My Secret Revealed

[SLarsonIH@domain.elided]

Thanks Tom,

<<You might want to ask Steve Larson what his secret is. 



I don't exactly remember, but I seem to remember that he had his manual

spread out over several binders, versus just one. And, he had some sort of

indexing with home made tabs set up. For the very reason you describe.

Being that he was a former mechanic, I think he had worked out a pretty

good system.>>

When I first got my IH manual for my 74 Scout II, I was offered a choice of a
bound version or a loose leaf photocopied version, which is, as I understand
it, not offered anymore due to legal reasons. I chose the looseleaf version,
as it will lay flat using a binder. I immediately found out how hard it was to
find the information that I wanted, WHEN I wanted it.

First I got two large binders with the clear covers that you can stick sheets
into. I printed up front covers and end sheets so I can look at the binder in
the book shelf and see what sections are in which binder. Then, I went down to
the local stationary type store and got colored manila folders and cut and
hole punched them to fit in between pages. I used the tabbed ones for the
first part of a section. I rotated the colors so that, for example, all the
dividers for the fuel sections are blue. Transmission dividers are green, etc.
Then I labelled the tabs. So now, when I want to find something having to do
with transmissions, I go to the binder with transmission info in it, go to the
green dividers, and then go through each green divider till I find the one for
the T-19. Takes only a few seconds, and you know immediately where the section
you're looking at ends, and the next one begins.

However, I did not have that luxury when I bought the one for my 65 Scout, as
they only sold bound copies. What I did do in that case was this. I divided
the height of the manual equally by the number of sections. I then took a
black magic marker and blackened the edges of each section so that when you
look at the edge of the manual, you see black lines stairstepped from top to
bottom going from left to right. It would look something like this:
I
 I
  II
    I
     I
      III
         I
Thus, you knew that the 3rd mark down would be the carb section, for example.
This wouldn't let you easily find just the section for one type of carb, but
would put you in the carb section. They do make stick on tabs, so you could do
that. I could take my time and unbind the manual and do the binder thing, but
that's for another time.

I would suggest, that if you do use manuals, that you purchase a set of
colored highliters and highlight specs and stuff, so they can be located
quickly. I would probably highlight all the torque specs in red, all the
ignition specs in green, etc. That way, if you're looking for torque specs,
just skim all the red highlighted marks till you find the one you need, if
worse comes to worse.

That's my 2 cents worth, YMMV, BTDT, yada, yada, yada . . .

STeve - 74 Scout II with the infamous 40 gallon tank