This is for all you shade-tree mechanics out there.
 

I just encountered a problem with my starting battery going dead on me while I was out fishing.  Everything was going fine starting the engine as I was running & gunning from fishing hole-to-fishing hole.  Then one time I went to start the engine and then it would not turn over.
 

When I got home I started looking into why and realized I needed a service manual on my engine to properly test the charging system.  So I priced a service manual at Mercury Parts Department, it was $100.00 plus shipping for a new hard copy.  That’s rough, so I looked on eBay and they had it for $50.00 plus shipping for a used hard copy; that’s better, but I kept looking.  Then a Bing search came up with a site called Tradebit, and they had the same manual in a PDF file for only $8.99 with no shipping required; and I could have the manual right then and there.  This PDF file is excellent, it’s clean and clear, I can find things with its word search feature, and if need be print out what ever page I need at the time.

So if you find you need a service manual for your engine try http://www.tradebit.com its worked great for me. 

 

Thats pretty cool Traveler !!!!

 

Thanks for sharing that !!!!

Shade-tree is what I am! Thanks for the heads up. I just have the owners manual for my outboards, which as you know are not that helpful beyond general maintenance. 

That's all I had too. I would like to have the factory hard copy, but not at those prices. If I have to I'll carry my laptop out to the boat, or print the page I need. There's a lot of good info in the service manual that's not in the owners guide.

I like to have a hard copy (a Seloc manual is also nice), but you may be able to find what you need here (@ the best price: free!): http://boatinfo.no/lib/library.html    

 

This site was useful when replacing my controls, as a manual for Merc controls was difficult to find @ the time.