*******MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL********
Last summer my wife bought me the Original Technical Publications document collection for the XJ. If you are the type of person who enjoys researching these cars, then I highly recommend buying this. The documents and information are really cool, but the user experience could be better.
What’s really great about this collection?
I found the supplementary dealer information to be the most interesting. These are additional dealer info and training documents. For example, the first document is What’s New for ’75 – Advanced Service Information. This 22 page document highlights changes in the ’75 models such as the addition of a power steering oil cooler for V12 cars. It also has documents specifically outlining service procedures for fuel injection, the heating system, automatic transmission and repair operation times for our cars (this is useful to see how difficult something might be before jumping into a repair)
What could be better?
OK, so how is this to use? Overall the interface and usability feels a bit outdated and clunky. There are two options and I have the less expensive single license version, so my comments may not apply to the more expensive, portable USB version.
For obvious reasons, this is set up to stop the documents ending up on a torrent site or copying and sharing of the documents. The first thing you need to decide is what single device you are going to install this on. In my case, I used our Windows 10 laptop, with the idea that I could take this into the garage for reference when needed.
When you click on a document, it brings up a viewer called LockLizard to open the file. There is a table of contents along the left side but you really end up viewing the document page by page. This makes sense as the documents were scanned, but if you have experience using reference documentation for a newer car, you won’t have the same searching, viewing and drilling in capabilities. LockLizard looks and feels dated, but it may be the best option out there to keep the documents secure.
Even though you can print out pages to take notes on and take into the garage, I may be old school, but I find it a lot easier to use the paper service manual and parts book when actually doing work on the car.
An annoyance for me is how it seems overprotective. I use Evernote for my projects, blogging ideas and just about all my organization. If I have Evernote open and try to open one of the files, LockLizard says “close down the screen capture program, Evernote” and will not open the file. I can close down Evernote, but the message still pops up until I restart the laptop. This drives me a little crazy 🤪
So overall, what do I think. The price is amazing for all of the reference documentation you get. I guarantee that you will find information here that you have never seen before. Even though the interface is clunky, its a lot of fun to just browse through the information. I highly recommend this for any XJ DIYers.