I'd like a recommendation as to what books to buy for me to be able to work on my 2000 Sonata. I'm not going to rebuild my own engine -- no work of that type. But I want to be able to do routine repairs and a mod here and there to my electricals, door components, etc. I want to know how the radio is connected to everything, where every relay and fuse is located, and especially how to replace that lightbulb that's out behind the heat control knob -- which panels have to be removed to get to it and where the fasteners are located. Whether a task is to be done by me or a professional mechanic, I want to know what's involved. The Hyundai parts manager quoted me $45 for the shop manual, Volume 1. Volume 2 is $18 (electrical). He said that this is the literature that they use themselves. I assume that these are the same books that Helm is selling on their web site. Another party offered to sell me the manual on CD for $165 (Helm does not list this one). Do these manuals cover the vehicle adequately, or do I need to buy a "parts catalog" in order to get decent diagrams? My experience with aftermarket books in recent years has not been good, and they seem to be getting worse. These publications seem schizophrenic, leaving out a lot of routine repairs and even omitting some routine maintenance, but concentrating in intricate detail on rebuilding every engine that was ever used in the model. My purchase of Alldata/Popular Mechanics CD ROMs was even worse; the disks contained very few diagrams, and all diagrams and charts were rendered with such terrible resolution as to be virtually worthless. Advice? Richard
That sounds about right for service manuals. However, you can get the same information on Hyundai's WebTech site for free. The only caveat is that the site only works with Internet Explorer. Nice guy! That's only almost 3 times the price of the printed manuals. You don't need to buy anything. You can print any of the online pages you need as you need them. Yup, stay away from them unless you have a specific repair in mind and the book has a section on it. Still, I would use the WebTech instructions, since they come "right from the horse's mouth.
