Forty years later, and the "Idiot Book" is still unmatched | How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive 19 Ed: A...

a must have for VW owners | How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive 19 Ed: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot | John Muir, Tosh Gregg

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	• How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive 19 Ed: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot John Muir, Tosh Gregg Avalon Travel Publishing, 2001 - 470 pages average customer review:based on 109 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent!

This book is the ultimate guide for keeping your Volkswagen up to speed. The diagrams show it the way it really is - not a computer generated drawing. This way, you truly know how it looks when you get in there and what to do with all the stuff! Computer drawings throw you off base and can be confusing because they do not truly represent what's in there.

It's truly for the "idiot." The text is down to earth and humorous at times. I highly recommend this book for someone who is going to be working on a Volkswagen.

Forty years later, and the "Idiot Book" is still unmatched

First, my credentials for this review. From 1971 to 1994 (with insignificant gaps), I've owned and driven three Vokswagen buses and used this manual to keep all of them on the road. I've gone through four copies of it, using each one until it either fell to pieces, became illegible from grease and oil stains, or needed to be updated as I bought a later-model bus. It has guided me through six or seven engine rebuilds (I used my engines very, very hard) and God knows how many other procedures ... I think that I've done every single procedure in the book that applied to my particular makes and models. And using this book, I've done work on various WV bugs, buses, and squarebacks that belonged to friends of mine.
I agree with everybody who calls this the indispensable reference for VW owners. I also agree with those who point out its shortcomings. Muir quotes a friend of his, on a review of another VW book. as saying "I agree one hundred percent with ninety percent of what he says." That could also apply to my own feelings about this book.
As a technical manual, it mostly consists of solid information -- solid enough, anyway, to get you back on the road so you can find somebody to show you how to do it the right way. I've always advised a prospective repairer to own both this book and another manual (my favorite was the green Volkswagen Official Service Manual, also called the "Bentley"), read the Muir write-up first to get a general idea of what to do, and then compare it to the other manual, note the differences, and ask somebody why the differences are there. Usually it's because Muir assumes you're making do with a minimum of tools, or are too cash-strapped to make a proper fix. Occasionally, you'll find that John was flat wrong about something (such as how to warm it up in the morning, or why chokes should be disabled), or that your particular model had a different set-up than the ones he was familiar with.
But to simply compare this book with other technical manuals would be to ignore the most important feature of this book, which is its ability to empower you. It presumes that the reader has no technical aptitude and starts you gently down the road to proficiency and self-confidence. I'll bet that more mechanics have been inspired by this book than any other technical manual ever written. Not only that, but once you have discovered that you can indeed perform a repair competently, you get a sneaking suspicion that there are other things you can do if you apply the same confidence, common sense, and ingenuity that John taught you about. I doubt if I would have had the courage to time a sewing machine, install a hard drive, build a mandolin, or re-assemble a hang glider if John hadn't shown me that I had the potential to do these things.
This book has survived because of its idiosyncrasies, not in spite of them. John writes that "You must do this work with love or you will fail. You don't have to think, but you must love." He's telling you something important about Life here, and about the relationship we have to our possessions and to our work. Forty years later, these are still wise words, and to find them in an automotive manual is astonishing. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" tried to apply philosophical principles to machine repair, but it failed because he was no mechanic and tried to gauge his mechanic's skill according to his own expectations of what a mechanic's mind-set should be. John knew better. He knew, and taught, that you achieve oneness with the machine by applying mind, heart, and hands together, and by listening to the machine as it tries to tell you what needs to be done. If there's ever been another book like that, I haven't heard of it. And if there is, I'll wager that the author has read the "Idiot Book."

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a must have for VW owners

Great book with some great tips... if you own and old VW its a must have for your collection.

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The must have VW book

The is the one VW book that is a must have. If your new to Aircooled VW's get this book first.

The drawings may well be the best part

I have owned a copy of this book for the past few years and have found it to be an invaluable reference for working on my 1960 type 1. Not only are the jobs broken down into step-by-step procedures that are extremely logical, but Muir's sense of humor and upbeat attitude help to put you in the proper frame of mind to do things right. Quite honestly though I would have to say that Peter Aschwanden's illustrations are the highlight of this book for me. not only are they FAR more useful than photographs for showing the details of a part (drawings can get rid of distractions, show cut-aways, etc that are impossible with photos) but these illustrations truly are works of art. It's really nice when you are deep into a difficult project and you get to turn the page and have a laugh at one of the drawings. These drawings are one of the things that put this book in a class of its own.

I give this book 4 stars instead of 5 for a couple of small reasons. First, you definitely need to own a shop manual too, as this book is not going to be all-inclusive for your particular model. Second, although the drawings are great as I mentioned above, the book would be a lot better if there were a whole lot more of them. Some of the steps in the procedures will cover a page or two of descriptive text that would be a lot better served by using an illustration.

In a nutshell, if you have an aircooled VW, BUY THIS BOOK. Then again, even if you don't own a VW but you are a fan of the mentality of the 'hippie' era you would probably enjoy reading the book anyway.

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First published in 1969, this classic manual of automotive repair equips VW owners with the knowledge to handle every situation they will come across with any air-cooled Volkswagen built through 1978, including Bugs, Karmann Ghias, vans, and campers. With easy-to-understand, fun-to-read information ? for novice and veteran mechanics alike ? anecdotal descriptions, and clear language, this book takes the mystery out of diagnostic, maintenance, and repair procedures, and offers some chuckles along the way. This edition features new information on troubleshooting, new photos, and an updated resource list.

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