Time to start a food fight.

Every time a manual is mentioned on the Mini forums I visit, including this one, it's the Bentley Manual. In fact, I just did a search and found 500 hits on the word “Bentley” in threads here. Also, now and then, self-anointed "experts" tell or imply to a relative newbie something like, "OMG, you must be an amateur if you don't have the Bentley Manual." Or similar yada yada yada.

Well, unlike 99.9% of you, I'm an experienced publisher (books, magazines, newsletters, and online), and I think it's abominably stupid to pay $150 for a paper manual. I've been there, ripped business off which that sort of pricing myself two and a half decades ago, when the Internet was still young.

I sold high-priced publications in business publishing niches. With the Internet, that pricing, along with the other major shortcomings of paper (no search capability or updates, et cetera) went out the window years ago. Longer ago in my case. I went digital with a $300-a-year professional publication back in 1997 -- and cut the price. But Bentley still wants a hundred-fifty bucks for a forkin' book.

Not to mention that paper will get all greased up in the shop, when for $26.95 to $29.95 a year, I can get the Alldata or Mitchell1 DIY. And a mouse and keyboard are a lot easier to degrease (or throw out for a combined $20 replacement cost) than paper.

So, three questions:

1. Why should anyone invest in the Bentley Manual rather than an online repair manual service?

2. Which is better for an R56 Mini Cooper, Mitchell, Alldata, or one of the other online manuals?

3. Other than for electrical diagrams, why does anyone even need a manual with all the information available through Google searches? Six years of repairs and maintenance now, and I haven't used a manual yet.

I'm betting that this post is going to be deleted.

 

Yeah, the Bentley manual is expensive, but the amount of information it contains is overwhelming. I’ve had other enthusiast manuals and factory shop manuals in the past, and the Bentley is comparable to a factory shop manual.

You can get the Bentley manual from RockAuto for less than $100…
https://www.rockauto.com/?carcode=15...parttype=10335

Your other option is newTIS, which is comparable to an online version of the Bentley manual.
https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/

 

I have the Haynes manual for my n14 and I have an account on Newtis. I do have access to the Bentley one as well but haven’t needed to pull that trigger yet. With the age of these cars there is a wealth of knowledge on YouTube, google, and here. If you are curious on Newtis, pm me for details on free account.

 

BMW is telling me that NewTis costs $250 a month or $2500 a year or $30 for one day. The online manuals I cited are $27 and $30 per year. Comparing apples and gold bars.

Regarding the "overwhelming" amount of information in the Bentley Manual, my impression is that the same is true of the online manuals. My question is whether Bentley has valuable content which the online manuals don't.

 

Sent you a few pm’s bud.

 

Everything that is on newTIS is in the Bentley manual, laid out in the same manner. The Bentley is the physical version, newTIS is the virtual version.

 

The TIS in ISTA-D. That is the definitive workshop manual.

While the Bentley manual is good, some of the torque values are incorrect when compared to what is in ISTA. I have been diagnosing a faulty convertible top on an R59. You're not going to get that information from the Bentley manual. The online manuals are nice until they get removed again.

 

Sorry for resurrecting a years-old thread, but for posterity’s sake:

Access to “ALLDATA Repair” currently costs $209/mo or $2508/yr.

Access to “Mitchell1 ProDemand Repair” currently costs $184/mo but requires a one-year lease of the service ($2208).

(I assume these are the services to which you referred, or at least the current analogues to such)

My 12+ year-old Bentley manual has cost me $10/yr so far and gets less and less expensive as time goes on.

I appreciate that these online services provide information that can be corrected/updated over time, and they are no doubt curated to the highest standards, but clearly the main advantage of a Bentley/Haynes/etc. hard copy is that you pay the fixed cost of the book (or, even better, find a secondhand copy) and then you own your access to that information until the heat death of the universe. Online services put you at the mercy of a subscription model that can change shape at the provider’s whim (apparently as a result of legal pressure by various auto manufacturers?).

Please correct me if you know of a comparable service that is still available for ~$30/yr, because that would definitely change the calculus for me. Is there perhaps a less-expensive way to get this kind of online service for just one specific make, model, and year instead?