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Oldsmobile
1949 Shop Manual 6 and 8

The lubrication chart is a 2-page spread with tiny type. The file is 459375 bytes.

Introduction

The "Oldsmobile 1949 Shop Manual 6 and 8" was copyright, 1949 by the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors Corporation, Lansing, Michigan. Works published in the U.S. from 1923 to 1963, and not subject to exemptions for foreign works, had to have the copyright renewed in the 28th year after publication or the work is now public domain. This is the trail through U.S. copyright that I followed before placing the scans of the pages of this book online:

• Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States
• How Can I Tell Whether a Book Can Go Online?
• How Can I Tell Whether a Copyright Was Renewed?
• Information about the Catalog of Copyright Entries
• Copyright renewals for 1976
• Copyright renewals for 1977

No copyright renewal record for this book was found.

Preparation

Discussion took place at Hotrodders.com.

The book was bound using 3 large steel staples and the cover was glued on. The glue was brittle and had gaps between the spine and the stapled pages. A pocket knife blade was gently worked along the glue line from these gaps. The spine separated without damage to the pages. The staples were removed and the pages separated. There was some prior wrinkling and damage from the staples, but not more than should be expected for a 57 year old shop manual. Better scans and less damage results from unbinding the pages instead of trying to flatten the book on the scanner.

Scanning

Each page was scanned at 600 dpi, 8-bit grayscale, and saved as a PNG image, using Xsane and an Epson Perfection 4870 Photo scanner. The cover and the color diagrams for the Hydra-matic transmission were scanned in 24-bit color.

This resulted in files of about 17 MB each, which is far too large for viewing with a browser. Copies of these were resized and converted to JPEG images using the convert utility of ImageMagick. Extra images were created using Gimp to crop or rotate the original images. The original scans are available for download.

Bash script used for converting the large PNG scans to JPGs, executed from within the directory containing the PNGs:

 #!/bin/bash
 for n in *.png
 do
	x=${n%.*}
	ls -l $n
	convert -quality 85 -resize 800x $n $x.jpg
	ls -l $x.jpg
 done

The book

Filenames are the same as page numbers, just padded with up to 2 leading zeroes and with a .jpg suffix. The PHP script used to page through the manual makes it easy to jump to any particular page. Note that no attempt was made to correct errors occurring in the original book. For example, page 5, the last page of the Index, shows "Wiring diagram, chassis. . . .630-633" when it should show 422 - 425.

Front cover
Rear cover
Spine
Table of contents
Copyright page
Index -- Accelerating pump - Fuel pump trouble chart
Index -- Garnish molding - Rear axle insulators
Index -- Rear axle lubrication - Wiring diagram, chassis

Much thanks to Rusty of The Old Car Manual Project and Keith of Old Online Chevy Manuals for the tremendous amount of work they do to preserve and disseminate important historical information that might otherwise be lost. Their work inspired this comparatively small one. Each is welcome to copy and/or modify any portion or all of this on their sites to add to their excellent, extensive collections.