Customer Reviews

Honda CB 750 & 900 '79'83 (Owners' Workshop Manual)

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I have been riding motorcycles for almost ten years. Since I never managed to get that really high paying job nor did I ever win the lottery, I usually tend to own old, relatively inexpensive Japanese bikes. I have grown to prefer them over the years. They are simple machines and, if one possesses basic understanding of motorcycles, the whole service experience can be very rewarding for both human and vehicle. So how does one obtain that basic understanding? - Well, there are two major publishers of workshop manuals - Haynes and Clymer and I am currently reviewing the former. For any given motorcycle that I have owned, the Haynes manual has been noticeably inferior. Here are some of the reasons why I do not particularly like the Haynes publications:

1. The manuals tend to cover too many models, which results in lots of confusion. For example the Honda CB manual will cover the following models CB750C, CB750K, CB750F, CB750LTD, CB900F, (but not CB900C) between 1978 and 1982. I consider it a big inconvenience to try to hold on to my own branch of relevant information in the sea of numbers, measures, and settings, which relate to each of the above listed vehicles.
2. The service instructions are not compiled as carefully as the ones offered in the Clymer manuals. Clymer will provide a detail photo of every step of every procedure and the images will be running side by side with the text. The Haynes manual on the other side will group all images on the same page, which results in lots of flipping between the text section and the image section. Also, the Haynes manual does not provide a clear explanation of how a particular image relates to any particular section of the described service/repair procedure. Simply put, I find myself looking at a chaos of black-and-white close-ups of machine parts and use the Clymer manual to interpret the Haynes manual.
3. Since the publisher is British, most of the information is related to models released in Europe, which too often differ from their American counterparts. (This last point is mostly relevant to the American reader)

Unfortunately, or probably exactly because of point 1 above, Haynes tends to cover more motorcycles still available on the market. Eventually you will buy a motorcycle, which is no longer covered by Clymer (for example Suzuki GS 250) and you will have to resort to the services of Haynes. I wish you good luck with the interpretation of the text, let alone the actual procedure that you intend to perform on your vehicle.

i'll never buy another haynes book simply on the merit of this rather useless one ... someone else suggested it covers too many models, & i concur! where clymer makes the effort to detail difficult procedures with pictures & in-depth descriptions, haynes simply assumes we all know more than the average joe about just about everything from batteries to camshaft ... if that were the case, WHY would i need this darn book!?!

i say, save your money & buy a helpful & essential clymer!
bjr

Even though I did read the comments about this book covering too many models, I decided to buy it anyway thinking that this would not a big deal. How wrong was my assumption! Now that I've had it for 10 months and having done several repairs on my 1983 Honda CB750SC, I have found this book utterly useless. Every time I refer to it, it tries to include too many models and thus, it does not cover any of them sufficiently and at times it doesn't even mention the model I own. Please, please, do yourself a favor and DO NOT purchase this book. It will be a waste of money and a big waste of my time every time you look up anything in it. Please also spread the word to others who may be naive enough to want to get this book.

I don't think that this book delivers.

I have purchased many Repair manuals in the past from Haynes. They have been all car manuals though. These manuals always seemed to have plenty of instructional information, and a great troubleshooting section. This book had neither. Some of the good things in the manual are some of the specifications that it has for the bike, Tire pressure, Spark Plug gap and type, things of that nature. But I Imagine if you had the owners manual you would already have that info. However I think that the book is too technical for the regular owners.

Exactly what i was looking for to rebuild my motorcycle and at a great price.

Initially, I was thrilled that we were getting a Haynes shop manual to help us rebuild a few items on our 1981 Honda CB750C. However, when we got it, we found it difficult to read. Yes, it's written in English... the queen's English. I have parts like a gas/fuel tank, pet cock, and screen. This book has a petrol tank, gauze filter, and speaks of loosening from nubs. By far, I'm not a professional mechanic, but I can figure it out. The British English is an added stress that I didn't need!

MAKE SURE you're getting a copy in American English!

We tore down a 1986 CB750F using this. While it could have been a bit better on descriptions (like Muir's Complete Idiot VW book), it still guided us through the process well enough... but it took two of us to be sure what was being said in some parts. That was the hard part.

Well, putting the bloody thing back together...