If you’ve worked on cars over the course of the last 75 years, you’ve probably heard of Motor manuals, Chilton manuals, and Haynes manuals. Maybe you had an old Glenn’s auto repair manual or a copy of a Clymer. A name that might have slipped your mind, however, is Goodheart-Willcox, publisher of all the titles pictured above, although the mini-mechanics crawling on the Chevy and the Volkswagen above may jog a memory or two.
Goodheart-Willcox got its start by publishing Dyke’s Automobile and Gasoline Engine Encyclopedia in 1921, and they’re still around today as a publisher of books for education. Regardless of the shadows of the Sears Catalog standing menacingly over such a pursuit, they’ve managed to make it to 100 years and more.
One of their most prolific authors was a man named William King Toboldt, whose name on the byline became synonymous with the “Fix Your [Fill in the Blank]” series of repair manuals for decades. Short of subscribing to ancestry.com or the Chicago Tribune, one will come up sadly empty of biographical information of Mr. Toboldt, but from what I’ve been able to piece together, he himself lived almost 100 years, passing away in 1992. According to the Front Matter of his repair guides, he was a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and an associate member of the Automotive Engine Rebuilders Association (which still exists as the “Engine Builders Association”).
My introduction to Mr. Toboldt’s work was at my local library, which in itself is well over a hundred years old, the land having been donated by one of the slash-and-burn lumber barons so well-known to Michigan history. I walked to the library as a kid and would often check out Fix Your Ford, the 1973 edition from what I recall. Having been given my mom’s derelict 1965 Mustang at a young age, my youth was misspent with my nose inside service manuals and HPBooks that I didn’t completely understand until I was a little older.
I rarely read the books cover-to-cover, but rather I jumped to sections and let my disorganized mind take in images and snippets. Many of the pictures were clearly taken from factory service manuals, which are my go-to source today, but they weren’t exactly available at the library back then. Like all good catch-all service manuals, there was a handy troubleshooting guide in the Goodheart-Willcox books.
The manual was also filled with factory photos that were largely unavailable in those pre-internet days of the late-1980s and early-1990s. One thing that strikes me as adventurous today is the section on engine rebuilding. I like to think of the 1950s-1970s as a time when someone would rebuild their engine with nothing more than a copy of Fix Your Ford in front of them. I’m sure it happened, although that kind of activity has either been replaced by YouTube or disappeared altogether; after all, engines last a lot longer these days.
More recently, I found a copy of Toboldt’s Diesel: Fundamentals, Service, Repair at a swap meet. Published in 1983 (Bill Toboldt would have been 88 years old or so at the time if my information is correct!), I bought it to fill the very wide gap in my knowledge of diesel mechanics. Being that I’ve never worked on or owned a diesel-powered car or truck, it’s unsurprising that I was starting with nothing more than the four-cycle basics, and the book was helpful in explaining things with the amount of detail I was looking for.
Being that Goodheart-Willcox is an educational publisher, you’d expect them to print books on general auto repair for those students who were going to school to be mechanics or simply taking auto shop to learn how to fix their own cars. Sure enough, they printed the Automotive Encyclopedia for just that purpose.
The problem with buying one today? Unless you buy the teacher’s manual, you don’t get the answers to the review questions at the end of each chapter. Still, for anyone who is looking to learn how an automobile works in an easy-to-understand way (and again, with factory pictures), this is still an excellent place to start one’s journey.
These G-W books are still available all over the place; my parents picked me up a copy of Fix Your Ford at an estate sale (it’s appropriately copyrighted in 1965, perfect for my two classic Fords). One thing I never quite understood, however, was the concept of the mini-mechanic(s) of the cover. They have more than a bit of a Chrysler “Tech” vibe, but they added a little visual flair to a workaday topic. If you have an old car in your garage, these little guys can still help.
For those who want to relive their service-manual-reading youth, the Internet Archive has quite a few Goodheart-Willcox titles available to “check out.” Time marches on, huh?
Related Reading:
Shop Manual Classics: The MOTOR Manual – The Next Best Thing To A Factory Shop Manual Since Forever (by me)
I have a copy of the 20th edition of Dyke’s Automobile and Gasoline Engine Encyclopedia, published in 1943. It is a serious book, weighing 2.4 kilos, with 1244 main pages plus 111 addenda. Everything known in the US about
automobiles and engines in 1943 is covered, including diesels, aircraft engines and even the Oldsmobile Hydramatic. Well worth the $30 I paid for it in the early 2000s.
“Automotive Encyclopedia” was the textbook for my Engine Mechanics class in High School.
I thought it was so useful, that I went to a bookstore and ordered a copy. Still have it. Still recommended for kids of all ages who want to understand cars…although…it’s going to be somewhat dated; coming out at a time when Domestic wrong-wheel-drive vehicles were limited to Toronado and ElDorado; and on-board computers were glimmers in the eyes of the engineers.
The Chrysler “Tech” Vibe link, is directing to AERA.
Oops! Thanks…it’s fixed now.
I was given an old edition of Dykes years ago. It probably dates to the early 40s and covers all kinds of obsolete tech, like pouring bearings and mixing up your own engine paint. It is fascinating to thumb through, even if I will never put its information into practice.
I remember copies of “Fix Your Ford” and “Fix Your Chevrolet” in various editions at my local library when I was a teen. But I was spoiled by their wide selection of factory service manuals that were available for checkout, which I used regularly.
Your library had factory manuals? Wow, we were nowhere near that lucky.
The four dwarves who are fixing the 1976 Ford and five toddlers at play with the Chevrolet are bizarre.
Though I do no work on my vintage cars by myself (would have loved to learn that but I was born the wrong gender, at the wrong time, and lived among the wrong economic class to have such an opportunity) I do keep a Motors book of the appropriate year range in the box I keep in each car’s trunk with their shop manuals. Today’s working mechanics who were taught to plug a reader into a car’s diagnostic port, need some obsolete information at times. One of the best features Motors has, is a photo showing the difference between each year of a marque. That’s not real useful for mechanics any more because I tell them what year my car is. But it is very useful for car spotting. If I have a photo of a Ford and need to know if it is a 1961 or 1962, all I have to do is turn to the F section and find those Fords.
> One of the best features Motors has, is a photo showing the difference between each year of a marque.
That feature was invaluable to me when I first became interested in cars. The photos were fuzzy half-tones and weren’t always legible enough to give me answers. We didn’t have Google available to show us color photos for comparison. One couldn’t check out the Motor manuals at my library. I assume backyard mechanics would get the pages greasy. But I was always tempted to cut those pages out and take them home. This was still the age of annual styling but I’m sure that the local gas station mechanic had easier ways to tell a 1961 from a 1962 than I had.
I still have the “auto mechanics fundamentals” and “auto service and repair” by Martin W Stockel, published by G-W, that my brother got when he took auto mechanics at community college back in the mid ’70s. Still use them from time to time even now.
I have a copy of “Auto Mechanics Fundamentals,” as well. It’s a great book for brushing up on your basics.
I hotroded a ‘59 Rambler wagon in high school. (1965 – 1968) Learned how to repair/rebuild engines; transmissions etc from Motors Manuels. (Still have all the books). Didn’t know about G-W books. Would have helpfull at the time. Loved to beat Chevys and Fords in Rambler station wagon.
That Rambler sounds like a story waiting to be written, Jack. Have you thought about a Car of a Lifetime series, or even just a writeup on your wagon?
It was an interesting adventure. The car came with a 196 ci 6 cylinder engine. I replaced it with a 250 ci V8 from a ‘57 Rambler. The only interchangeable parts were the upper radiator hose and the rear rubber brake line. I rebuilt the engine and the 3 speed overdrive transmission. Ported and polished the heads, had the heads shaved in little to increase compression, built a “high rise” intake manifold, put in a bigger Holly 4 barrel carb, custom built floor shifter and painted the car. Chevy 283 and Ford 289 that weren’t highly modified I could beat or keep up with in a quarter mile. They hated being beat by a Rambler station wagon.
Never heard of the Dykes manual. I do have a 1974-79 Motors manual. A bunch of Haynes manuals, most of which I picked up at the resale whenever I saw one. I have one Chilton manual, but it always seemed impossible to find whatever I was looking for. Over the last 2 decades I’ve just bought the factory service manual off eBay whenever I got a car I was keeping, usually they were less than $20 shipped. I like paper books rather than fiddling with a phone or tablet.
I once had a copy of the Automotive Encyclopedia but had forgotten about it. I wonder when it disappeared. When I was into Triumph sports cars, my go-to manual was Bentley’s. They were copies of the factory manuals If I recall correctly, they had done many British workshop manuals. Far more useful than Clymer, Autobooks, Chilton or any other. “Rod’s Enthusiast’s Shop Manual was even better than the official Mazda during my Miata phase.
I once saw the Bentley Publishing people in the midway at an auto race around 1994 and told them that the Miata was right in their wheelhouse. But the gentleman looked down his nose at me and said that they had gone on to more ‘coffee-table’ styled books. They’re the ones behind the recent edition of Ludvigsen’s “Porsche: Excellence Was Expected”. It seems that they still offer manuals for some European cars but consider Asian makes to be beneath them.
I might add, in my experience, Chilton manuals, have the most mistakes or just plain wrong. But they are just one step above bird cage liner anyway, so no surprise.
I agree ;
Chilton manuals have the most errors, it’s like they didn’t even bother looking at a factory manual or the vehicle in question .
Haynes, in it’s older versions apparently used a spin wheel to discern the important technical details and specifications, to the point where the colloquial name for them is “H.B.O.L.” or Haynes Book Of Lies .
I have several versions of the VW book shown, even a 1956 version with the dust cover intact .
I wonder where I could sell these as I’m closing in on the end of my long career and fear my son will pitch them all out along with my MOTORS manuals and original Porsche 356 & 914 manuals, factory Honda and others Motocycle shop manuals and large collection of vintage owner’s booklets .
-Nate