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fetch-ford-service-manuals

Downloads HTML and PDF versions of Ford Service Manuals from PTS.

Bought a 72-hour subscription to Ford's service manuals and want to save it permanently? Here's the repo for you.

These manuals are copyrighted by Ford, so don't share them!

Table of Contents

Usage

Getting this to work currently requires some knowledge of browser DevTools. If you're not sure how to use them, ask a friend who does.

This script uses playwright, a headless browser interop library, to save documents as PDF files rather than raw HTML (this way files include images).

(Avoid) Using Windows

While this script has been verified to work on Windows natively (see issue #6), it's recommended to run it in WSL. Running in WSL makes installing things like Git and Node far easier.

WSL is a way to run Linux (Ubuntu is recommended for this project) in tandem with Windows. It's far faster than a virtual machine but still uses the real Linux kernel. Learn more and see install instructions here.

Set up Node (>16.3) and Yarn

  1. Install Node.js 16.3 or newer (with corepack)
  2. Run corepack enable

Get code and dependencies

  1. Clone this repository with git clone https://github.com/iamtheyammer/fetch-ford-service-manuals.git, and enter the repository's directory (likely with cd fetch-ford-service-manuals)
    • Previously cloned? Run git pull to get up to date!
    • If git pull does not say Already up to date., run the next 2 steps to ensure your dependencies are up-to-date.
    • If you get an error while pulling, try running git stash, git pull, then git stash apply to un-stash your files.
  2. Run yarn to download dependencies
  3. Run yarn playwright-setup to download and set up Playwright

Set up PTS

These instructions are intended for Chrome or Chrome-based browsers.

  1. If you haven't, purchase a PTS subscription from here. The 72-hour subscription is fine.
  2. Once purchased, go to PTS: click here, then click on your subscription title. how to open PTS
  3. Once PTS opens, navigate to your car.
    • On the left, choose By Year & Model, then select your car's year and model.
      • In some countries, By Year & Model may not be available. In that case, choose By VIN and enter your VIN.
    • Press GO once selected.

Set up template files

  1. In templates/, make a copy of cookieString.txt.template, and name it cookieString.txt
  2. Clear the contents of cookieString.txt
  3. In templates/, make a copy of params.json.template, and name it params.json.

2003 or newer: Get data for your car

If your vehicle was made BEFORE 2003, use these instructions.

This script requires some data about your car that's not available in the PTS GUI in order to fetch the correct manual.

  1. Open DevTools, and navigate to the Network tab.
  2. Click on the Workshop tab in PTS.
  3. Filter for the one POST to https://www.fordservicecontent.com/Ford_Content/PublicationRuntimeRefreshPTS//publication/prod_1_3_372022/TreeAndCover/workshop/32/~WSLL/{some numbers here}. It should look similar to the request in this photo.
  4. Click on that request, and look at the sent form data (i.e. the payload).
  5. Open templates/params.json, and copy/paste information from that request into the values of the JSON .workshop field.
    • Do not add fields. Only change values.
    • Copy-and-paste values to ensure you don't add typos.
    • Change the values to match. You probably won't need to change anything under the line break.
    • If you can't find the Book Title or Wiring Book Title, look in the query string parameters. Do not leave them blank!
  6. Get your wiring data: follow instructions here.

2002 or older: Get data for your car

If your vehicle was made IN 2003 or LATER, use these instructions.

  1. Click on the Workshop tab in PTS.
    • You may see a couple manuals, often a "Workshop Manual" and a "Body Collision Repair Manual". You can use this application to download both-- just repeat the process for each manual, just remember to change the output path for each manual!
    • To proceed, click on either manual.
  2. In the sidebar, right click on "Alphabetical Index", and click "Copy Link Address" (see picture).
  3. Open templates/params.json, and change only:
    • workshop.modelYear to the year of your car
    • pre_2003.alphabeticalIndexURL to the URL you copied in step 2
    • The rest will be filled in later
    • Copy-and-paste values to ensure you don't add typos.
  4. Open DevTools in your browser.
  5. Get your wiring data: follow instructions here.

All Vehicles: Get wiring data

  1. Clear the DevTools Network pane (click on the trash can or circle with a line through it)
  2. Click the Wiring tab at the top of PTS.
  3. Filter for the GET request to this URL: https://www.fordservicecontent.com/Ford_Content/PublicationRuntimeRefreshPTS//wiring/TableofContent (there are query params at the end, that's ok). It should look similar to the request in this photo.
    • Make sure that "Content" in the url is SINGULAR: TableOfContent, not TableOfContents
  4. Copy the environment,bookType, and languageCode query params into .wiring in params.json.
    • If WiringBookTitle or WiringBookCode are still missing, you may need to select you may need to select a wiring manual. After selecting a manual, you'll find these in another request to https://www.fordtechservice.dealerconnection.com/wiring/TableOfContents (with some query params at the end):
    • booktitle → WiringBookTitle
    • book → WiringBookCode
    • Use these two requests to fill in params.json as best as you can.
  5. Save params.json.
  6. Create a copy of cookieString.txt.template called cookieString.txt if you haven't already.
  7. Filter for the GET request to this URL: https://www.fordtechservice.dealerconnection.com/wiring/TableOfContents (there are query params at the end, that's ok).
    • Unlike last time, make sure "Contents" in the url is PLURAL: TableOfContents, not TableOfContent
  8. Go to the request headers and find the "Cookie:" entry.
  9. Copy the cookies from this request (triple-click to select all) and paste into the cookieString.txt file.
    • Do not include the name of the header (cookieString.txt should not include Cookie:, for example.)
    • NOTE: In Firefox, you MUST enable the Raw toggle at the top right of Response Headers, then copy it from there. If you don't, you'll get an invalid character error when trying to fetch wiring diagrams.
  10. Save cookieString.txt.

Download the manual!

To download the manual as PDFs, run yarn start -c templates/params.json -s templates/cookieString.txt -o /directory/where/you/want/the/downloaded/manual/. You should see output that looks like this.

Before manuals start to download, the bot will validate that your cookies are correctly set up by attempting to open the PTS site in the background. While you can skip this check, there is a good chance that skipping it (with --noCookieTest) will result in an error later on.

Make sure that the directory for the downloaded manual is empty-- it'll have lots of subfolders.

You can get more param information by running yarn start --help. Notably, --saveHTML will save .html files along with the .pdf files downloaded by default, and --ignoreSaveErrors will continue downloading manuals if an error is encountered, skipping the file with an error.

It can take a little while! On a fast computer with a fast internet connection, and, more importantly, a fast disk drive, over 15 minutes to download the manuals for the 2005 Taurus. Be patient!

Also, the resulting folder is pretty sizeable. The folder for the 2005 Taurus was about 300mb, and the F150 folder was a couple gigabytes.

Having issues? See Common Issues or FAQ.

Results

This bot downloads the entire workshop manual and all wiring diagrams for the vehicle you set up.

All vehicles: Wiring diagrams

Wiring diagrams will be in outputpath/Wiring. There's also a toc.json file with the table of contents for the wiring diagrams.

Connector Views & Component Location Charts

If you have a Wiring/Connector Views folder, you've got a special file in there: Connectors.csv. It tells you where to find every connector in the car, and where it is in the Component Location Charts. Open it in Excel or Google Sheets to see the data. Here's a quick example:

Connector IDConnectorConnector Location Views Page NumberGrid ReferenceLocation in Vehicle
C168A10R80 Transmission (2.7L)29F5Transmission
C1840Line Pressure Control (LPC) solenoid34E8Inside transmission

2003 or newer: Workshop manual

The folder structure in the output directory will mimic the structure on PTS, so if a file has a path like 1: General Information -> 00: Service Information -> 100-00 General Information -> About this Manual, it will be in the folder outputpath/1: General Information/00: Service Information/100-00 General Information/About this Manual.pdf.

The cover.html file contains the book's cover and a table of contents laid out in bullet points. The tree of those bullet points directly maps to the file structure of the downloaded manual. Note that some characters are not allowed in file/folder names, so characters like slashes, colons, and more are replaced with dashes when saving.

The toc.json file contains the computer-readable table of contents, with the name mapped to the "document number", which is used to fetch the PDF.

Truncated filenames

Most operating systems limit filenames to 255 bytes (not 255 characters). For filenames over 200 characters (which are fairly rare), the downloader will truncate the name, then add (docID truncated) onto the end.

If you're having trouble finding a document with a long name, search for it in toc.json, where it will be a key with a value. That value is the docID which will be in the filename.

2002 or older: Workshop manual

Vehicles from 2002 or older have a different, harder-to-fetch structure in the manual, so this tool just uses the alphabetical index. This means the output is a bit different; you'll simply get a flat structure with all pages in the manual in the output folder you specified.

You can easily browse the manual by opening outputpath/AA_Table_Of_Contents.html-- all the links work except for the letters at the top.

There are also a few special files:

These files are prefixed with AAA so they appear at the top of the file list in most file browsers.

Common Issues

Failed to log in with the provided cookies.

When the script starts, it tries to sign in to PTS to verify that your cookies are working. If this fails, you may not be able to fetch manuals.

Try to re-collect cookies and make sure you're using the correct ones. If you're 100% sure that your cookies are correct, you can add --noCookieTest to the command.

Looks like your PTS subscription has expired

Well, it looks like your subscription has expired. You'll need to renew it to download manuals.

This check can also be skipped with --noCookieTest, but without a subscription you won't be able to download manuals.

Expected cookie ... not found in cookie string. This may affect functionality.

The script auto-checks your cookie file against a list of expected cookies. If it can't find one of the expected cookies, it'll warn you (note that the bot does not stop if this prints out).

If you see this message and the script starts to download manuals, let it go-- it's just a warning. If you see the message and everything downloads just fine, please open a GitHub issue so I can fix it for others.

If you're having issues, try re-collecting your cookies.

ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR

This can either mean that your cookies are invalid or that Ford (actually Akamai) has detected we're using a headless browser (Playwright).

First, try re-collecting your cookies and trying again. If you still have issues, reach out.

ERR_BAD_RESPONSE

This usually means that one of the fields in your params.json file is incorrect. Check that all the fields are correct, and if you're still having issues, open a GitHub issue. (This sometimes happens as Ford updates their site.)

FAQ

Which vehicles does this work with?

All the ones I've tested. Just for fun, I tried:

All worked flawlessly!

How do I re-collect my cookies?

To re-collect cookies, follow the instructions in this set of instructions, making sure you:

If you're still having trouble, reach out.

Will this work in my country/region?

Probably! We've had success all across North America, South America, Europe, and Australia.

While the script is in English (meaning all messages that print out will be in English), it will download manuals in the language specified in params.json. Note that Ford must have the manual available in the requested language.

To download manuals in a specific language, change your PTS language, re-collect all parameters, and run the download again.

How can I support this project?

As Ford continues to change how manuals are accessed, this project requires continuous maintenance.

If this project was helpful to you, you can support this project on GitHub sponsors (click the "Sponsor" button at the top of the page), buy me a coffee, or just share it!

Contributions via pull requests are also more than welcomed. For the highest chance of getting your PR merged, please:

These are not requirements-- I can always help you with these things-- but they make the process faster.

Can I get help/support?

I'm generally happy to help, but I am a full-time university student and this is a pure passion project. I also don't keep a PTS subscription on hand for testing (it's pretty expensive long-term!).

For help, either open a GitHub issue or join the Discord server. To help with 99% of issues, I'll need the error you're getting along with your params.json and cookieString.txt files. There's a method on the Discord server to send them privately.

Why did you make this?

I wanted to have the manual for my car, and I bought the subscription hoping to download a PDF, so that's exactly what I did!

Why do you fetch pages one-at-a-time?

Two reasons. Firstly, I don't want to DDoS Ford (they also have Akamai in front of this, and a ton of parallel requests would absolutely trigger it and get us blocked). Secondly, it was easier to code synchronously.