

In my case, I don’t NEED that manual. But I was considering buying one, or possibly even a couple since I own a Duster, a Dart and a Challenger. I love the old engineering drawings. But if they look like the examples above, I won’t bother. Ruins the whole feel of the manual and drawings. And even makes them harder to use from a functional standpoint.
 
DFX 340 Duster said:
Faxon spends money to obtain original manuals and have them unbound and scanned. Then they have to print and bind a copy for sale. Therefore they include the watermark in order to have you buy the copied manual. They have printed original manuals for sale as well as some of them in digital form. It is a small business and should be compensated for their expenses.
They were kind enough to give me a tour of their warehouse when I drove there to pick up original shop manuals for my cars. They are good people.
Click to expand...

I understand all that, but the watermarks are a bit over-done. As I said, "the camera" sensor does not depict accurately what "my old eyes" actually see. I am not tremendously unhappy, given the "these used to be impossible to get" but I won't be buying anything else from them if the other printings are similar in watermarks
 
72bluNblu said:
But if they look like the examples above, I won’t bother.
Click to expand...

My experience was exactly the same. Several years ago, I bought some literature from Faxon that had all the engine accessory assemblies, small block, big block, etc. The watermarks are too dark, some notes and text are unreadable.
 
I agree. It's ridiculous that we have to make photographs to be able to read some of the drawings and text. I only recommend this book because the information is good - so its worth the struggle - at least for some of us.

The quality of other manuals I have purchased from Faxon was actually worse. When I purchased the MR 253 (Full size jeep manual - well over $100) it was on copy paper and taped on binding a clear plastic 'cover'. Worst part was that pages were missing. The sales people were very nice but they continued to exchange copies with the same pages missing. :( That tells me this a big enough operation the sales people couldn't actually go check the copies being sent out. Eventually I asked if they could just send me all the missing pages that I listed -and they could. So they did and those pages are still stuck in loose in their proper places. IIRC I found one other missing page later and printed those from someone's scan.
 
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