How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot

great book. it has everything you need to know.

Great insightful book. It’s helping me out with my bettle restoration!

The "bible" on the VW as far as I'm concerned. I have owned this book, two different revisions and it reads great, makes you understand the principals of the VW well.

Very good product

My husband is a VW Beetle addict and this is the perfect book for him. Someone else must have thought so too because now he has 2 copies

First, my credentials for this review. From 1971 to 1994 (with insignificant gaps), I've owned and driven three Vokswagen buses (not including a parts bus)and used this manual to keep all of them on the road. As of this writing, I'm driving my fourth bus. I've gone through four copies of the Idiot Book, using each one until it either fell to pieces, became illegible from grease and oil stains, or needed to be updated as I bought a later-model bus. It has guided me through six or seven engine rebuilds (I used my engines very, very hard) and God knows how many other procedures ... I think that I've done every single procedure in the book that applied to my particular makes and models. And using this book, I've done work on various WV bugs, buses, and squarebacks that belonged to friends of mine. I agree with everybody who calls this the indispensable reference for VW owners. I also agree with those who point out its shortcomings. Muir quotes a friend of his, on a review of another VW book. as saying "I agree one hundred percent with ninety percent of what he says." That could also apply to my own feelings about this book. As a technical manual, it mostly consists of solid information -- solid enough, anyway, to get you back on the road so you can find somebody to show you how to do it the right way. I've always advised a prospective repairer to own both this book and another manual (my favorite was the green Volkswagen Official Service Manual, also called the "Bentley"), read the Muir write-up first to get a general idea of what to do, and then compare it to the other manual, note the differences, and ask somebody why the differences are there. Usually it's because Muir assumes you're making do with a minimum of tools, or are too cash-strapped to make a proper fix. Occasionally, you'll find that John was flat wrong about something (such as how to warm it up in the morning, or why chokes should be disabled, or why the 009 distributor was perfect in every way), or that your particular model had a different set-up than the ones he was familiar with. But to simply compare this book with other technical manuals would be to ignore the most important feature of this book, which is its ability to empower you. It presumes that the reader has no technical aptitude and starts you gently down the road to proficiency and self-confidence. I'll bet that more mechanics have been inspired by this book than any other technical manual ever written. Not only that, but once you have discovered that you can indeed perform a repair competently, you get a sneaking suspicion that there are other things you can do if you apply the same confidence, common sense, and ingenuity that John taught you about. I doubt if I would have had the courage to time a sewing machine, install a hard drive, build a mandolin, or re-assemble a hang glider if John hadn't shown me that I had the potential to do these things. This book has survived because of its idiosyncrasies, not in spite of them. John writes that "You must do this work with love or you will fail. You don't have to think, but you must love." He's telling you something important about Life here, and about the relationship we have to our possessions and to our work. Forty years later, these are still wise words, and to find them in an automotive manual is astonishing. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" tried to apply philosophical principles to machine repair, but it failed because he was no mechanic and tried to gauge his mechanic's skill according to his own expectations of what a mechanic's mind-set should be. John knew better. He knew, and taught, that you achieve oneness with the machine by applying mind, heart, and hands together, and by listening to the machine as it tries to tell you what needs to be done. If there's ever been another book like that, I haven't heard of it. And if there is, I'll wager that the author has read the "Idiot Book."

Dear Amazon-- the editorial review you supplied here about the author is totally erroneous and laughable!! Please correct it. This book is NOT authored by John Muir the nature-writer and conservationist, born 1838 and who died in 1914, BEFORE the volkswagen was even invented. This book is by John Muir (b1918– d1977) who was a structural engineer who worked for National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), who "dropped out," 1960s-style, to become a writer and long-haired car mechanic with a garage in Taos, New Mexico, and who specialized in maintenance and repair of Volkswagens. OMG!! This is exactly the sort of thing that makes the World Wide Web so damn dangerous Amazon. Fix it please! Peter Aschwanden's art work is awesome. It reminds me of R. Crumb. The detail is amazing. The book itself is a master-piece of entertainment and a great combination of art and technology. Reading it front to back will give the novice a good understanding of what makes the wheels go round and round. You might want to have a Haynes manual handy too, but you can't go wrong with Muir/Tosh Gregg for taking your bug apart and putting it back together again. It's just damn fun!

Easy to read and understand.

Excelente manual

Habe dieses Buch auf Anraten eines Bekannten für einen Freund zum Geburtstag gekauft, dieser war im Mai die Freude über dieses Geschenk hält bei ihm bis heute an. Schuld daran sind die von skizzierten Bebilderungen die so weit ins Detail gehen, das selbst Laien verstehen worum es in diesem Buch geht und das wollten die Autoren wohl auch erreichen, einfach ein tolles Buch und schönes Geschenk.

If you are working on a classic VW . Beetle or Van. This book has everything in it . And it's written in a comical way. It beats any other technical book

Een hilarisch boek en tegelijk een zeer duidelijke omschrijving van werkzaamheden en onderhoud voor luchtgekoelde volkswagen eigenaren en / of liefhebbers. Een lust om te lezen met zeer mooie / maffe / geweldige tekeningen ter illustratie. Een echte aanrader ! Voor de prijs hoef je het ook niet te laten liggen.

já comecei a leitura e tradução pra conseguir conversar com mecânicos e comprar peças. ainda não avancei na recuperação da Kombi mas o livro é bem completo. recomendo.