John Haynes, Father of the Haynes Manual and RAF Veteran, Dies at 80

Jalopnik ^ | 2/11/2019 | David Tracy

[CtBigPat]

John Harold Haynes, died at the age of 80. John Harold Haynes was born on 25 March, 1938, according to the obituary on the Haynes website, in Sri Lanka, which was then occupied by the British and known as Ceylon. His dad managed a tea plantation there, and drove John around in a Morris 8 sedan—a pastime that John loved.

[CtBigPat]

An RAF colleague had bought a ‘Frogeye’ Sprite, which was in poor condition and he asked John to help him rebuild it. John agreed, and quickly realised that the official factory manual was not designed to help the average car owner. He bought a camera and captured the process of dismantling and rebuilding the engine. The use of step-by-step photo sequences linked to exploded diagrams became the trusted hallmark of Haynes Manuals. The first Haynes Manual, for the Austin Healey Sprite, was published in 1966, and the first print run of 3,000 sold out in less than 3 months.

https://jalopnik.com/john-haynes-father-of-the-haynes-manual-and-raf-vetera-1832536467

[BAN-ONE]

I guess that explains the British flavor present in Haynes books.

No, not as good as a factory publication.
But they always contained enough info for the task at hand.
A bargain.

[ConservativeMind]

I own multiple manuals from his company.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

I have a Haynes manual for the first-generation (1990-1997) Mazda Miata, which is dog-eared and full of grease stains. It also helped me keep my ‘91 Miata running for the seventeen years I owned it. And when I do the timing belt on the ‘90 Miata that replaced my ‘91... well, I did enough timing belts on the ‘91 that I basically only need the manual for torque specs.

And as I recall, my first experience with a Haynes manual was picking one up for the Honda Super Cub 90 we had when I was a kid. And I’m pretty sure I had one for my ‘81 Accord...

[Boiler Plate]

I have owned dozens of those. Now with YouTube they are kinda obsolete, but I always get one with every acquisition.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[Celtic Conservative]

A haynes manual and the local junkyard were all that stood between me and walking when I was a young man.

CC

[mowowie]

Those books saved me a crapload of mechanics bills when i was younger.
RIP

[ebshumidors]

I still have a bunch, but alldataDIY, auto forums and youtube are better.

[ebshumidors]

Case in point. I had a 2004 BMW330I that had a miss code in one of the cylinders. I did all the usual (compression ck, swapped coils, plugs, injectors, etc. but the problem would not follow. Next step was continuity checks on the wires and if they were good, change the computer and security module. Looking on a BMW forum I found that on some cars, there are separate chips for each coil inside the computer. I opened it up and sure enough, a chip was melted. $12 and solder a new one on. I would have never thought that and I’ve been wrenching for 40 years.