steven kiser wrote:There are times when charging for information is fitting. Some of my customers have unique vehicles or pieces of equipment that call for special tools. Some i can get away without while others i can't. The ones i need to purchase get billed out to the customer. It may not be all at once but you can bet that within a few visits they've paid for it. There are sights out there that will sell you blocks of information. If i needed a harness diagram for this truck i would just add the cost to the order. I needed a wiring diagram to a guard rail installer. I had no problem contacting the manufacturer and purchasing it. I down loaded it, printed it out, added 10% to it and added it to the order. I gave the owner the option of holding on to it or leaving it with me. He chose to take it. It was a complete service guide with exploded views. Later in the year i needed it again and he couldn't find it. I just purchased it again (opened the saved file) and printed it out again. Yes i charged him for it and this time he let me hang on to it. Some times i actually win one.....................
Right now, I would PAY for an actual service manual for this truck. lol My guy spent a few hours with it this afternoon and I think he said he's got most of it figured out. Its a real pain chasing this circuit board. Same customer has two identical trucks and no manuals. I had a guy one time wanted me to put timing chain or something in an Audi. One of the bosses friends at a place I worked. I quoted out the job, then added $800.00 to it, when the boss asked "Why so high?" I simply replied, thats to cover the $800.00 cam and crank holding tool that we will NEVER use again.
I charge an "Information Access Fee" anytime I have to purchase a subscription to any manufacturers website for flash files, or just service info. The fee is variable depending on how many customers I am accessing info for.
Let me pose a question just in case I don't end up calling support.. Does the Mitchell Med/Heavy truck subscription have the info I am looking for? One of the problems I have with the automobile version, is the older vehicle information just is not available. There are a ton of 80's era vehicles still running around out here, but mostly 90's to early 2000's. Same goes with the heavy trucks. One you get a vehicle out here, you run it, break it, and fix it then run it some more until it literally falls apart and cannot be fixed anymore. Also a big kicker for me would be BlueBird school bus coverage as we also maintain the cities 4 School buses. ( i'm probably dreaming on that one, I know..lol)... Happy Monday!
There is always enough time to do it right the first time.
.... anyway. I was hoping someone might still have one of these books kicking around or I'm not even sure if Mitchell goes back far enough to cover this. Would be nice to have, otherwise, going to be here all day testing circuits. 
