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MG MGB Technical - Sad Loss of MG Electrics Help Site

Apologies if this has been posted (searched), but this was certainly a nasty surprise to me yesterday.

Warning: RANT FOLLOWS

R.I.P one of the best technical, free, electrics trouble-shooting sites for our beloved B's.

http://www.mgcars.org.uk/electrical

It's interesting to see this site going back to good ol' book format, in this so-called brave new world of the web.

What was once pleasantly free, is soon to be a paid-for book. Not that I begrudge the author his due rights (this rant exceped)...it's just that I already find the Hayne's manuals super-expensive for what they now are: soft-covers with thin, brownish, cheap-feeling paper. I hope the Veloce manual is not similarly spec'd.

What I want to know is who were these 'site visitors' with their 'lot of correspondence'? Sounds more like some Veloce reps. to me. I mean, I can understand wanting a book in addition to, but not instead of, the website. Sigh.

Rant Ends.
Curtis Walker

That was a great site. Helped me out loads with my electrical problems.

I've tried http://www.archive.org to see what they had archived. Not much unfortunatly. You just need to search on the url http://www.mgcars.org.uk/electrical/

I don't see why the website has to go as well. I'm sure there will be plenty of people willing to buy the book even with a website available. I don;t think I will buy the book, but it would make a good gift.



andrew.horrocks

Here's a link I got in reply from one of the guys over at the British Car Forums:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050304025645/http://www.mgcars.org.uk/electrical/

All your info are [again] belong to us. Mwa ha ha haa!
Curtis Walker

Notwithstanding the link Curtis has provided, and FWIW, you might like to look at my own humble offering at http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk which is still free and likely to remain so, and covers electrics plus a lot of mechanical, trim etc. stuff.
Paul Hunt 2

Good point about the cheapo looking Haynes manuals. My 17 year old mgb manual is decent quality paper (plus my greasy thumbprints)and I don't mind paying
Dave Smith

The electrical help information can be seen at;
http://www.mgbexperience.com/service/electrical/

Clifton
Clifton Gordon

US Haynes manuals are paperback and printed on very cheap paper, I think the last one I bought was $18 (the same as £18 to a Brit - we earn the same in $ as you do in £ for the same job).

I have also found that the ones for modern vehicles are pretty useless - they don't tell you how to do anything, just say "take it to a repair station with such and such a piece of equipment"!

The one thing I like about the paperback manuals is that they are easy to have spiral bound, it's so nice having a book that will stay open without weighting it down!

http://www.mghorizon.com/horizonfiles/usefulstuff/P8160004.jpg

If you haven't checked out Paul Hunt's site mentioned above, do so, his coloured, individual circuit wiring diagrams are wonderful!
The Wiz

Wiz,
How do you figure that? The same job in the U.K. pays me 33K in pounds. In the U.S. it pays 65K in dollars.
Cleve

Cost of living vs salary is a thorny subject as there is so much variation even within a city, but for fun have a look at http://www.homefair.com/homefair/servlet/ActionServlet?pid=500&homefair&to=ActionServlet%3Fpid%3D244%26cid%3Dhomefair&pagename=199&internal=T
for some international comparisons and ideas on where to go for a really cheap holiday.
Steve Postins

Its good to see we can still get the electrical help.

Sorry Paul. I was going to mention your site in my email but it was to much for me to type at the time. Poor excuse I know.

I have two manuals. One for in the garage that I don't mind getting oil and dirt on and one for in the house that is almost oil free. They only cost £4. One came with the car and the other I got from an auto jumble for £4.

andrew.horrocks

Wiz,

Where do you go to have an individual book spiral bound? I'd love to do that with Haynes and Bentley if its not cost prohibitive.

John
John English

John,

Staples or Office Max should be able to spiral bound something for you. I know that Kinko's can do smaller things, say around 70 pages, but I don't know about actual books.

However I think there is a limit to the thickness of the book that you would like bound. I only mention this last part because a friend of mine recently had a Latin text book bound and he had to remove some of the pages in order for the spiral binding to fit.

Zach
Zach

Cleve, you can't just look at one job and you have to take into account the area that job is in, a job in New York will generally pay more than the same job in Cairo, Arkansas but the average won't be too different to the figure you would get in the UK.

John, any of the small instant print places, Kinkos, etc. Office Max and Office Depot both have small instant print sections too, either of them could do it.

I don't know about cost, I do mine myself, I'm in the print trade, it shouldn't be too much though.

Make sure you get spiral binding, not GBC comb binding.
The Wiz

John,

My wife gets pamphlets spiral bound @ out local Kinko/FedEx store. Don't know if they will bind an individual book or not. My wife normally takes 200+ 50 page manuals.
Shook

I went by Office Depot - they can do something as thick as a Bentley or Haynes manual, and its only $2.49 each, including cutting the glued binding.

Thanks for the idea, Wiz!

John
John English

Steve:

Thanks for the international comparisons site. I'll be able to make good use of that.

Jack
J.C. Weidner

After 20 some odd yeares my Haynes manual was sort of tearing itself apart. My solution was to remove it page by page and insert the pages into plastic 3 hole sleeve page protectors. a box of 100 is cheap at Office Depot. I placed the manual in a three ring binder. Now the pages stay open and can be wiped down from the greasy fingerprints.

Glad to see we still have electrical assistance.
Luigi

Yes, I've used your pages a few times too, thanks Paul!

I'm off to the library to see if they've got a copy of the MGB Haynes manual - I'm extremely annoyed at misplacing mine during a recent move!!
Curtis Walker

Wiz,
Sounds like Clive is making more sense than you. For your statement to be correct, we would have to make 1.8 times more per year than we do. If the average income in the U.K. is 21,000 pounds and the average in the U.S. is 38,000 dollars, (per the web)then the worker in the U.S. can purchase 2,111 copies of the print, while the average worker in the U.K. can only purchase 1,166 copies of Haynes manuals, at 18 dollars or 18 pounds per copy.
We are talking averages, so it sounds to me like the average guy in the U.S. is coming out way ahead by getting nearly twice the number of books.
(You chaps get a lot more books for the bucks than we do for the pound.)

$18 (the same as £18 to a Brit - we earn the same in $ as you do in £ for the same job).
?????
Erskine

Ahhhh, Wiz - you do us a disservice - the closest Cairo I know is over in Illinois, where it's pronounced "kay-ro", and not "ki-ro", as one might expect. But I figure you knew that, and were just making a point....

Some semi-famous Arkansas place names (for real): Turkey Scratch, Oil Trough, Toad-Suck Ferry, Amagon, Back Gate, Bee Branch, Blue Ball, Figure Five, Dixie, Hogeye, Ink, Rag Town, Number Nine, Seaton Dump, Umpire, Tomato, and - for our UK brothers - DeQueen.

But, sadly, no Cairo <grin> - cheers - - Alec
Alec Darnall

Alec, maybe he meant Bumf??? , as in Egypt. Or maybe I'm the only one that has heard that term of endearment. Got one of those? Toad-Suck Ferry? LMAO!!
Tom

Got to agree with the WIZ about the new Haynes manuals.
Bought a range rover one when I did the V8 conversion. The older editions (which I eventually got copies of) were way better. New version was a mix of copied and pasted parts of older manuals (alot of which was irrelevant to the current model) interdisspersed indifferently with a few photos of the current model almost always accompanied with the the equivalent of "too hard , don't try, so we are not going to tell you, take it too a mechanic". I mean we bought the **** manual to ovoid just that. Obviously a very different set of people run the show at haynes now days. I get the impression that they are more interested on software packages then cars. The sons of the fathers are lesser men.
Peter

If you want to bookmark the archived version of Rick's site, now's the time to do it. In time most of the archived content can be blocked and you may be lucky to see a shell. Such is the way of the New Internet, the profitability of it, and the legalities of copyright laws, particularly if much of his content is going into the book he mentions. Sorry to see his site go, but I can't blame him for seizing the opportunity. Dan Master's has some stuff still on the web, but for how long, who knows? I am grateful for the work he has done and for offering it to us for so long for free. But that was the old internet.
Bob Muenchausen

This thread was discussed between 26/01/2006 and 28/01/2006

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