I've looked through the maintenance and DIY info in the owner's manuals for my 2011 Prius, and would like to find a good repair manual that would take me the next step down in getting to know the car better. For cars I've owned before I always liked to get the maker's official repair guide, as I found them to be more complete than books from Chilton, Haynes etc. However it sounds that in the case of the Prius this is multi-volume and very expensive? Is there a manual out there that any of you like? (Having worked on an air-cooled VW for many years, it'd be great if there were a Prius equivalent of the "Complete Idiot's Guide.")
The comprehensive one you are talking about is available online from TIS: TIS Unless you are going to use this online manual for a specific purpose, and not just to have for reference, this is probably not practical. I am curious to hear from others what other resources are out there in terms of factory repair manuals in addition to the one from TIS.
I found a link, here, recently. Someone had it on a server, no nonsense. But danged if I can find it right now. It's out there, one pdf for the "Repair Manual", another for electrical diagrams. I'll look through my bookmarks a bit more, not sure if I bookmarked, should have.
I subscribe to Alldatadiy.com. It's not expensive and gets updated with technical service bulletins from time to time.
I haven't tried it yet but for $15 the Toyota TIS site allows you 2 days use - seems a great deal! Just got to make a list of everything you want & d/l & get it all done over those two days. From their FAQ - NOTE: All subscriptions expire at midnight, Pacific Time on the last day of your term. This means a two-day subscription may actually provide greater than 48 hours of usable access.
Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll spend $15 to get a couple of days' access to Toyota's online Technical Information System and see how much information I can get on maintenance tasks I expect to do soon. I've only been able to find one after-market repair manual that covers the Gen 3 Prius -- Haynes' "Toyota Prius 2001-2012 Repair Manual." I ordered a copy of that as well to see if it might give me an overview somewhere between what's in the owner's manual and what's in the Technical Information System.
