Where to find your owner’s manual

Used cars arrive with a glovebox full of parking tickets and no handbook. It matters more than it sounds. Without it you are guessing at oil specification, wheel-bolt torque, service intervals, which of thirty identical fuses runs the reversing camera, and what that amber symbol on the dashboard is trying to tell you. Guessing at any of those costs money eventually.

Handbook or workshop manual? They are not the same thing

For the eight jobs on our DIY list, the handbook covers about six of them on its own. Brake and suspension work is where a proper repair manual starts to earn its price.

Manuals by make

These sites collect manufacturer owner’s manuals by model and year, which is usually the fastest route when your handbook has gone missing:

For other makes, the manufacturer’s own UK website usually has an owners’ section where you enter the registration or VIN and download the correct PDF free of charge. It is worth doing that once and keeping the file on your phone — a handbook is most needed on a dark forecourt, not at home.

Haynes has stopped printing manuals for new cars

For half a century the answer to “where do I find out how to do this?” was a Haynes manual with an oily thumbprint on the cover. Haynes has confirmed it is no longer producing new printed workshop manuals for recent models, moving instead to online data.

What that means in practice:

• Older cars are still well covered. If your car is more than about ten years old, a printed manual almost certainly exists — and second-hand copies are cheap and plentiful.
• Newer cars mean online subscriptions. Haynes and its competitors sell time-limited online access to the same data. Fine while you need it, gone when the subscription lapses.
• Model-specific forums and owners’ clubs have filled part of the gap. Quality varies wildly, but for a specific fault on a specific engine they are often better than any manual.
• An OBD2 reader has become close to essential. A basic Bluetooth reader costs about £20 and turns “the engine light is on” into a specific fault code you can research before anyone quotes you for anything.

If you like paper, our beginner maintenance books page covers the general-purpose guides that teach the principles rather than one model — those age far better than a model-specific manual.

Five things to look up in the handbook this week

1. Oil specification and capacity. Modern engines are fussy. The wrong viscosity or spec can affect emissions equipment and, on some engines, cause real damage.
2. Tyre pressures, laden and unladen. Most people run the unladen figure with four passengers and a boot full of luggage.
3. Service intervals in miles and months. Whichever comes first — and for low-mileage cars it is almost always the months.
4. The fuse chart. Ten minutes and a £1 fuse instead of a diagnostic charge, for a dead 12 V socket or reversing camera.
5. What the warning lights mean. Specifically which ones mean “book a garage” and which mean “stop the car now”. Those two categories look far more similar than they should.

Sources: end of new printed Haynes workshop manuals — Autocar. Last reviewed September 2026.