Elise Service Manual for $25 from LCU.

[sandsmuseum]

The Service Manual for the Federal Elise is available on the Lotus Cars USA website. You must pay a membership fee of $25 for one day, $300 for a month, or a huge amount for a year to gain access to the site. Once on the site you can download individual chapters from the Service Manual.

I purchased a one day access for $25 and proceeded to download all the sections that were available. I have not checked to see if they are as complete or are the same as the paper manual I purchased several months ago. First glance suggests all the chapters are there.

The Toyota manuals are separate and can be purchased at your local Lotus dealership. The site does include a listing of what these manuals include and the price.

Terms of Agreement prevent the uploading of the material and only license you to have one copy. Please do not ask me for a copy of my material. $25 is inexpensive.

Michael

edit to add-

Originally Posted by RoadDad

I've had consistent trouble with the plain www.lotustechinfo.com link.

This one http://www.lotustechinfo.com/subscriber_new_terms.asp however has always worked for me.

YMMV.

[darkSol]

Michael,

Are the sections in Acrobat or some other format?

Just wondering... thanks!

[ConeFusion]

It was mentioned as a sidenote in another thread, but it's certainly exciting enough to deserve its own thread! I think it's great news. Other manufacturers have similar systems, and I was hoping that Lotus would do something like this. I don't mind paying a fair price for a legitimate copy of the manuals.

I would also be interested in hearing more about how the download looks. Format, number of files, etc. With Subaru, each small section is a separate file, so you have to download a few hundred (?) files to get the complete manual, and build yourself an index.

Edit: Just saw what you mentioned about the drivetrain manuals not being included. That's a shame. Does Toyota have a similar system to get electronic manuals?

[andykeck]

I saw that other thread and immediately jumped on the Lotus site. You end up with about 20 high-quality PDFs. After a quick browse I can say that I think it looks pretty complete. Obviously minus the 3 Toyota specific manuals.

I wish I had a Lotus scan tool. Looks like fun.

[Evl]

As the person who made the side comment, I'll chime in. You get a bunch of files, basically one per chapter. The quality is pretty good for most of them, but others are obviously scanned. They are for the Fed Elise/111R (plus you get the Esprit for the same price). In addition to the manual (sr_*.pdf), you get service bullitins, (sb_*.pdf) of which there are currently 3: 1 for the shifter, 1 for the oil cooler leak, and other for some kind of leak related to the sun visors. I didn't see one for the idle problem or the AC problem, both of which have been rumored to exist, so the manuals might be a little behind. Overall I'm pretty pleased in that you don't have to feel bad about paying $400+ for something that they are going to realease updates for. So I'll happily go back in 6 months and pay another $25 to see if there is anything new. For those using linux, the PDF files work fine in gv, so there doesn't seem to be any wierd DRM or anything in the files.

[Ground Loop]

Originally Posted by sandsmuseum

The Service Manual for the Federal Elise is available on the Lotus Cars USA website. You must pay a membership fee of $25 for one day, $300 for a month, or a huge amount for a year to gain access to the site. Once on the site you can download individual chapters from the Service Manual.

Excellent! That's the same price I paid for my Infiniti G35 manuals, downloaded the very same way.

I did have to write some strange "Acrobat spider" tool to get all the linked Nissan chapters, but the price is fair enough.

Thanks for posting; I'd have never found it myself.

[Ground Loop]

I doesn't look like Lotus uses any funky PDF->PDF links, so you can get them all with a simple spider/mirror tool, like wget:

 wget --no-parent -r --convert-links --level=99 -nr -N --http-user=your_user --http-passwd=your_password http://xx.yy.zz.aa/amember/subprods/index.html

It's about 36MB for everything. Some of the PDFs are paper-scans, not regenerated from document source, while others are all-digital.

Very odd that the Terms of Service Agreement was something like:

Please read and agree with the following user agreement:
=== PLACE YOUR AGREEMENT TEXT HERE ===
[ ] I Agree

So I did. My inserted terms were very reasonable, I think.

For $25/day, it's an awesome find. Thanks again!

[ChrisH]

There is a link at the top of the sign-up page to the terms for use.

[Ancient Wedgie]

hey thanks for the info. I like it, so MW sure to love it.

[pinmagic]

How long should I figure it will take to download the whole thing (with broadband)?

[EdHahn]

Took more time to organize the downloads than to download. The chapters are short enough that you rarely have to wait for the download to really complete (using Comcast cable internet).

BTW - WHY ISN'T THIS STICKY????

ed

[apkom]

Using wget to mirror whole 36Mb tree on multi megabit connection takes about a minute. I'd expect no more then 5 mins on typical broadband.

Originally Posted by pinmagic

How long should I figure it will take to download the whole thing (with broadband)?

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by pinmagic

How long should I figure it will take to download the whole thing (with broadband)?

By hand it took me 30 minutes and that was making directories by hand. Best $25 I've ever spent!!!!!

Shouldn't just be a sticky but the link should be added!!!!!

http://66.139.73.25/amember/index.php

[demarco]

Thanks for the link. i just downloaded and printed everything.

Awesome, i wanted the manuals, but wasn't really willing to spend 300 or whatever dollars.

The Engine/Transmission manuals would be great, but this fantastic.

[Patricko]

What section has the info on taking the seats out? I can't find it Does anyone know what the seat bolts should be torqued to?

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by Patricko

What section has the info on taking the seats out? I can't find it Does anyone know what the seat bolts should be torqued to?

Cant find it, must be covered in the parts manual, I wished that could be downloaded too, hopefully in the next 22 hours

[MERLIN]

Unfortunately, the site does not seem to be compatible with a Mac platform.

[andykeck]

Originally Posted by MERLIN

Unfortunately, the site does not seem to be compatible with a Mac platform.

Worked fine on my Macs. Using Firefox, of course.

[EdHahn]

Originally Posted by andykeck

Worked fine on my Macs. Using Firefox, of course.

Even worked here with Safari.

ed

[Dro]

I had tried to get one day access last weekend to download the manuals, but I never received a password to login. Tried and tried to get it to send me a password, and it never did. The support person ended up crediting my $25 back to me and he said his IT specialist hasn't been able to solve the problem yet. Bummer. I really wanted those files.

Has anyone else had this problem?