el cheapos

This pehaps could be useful in addition to other manuals and/or a hands-on course, but but itself it's close to useless (though it depends on what exactly you're endeavoring to do: some procedures are better covered than others.)

In general, there's endless cross-referencing (so that a simple-looking procedure in one place will refer you to five other procedures and so on, so you won't be able not only to do anything, but simply understand.) Pictures are not helpful, crude, frequently not very illustrative.

The good parts are the introductory ones -- the necessary tools, etc. Again, if that's the only book you have and you're not a mechanic you won't be able to do anything based on this book. A better option would be to get the official Mazda manuals (a 2-book set) from an authorized dealer and, better yet, take a auto-maintenance course. Most of this stuff is really simple but hands-on; if you watch someone actually do something and then try to match the procedure with the description in the book you'll see what I mean.

Well, I've said most of this stuff is simple -- that's not quite right; many procedures are anything but simple and require a shop setup to perform correctly, so I'm not sure what the premise of this kind of books is to begin with: after all, the complex tasks you won't be doing yourself anyway (so why have them there), while the simple stuff that is within the reach is either badly demonstrated or altogether missing. A good example: say you need to replace a windshield washer hose. It is a very simple operation that anyone could do, but there's no word on it in the book. But there is all kinds of stuff about the engine, most of which a regular Joe couldn't do even if he knew how to.

This book is practically useless, I think; definitely check it out in a store before buying to make sure that the procedure that you need is present and covered in an understandable way.

When you page through this book you notice all the great diagrams. It's not until use it that you realize none of the blow up diagrams have any parts labeled. The book has a lot of great procedures but most are not thorough enough and there is no general troubleshooting section to steer you in the right direction (other chiltons have this). For example, my Mazda lunged and quit working. I troubleshot a lot of systems before finding a weak spark. Then the only explanation for a weak spark in the book was the coil. I validated the coil did not meet their validation criteria and replaced it. But it did not work so I took it to the dealer. The dealer determined it was the distributor. The book had no validation or installation procedures for the distributor.

It is indeed a tough job to describe so many different models of Mazda vehicles in one book. While a lot of information is covered, I feel that too much space has been devoted to teaching the basics of how to do generic tasks. Not having seen any other Chilton's manuals, I don't know if this basic training appears in all manuals, but I beleive that the basics should be left out so that much more detail can be included about the specifics of the Mazda vehicles covered by the manual. The information included in Chapter 1 for example, should be in a General Mechanics book. Apart from that, I have found the manual helpful.