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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
But here's the thing -- the Toyota page is organized by Make/Model/Year, not part number. So I found the 2ZZ-GE engine chapters under Matrix and Celica, and while the manual is probably close, they are different part numbers. (RM1108U).
I've tried every model year and combination I could think of, but no exact matches for any of those three manuals appear. It might not matter, but it seems like they should be in here somewhere.
Also, is our transaxle a Toyota C60 with different ratios, or something different altogether?
Here's a wild guess Steve, but is it possible to try the European site for the Celica T-sport? I believe we have the Euro set of ratios, so maybe the manuals are from that car.
Our Elise uses the European version of the C60 (with stock ratios).
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