Since I first passed my driving test (circa 1965), I have owned and ran every type of banger you can imagine. My first-ever car was a 1956 Hillman Minx with a slipping clutch. By careful driving I did about 1000 miles but then, when I found myself having to avoid steep hills, I thought is was time to get the clutch done, but whatever it cost in those days was a lot of money, so with the help of a friend, I set about getting the gearbox out. I knew the gearbox had to come out, but no idea how that happened. To make things worse, neither did my friend, but we knew where it was and lying on our backs under the car, set about unscrewing every nut and bolt we could see. Well, it was bound to come out sooner or later! Well it did along with a shower of smelly black oil all over our heads and clothing! You can imagine what my mum said! And my father wasn't too pleased either because now my banger was stuck on bricks in his garage. He took one look at it and it was obvious to him that neither my friend nor I would have the first idea about how to put it all back together again - so the car was sold for spares for a fiver. You didn't have top pay people to take them away in those days.

The Haynes Workshop Manuals had just hit the market and I got one for the Escort before making the attempt. A work colleague had one for his Vauxhall and it had looked very good. Looking through the pages, I could see exactly how to remove a gearbox and clutch, and then align and fit a new one. Clutch replacement in a garage was around £40 in those days (no quick fit centres), and I paid out around ten quid for the parts needed. Again the same friend helped me out with the gear box, but this time, within two hours I was back on the road with the car in perfect running order.

One particular manual that in my opinion has saved me a fortune is the Engine Management and Fuel Injection Systems manual. The first car I owned with an engine management system was back in 1992 (a two-year-old XR3i) and soon it was running too lean and overheating because of it, and had difficult hot starting. These early systems did have problems. With the help of the manual I managed to trace the problem to a faulty mixture sensor (the air/petrol ratio was all over the place). £25 for a new sensor fixed that problems and similar sensor problems were also fixed during my long ownership of the car. Plugging the car into an analyser at the Ford garage was the only other option - I think it was £80 just for a diagnosis! I owned this car for 10 years but would have got rid of it a lot sooner if it hadn't been for Haynes.

My latest acquisition is the Haynes computer manual, which I have used to add an extra hard drive, memory, modem, replaced my CD RW and more. I am now looking to build a super-fast hi-tech machine, just for the hell of it, and then I can make a comparison between what I have built and what it would cost me in the shops.

If somebody is not very mechanically minded, Haynes now rates each job with small icons of spanners - the more spanners the higher degree of difficulty for the job. They also have a weekly checks section, routine maintenance section (for servicing including the correct oils and other lubricants needed for the model of car in question), trouble-shooting section, bodywork section, electrical section and an index. The books are compiled during a complete strip-down and reassembly of the car/motorbike/other product in question taking photographs and/or drawing explanatory diagrams at the same time.