Question about factory manuals

[jpearson]

I just bought the 63-71 manuals. I have the 72-83 manuals that I bought on ebay in a pdf format on a disk. For a variety of quality reasons (missing pages, unreadable wiring diagrams, etc...) I want to buy a set of the real manuals.

My question is - what should I look for? Are there different versions of these? I have seen both gray and red binders. Do they all have color wiring diagrams? I looked but couldn't find a thread that gave a lot of info about the manuals.

[djdsc]

There actually is a lot of info here but getting the search key words is the issue. In short, the 72-83 manuals are a 4 volume set, there is an early version with 2 binders. Getting a set with all the correct updated is the issue. The gray binders are a later issue than the burgundy ones and should ensure a more complete set, but I bought a complete burgundy set with no problems. There is information here on the forums regarding lists of manual updates but tracking these can be a bit of a PITA. I believe that the color wiring diagrams ended in the early 70's and the later ones are B&W only.