Service Manuals

Afternoon all,

Wondering if anyone here can help enlighten me as to the ins and outs of Toyota's service manuals and their distribution to DIYers and the general public.

My background is that I'm a DIYer and have been working on my cars for several years now. I am fortunate enough that my Yaris is old enough that Toyota made physical paper service manuals for it back in the day, and I've spent several years scouring eBay to get the majority of the ones applicable to my car. My sister drives a 2010 C1 and being a rebadged Toyota I managed to find the full GSIC library (offline web based service manual) being sold in CD format on eBay. My current partner is leaning towards buying a mk2 Yaris and that's lead to me trying to find service information once again.

I know that Toyota offer service manual access via their Toyota-Tech.eu website at an extortionate subscription price, which given the odd frequency that I need to access it doesn't make it worth the 4 euros it costs to access per hour worth it over the long run. I remember years ago there used to be an option to purchase 'hard copies' of the manuals either in cd or book format via the site and this is confirmed in the FAQ section where it details exactly this. However, this option now seems to be missing. Whenever I've asked a dealer in person whether paper copies are available I've been brushed off with "Oh I don't think you can get those". 

I understand that with dealers now accessing repair information online that there is next to 0 market for books and that's fine but it would be nice to have the option to outright buy an electronic copy applicable for your car rather than have to jump around 10 different disjointed online PDFs from questionable sources.

I'm hoping someone here can enlighten me, maybe Toyota do still make these and I've just been asking the wrong people

Cheers all

Sam

if your looking for an auto give the Mk2 a miss as they are all MMT

service manuals most of which are for the North American market

MK1 and Mk2 you want a Haynes hardback

modern cars are so more complex you would end up with a 2" thick manual

most dealerships are fully electronic, paper manuals went out a long time ago, it went to CD/DVD-based systems and now it's all online

1 minute ago, flash22 said:

if your looking for an auto give the Mk2 a miss as they are all MMT

Abosultely not, well aware of the MMT issues across toyota models, it's manual or nothing

1 minute ago, flash22 said:

MK1 and Mk2 you want a Haynes hardback

I find Haynes manuals alright but the official toyota service manuals are prety much superior in every way, more detail, excellent diagrgams, simple to follow, detailed but easy to read wiring diagrams, excellent information on OE SSTs, SSMs, fluids etc

19 minutes ago, flash22 said:

modern cars are so more complex you would end up with a 2" thick manual

most dealerships are fully electronic, paper manuals went out a long time ago, it went to CD/DVD-based systems and now it's all online

As detailed above I'd rather have an offline web-based manual on a CD rather than a book and this is something Toyota offer in theory but finding out the where and how of purchasing is a different matter