Some of the manuals include general manuals, diagnosis descriptions, repair manuals and maintenance manuals.  General manuals are mostly related to the make and type of the automobile. One search of the combination gives you various results and depending on your requirement you can choose the one.

Diagnosis manuals help you to identify the part that is causing the troubles in the automobile and repair manuals help you to rectify the problem of that component and fix the problem. Maintenance manuals help in the effective maintenance of the vehicle.

FSM basically stands for the manual that is published and supplied as the product of a branded company; Aftermarket service manual indicates the manual that are available separately from other brands or sources and they are used and published by other companies.

The main difference between these two manuals is where the content come from and how much information and description they provide to the reader.  One comes from the OEM or Original Equipment Manufactured end while the aftermarket is from any other company such as Clinton or Haynes, or etc that is working in collaboration with the original manufacturer.  Moreover the other fact to be noted is that most of the factory service manual endorse better and higher quality both in terms of content representation such schematics, layout, pictures, diagrams, and etc.

The aftermarket service manual might indicate it covers from this year to that year for a particular model, however the contents of such manual are generally not very detailed to the specific year as each model year has slightly different parts and repairing procedures.  This doesn't mean aftermarket manuals don't work for you at all as it still does its job fine if you have good mechanic background or you are just performing small repair or maintenance jobs.

So, it's usually the best to go for factory service repair manual if you are going to do bigger repair or maintenance jobs on your car, because you don't want to get stuck in the middle of repair and not to know how to do next.

When you get an online factory service manual, you will find that it is:

• Very simple to use
• Cost less than book version
• Factory diagnostic sources and information
• Complete sour of repair and maintenance procedures
• Part numbers for your factory car components and parts
• Easier navigation between pages

There are many ways you can get either free or paid service manuals on the internet.  You can often get access to free manuals by going to car forum that's for your car model and do some search there.  There are also manuals that cost less and are available in either book format or CD, and you find them easily through our site search.

Manuals on CD is a newer form, and it may not be available for your car.  They are often in a PDF file format, so you would need an Adobe Reader to read it.  Adobe Reader is free and you can get it from Adobe's website.  It comes with everything that a book format has.  The CD also often comes with this amazing feature that each referenced sentence or section is linked, and you can just simply click on the link, and then you will be to that page.  Another words if you are reading on how to change your brake rotors, before you change your brake rotors, you have to uninstall your brake pads.  An Uninstalling Brake Pads section will be linked in the Brake Rotors section, and you can just click on the link, and you will be in the Brake Pads section without flipping or finding pages like in the book form.  This linked feature is also available for your Index section as well.

So which type of service manual form should you purchase? Well, if you don't like storing a thick book in your garage or bookshelf, or afraid the book might get wore down or tear pages, you could probably consider purchasing the service manual in a CD form, especially with the linked feature.  If you don't like reading your manual on a computer, you can also just print the sections or pages you want from your computer.  If you end up printing all the pages from your computer, you might as well just buy the factory service manual in a book form to save you money on the ink and paper because there are simply just too many pages.

FSMs are mostly more informative and endorse better quality in terms of presentation.  Since the source of the service manual contents come from your car's manufacturer, you can often trust and rely more on information they provide in the manual.  It is always better to go for the specific repair  manual for your car if you have the budget; otherwise there are also Aftermarket Service Manuals available in the market for lower price, such as Haines, Clinton, and etc.

Factory  Manuals can also be purchased in two forms: Book and CD.  For more information on this, you can read the Difference between Factory Service Manual Book vs CD here.