I have a 2012 Civic HF and I have had a hard time finding a shop manual, like a Clymer, Haynes, etc. Local O'Reilly has one of the two, but it is sealed in plastic, so I can't open it up and see what $25 or so gets me. If it's like the one I got for my daughter's Rav4, it's practically worthless and a waste of money. Does anyone have a recommendation for a particular brand? I generally never let a mechanic touch my vehicles, and do all of the work myself (including timing belt changes, etc., on my other vehicles). Just looking for something that will give me some technical references.

 

Honda in 2012 moved away from printed manuals that was available through Helmsinc.com.

Now you have to do a subscription service with Service Express to get access to the factory service manual for your vehicle.

https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/logon.aspx

 

It is a ploy by Honda to force people to take their car to the dealer for all service work and repairs. And that subscription service is a joke. Why can we not just buy a freaking copy of a manual, either printed or digital?

 

Or its a cost-saving strategy, where Honda doesn't need to invest in having a supplier for printed text when most people either read on their phone or on a computer.

 

If you subscribe for one day, can you print out the pages you view? If not, it is a ripoff, and probably also part of a ploy to force vehicle owners to take their car to a dealer for just about everything. I can't even find the correct oil capacity. If I recall, the owner's manual (or maybe I found that number somewhere else) states 3.9 qt, when it's more like 4.25 qt, which I found by trial and error. I just want a manual that gives me correct numbers like that, as well as some reference for DIY repair work. And without having to pay out the **** for that info.

 

Welcome to the monetary world.

 

The pages can be downloaded and printed at service express. The manual consist of separate linked PDFs; so, the manual can't be downloaded as one whole file. It would have to be page by page.

 

I wonder if you could use a web crawler to do it for you once you paid for a couple of days....