Wednesday, August 04, 2010

My Citroen ID19 Repair Manual

I went to Powells in Portland, Oregon, last week and had a ball.  First, be advised that the automotive section has moved from the main store to the Powell's Technical branch a couple of blocks away at 33 NW Park Avenue.

The selection is even more fantastic than I remembered from my last trip.  Books dedicated solely to the history of Intermeccanica, the development of the Alfa Romeo Montreal, and maintenance of your Ford Pinto can be found.  I didn't go hog wild so I ended up with just two books.

The first is Analysing Formula 1.  The author put together a lot of interesting and unusual stats, such as number of races before a driver achieves his first win versus the number of races between that driver's last win and his last race before retirement (Jacque Villeneuve "wins" with 132 winless races).

But the crown jewel is this Citroen ID19 Repair Manual.  I really dig it, even though I'll never own an ID19.
Here is the cover.  It's made out of some sort of 1960s vinyl/plastic material.  It does not appear that it was ever used.

You open the manual up and it comes in two halves.  The top half contains diagrams; the bottom half contains detailed written instructions.

See?

Table of contents for the diagram section.

Table of contents for the instruction section.  The paper is kinda thin, like wax paper.  I don't think it would have held up well after years of use.

3 comments:

  1. AlanAugust 4, 2010 at 10:13 PM

    incredible find. that would be the centerpiece of my collection.

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  2. MaxichampAugust 4, 2010 at 10:18 PM

    @Alan: Thanks for recommending Roads to Sata. I'm about 1/3 through it. It brings back fond memories of me being an outsider in Japan in the go-go 80s.

    Do you have any other travel book recs?

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  3. AlanAugust 5, 2010 at 11:01 PM

    It's a fantastic book, no? So glad you checked it out and like it. Looking for the Lost by the same author is also really good. Tragic he was taken by cancer so young, I think he would have made a name for himself.

    Zoo Station by Ian Walker is a really cool book written about 80's era cold war Berlin, from the perspective of a young, partying, inquisitive English (or was he American?) ex-pat. It really captures the zeitgeist of the place and time and is written about all elements, from the divine to the debauched on both sides of the wall. One of my favorites.

    I have others too, but have to dig through my collection as I can't recall them off-hand.

    Any recommendations for me?

    ReplyDelete