Manuals Base Vehicle and Conversion

BlueVanMan
BlueVanMan Forum Participant Posts: 382
100 Comments
edited May 2017 in Caravan & Motorhome Chat #1

The thread on Ad-blue led to differing opinions about manuals. Typically with a new M/H you will get a base vehicle manual with associated supplements about servicing guarantees, radio code etc. You will also get a pile of manuals for constituent parts such as fridge, cooker/over, toilet cassette etc. This paperwork will fill a small briefcase and will most likely be put in a drawer. For example the Dometic guide for our oven is 135 pages long but contains about 2 pages of relevant information and answered none of the basic questions about operation which my wife had. Since it covered about 20 models and many languages not entirely surprising.

The vehicle handbook is usually OK so long as you invest significant time in identifying your model but even then it will highlight features and accessories that you don't have and generate envy.

On the habitation side what you typically wont get is a vehicle specific idiots guide taking you through the basics of the vehicle operation.

In short I think the industry generally serves us badly in not creating proper documentation particularly when you consider how much a new M/H costs. There may be exceptions to the above but what do others think ? 

Comments

  • peedee
    peedee Club Member Posts: 9,389 ✭✭✭
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    edited May 2017 #2

    I agree but some suppliers do make more effort than others. I try and obtain digital manuals for everything in and what I use in the motorhome and have them on a USB stick. I have recently all the manuals I have to "Dropbox" and now can view them from anywhere on any device.

    peedee

  • DavidKlyne
    DavidKlyne Club Member Posts: 13,866 ✭✭✭
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    edited May 2017 #3

    All the caravans we have owned and our now motorhome have come with a fairly comprehensive guide compiled by the manufacturer in addition to all the separate manufacturers guides. I do agree that I find it annoying that I get a guide for my fridge in a dozen languages when I only need it in English!!!

    David 

  • young thomas
    young thomas Club Member Posts: 11,357 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited May 2017 #4

    the English Cathago manual is pretty comprehensive and (for a german company) a useful thing...

    however, i agree that we have so many other manuals/handbooks that they literally do fill a (Carthago branded) briefcase and weigh a ton.

    perversely, the only manual i wanted to reference recently was the Poineer head unit one......on a DVD.

  • hitchglitch
    hitchglitch Forum Participant Posts: 3,007
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    edited May 2017 #5

    I would say that the AS manual is good. There are a few options but generally it is specific to the model. For the appliances I scanned and printed important sheets or looked up the manual online and printed the relevant pages. The result was a quite compact set of documents.