2022 Ford Super Duty Service Manual

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The other issue I have on my new laptop (Windows 11) is viewing the wiring diagrams. I think it has to do with how the .svg files are handled.... Will have to look into that some more. Seems like that is a other common complaint.
Fix for that is super easy, assuming it's the same issue I had. You need to install the SVG viewer that's on the disc. In my case (perhaps something to do with Windows 11?) it didn't install with the main installer, even though I said to install it.

The SVG viewer can be found on the CD at this path: tools\adobe\winnt\svgview.exe

Running that exe will install the SVG Viewer and wiring diagrams should work afterwards.

Awesome info @ccw !! I did some digging the other night and found other instances of people complaining about the DRM on the Helms service manual precluding them from making an ISO. The Transit forum had a rather lengthy discussion about this. I stopped there as that was the extent of my technical knowledge about how to make it work. I will give your method a try!
Yep, found the same thread after I posted my workaround to the CD. OP in that thread came up with essentially the same solution I did. You can find those instructions (and the whole thread if anyone wants some bonus reading) here:


The one big difference is the poster there changed the "3" to a "1" in the config line where you modify the path. According to the documentation in the file that should be done, but I experimented with not changing it and it worked just fine. I opted to minimize the number of changes.
 
Fix for that is super easy, assuming it's the same issue I had.
Done! Yes, super easy indeed! Thank you. I find it a bit telling that the folders are labeled, Win98, Win2k, and WinNT. Gives you an idea of the generation from which this was created...
 
Ok, after some poking here's how to get the Helm manual working without needing the CD after install.

Of note: you will need the CD for initial install without some more significant shenanigans. It is copy protected, meaning the installer won't run from a regular disc image. It needs to be run from a CD drive or a fully emulated CD drive as far as I can tell (would love to be proven wrong about this).

The need for the CD for install is super annoying if your laptop doesn't have a DVD drive and you don't have a USB CD drive on hand. Yes, they're cheap, but they should be unnecessary in this day and age for software.

Also super annoying because you need to keep the damn disc around in case you ever need to reinstall it. I'll probably poke more at this, but wanted to get y'all unblocked on using the already installed software without the disc inserted.

Steps:
  1. Insert the disc and run the installer as normal.
  2. Using File Explorer, copy the entire contents of the CD to a folder on your computer. I'm going to use the path "C:\Users\ccw\Ford Service Manual" as an example in these steps, but make that the path the folder you copied the contents to.
  3. The installer will have created the folder C:\TSO with a bunch of stuff in it. Open the file C:\TSO\tsobrowser.ini in a text editor of your choosing (e.g. Notepad). [Figure 1]
  4. Copy the 4th line, make a new line below it, and paste your copy there. [Figure 2]
  5. Comment out the 4th line by putting a semi-colon at the start of the line. [Figure 3]
  6. Modify the 5th line (the one you just pasted), replacing the path that looks like "E:\~stock\home.htm" (your drive letter might be different) with the path you copied the DVD contents to earlier (in this example "C:\Users\ccw\Ford Service Manual"). [Figure 4]
  7. Save the file, close it, and eject the DVD.
Despite ejecting the CD you should be able to launch the program without issue! Please let me know if you run into any issues with the steps above, or if you find something about the program not working after doing this.

Figure 1:
View attachment 111416

Figure 2:
View attachment 111417

Figure 3:
View attachment 111419

Figure 4:
View attachment 111420
Awesome write-up @ccw ... This was simple and worked perfectly!
 
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Done! Yes, super easy indeed! Thank you. I find it a bit telling that the folders are labeled, Win98, Win2k, and WinNT. Gives you an idea of the generation from which this was created...
Very telling. This software is ancient. Kind of wild it hasn't been updated seemingly at all. Also impressive Windows can still run it.

Awesome write-up @ccw ... This was simple and worked perfectly!
Great to hear! Good to have confirmation it worked for someone else. :D
 
Of note: you will need the CD for initial install without some more significant shenanigans. It is copy protected, meaning the installer won't run from a regular disc image. It needs to be run from a CD drive or a fully emulated CD drive as far as I can tell (would love to be proven wrong about this).

The need for the CD for install is super annoying if your laptop doesn't have a CD drive and you don't have a USB CD drive on hand. Yes, they're cheap, but they should be unnecessary in this day and age for software.

Also super annoying because you need to keep the damn disc around in case you ever need to reinstall it. I'll probably poke more at this, but wanted to get y'all unblocked on using the already installed software without the disc inserted.
So I poked some more at this and there's no reasonable way I can find to get around this. Heck, the installer would fail to run even if the CD was in my desktop computer and I network mounted the drive on my laptop.

The whole "if your laptop doesn't have a CD drive" thing applies to me. My desktop computer has a CD drive, and is how I did all of that fiddling last night, but I really want it on my laptop since that's what comes to the garage with me.

Guess I'm picking up a USB CD drive in the near future. 😡
 
So I poked some more at this and there's no reasonable way I can find to get around this. Heck, the installer would fail to run even if the CD was in my desktop computer and I network mounted the drive on my laptop.

The whole "if your laptop doesn't have a CD drive" thing applies to me. My desktop computer has a CD drive, and is how I did all of that fiddling last night, but I really want it on my laptop since that's what comes to the garage with me.

Guess I'm picking up a USB CD drive in the near future. 😡
I used my 12+ year old external drive on my laptop to install and copy all the files. It actually performed really well. I don't think it took any longer than our more recent desktop drive (read speeds must be similar).

Come on by and you can borrow it... Aren't you about ready for a good road trip??
 
I used my 12+ year old external drive on my laptop to install and copy all the files. It actually performed really well. I don't think it took any longer than our more recent desktop drive (read speeds must be similar).

Come on by and you can borrow it... Aren't you about ready for a good road trip??
Ya CD read rated haven’t changed meaningfully for a while. Don’t think a newer drive would get you much of anything. R&D basically stopped when they stopped including CD drives in the vast majority of laptops.

Lol! There’s definitely a part of me that would love to do that road trip. Cracking me up how many multiples the cost of gas would be relative to the cost of a USB CD drive.

20x I figure? :p
 
Got the Ebay USB stick in! Agreed with others on being wary of security, but figured there's been enough of them bought/plugged in without tanking the seller's reputation that I wouldn't worry too much. Here's what I did check once I plugged it in:
  1. Wrote a quick PowerShell script to output just the names of processes that have open network connections on my computer. Ran that just before plugging it in and a few times after. Saw no changes.
  2. Checked for any hidden partitions on the USB drive. There are none.
  3. Checked for hidden files on the USB drive. There are none. Just a singular, massive PDF file containing the manual.
Certainly doesn't eliminate all risk, but that would have caught some basic stuff.

Now, onto the comparison of Helm vs Ebay, along with a taste of AllDataDIY.


At the end of the day, without comparing the actual contents of the documents (first glance they seem the same) the difference between the two are the pages in the Helm manual are interactive (I'll get into that more below). By far the biggest impact for this is wiring diagrams, but it still plays a role elsewhere.

They both have Tables of Contents that can be used to navigate around fairly quickly at a relatively macro level. They both have the same contents, in full color.

I'll put my conclusion up here so it isn't buried. Do I regret paying roughly 10x the price for the Helm manual? I don't.

I plan on doing a lot of work to my truck over the years, particularly wiring stuff. I like to diagnose my own problems (especially out of warranty), and I plan on keeping this truck for a lot of years. I also bought a $70k+ truck and am outfitting it with lots of stuff. Compared to all of that, this is pretty cheap for the quality of life improvement.

If I were even a semi-professional mechanic working on these things regularly (e.g. owned a small fleet, or worked on friends and family trucks) the Helm manual would pay for itself extremely quickly. The interactive nature provides more than enough quality of life benefits. And of course it would be even more of a no-brainer for a professional mechanic.

Now, how does this compare to AllDataDIY? In short: the Helm manual has no true search feature. AllDataDIY does. That alone makes AllDataDIY worth a lot.

Of course the PDF also has generic search, but it's painfully slow (example of that below). And the search isn't categorized/organized like it is in AllDataDIY, which is pretty valuable.)



So, what does interactive mean in practice? It means on a page like this, everything blue is clickable and will take you to more information about that thing.

1675386204014.png


As an example, if I click on S118 ('s' is short for Splice), I get this window:

1675386247837.png


Clicking on Location I get a new window showing the location visually, and highlighted in red:

1675386303488.png


Could I accomplish the same thing with the PDF? Sure. But it's more of a PITA:
  • Searching a 17,000+ page (that's not a typo) PDF is painfully slow. I tried searching for "S118" (trying to find that splice) and it took a solid minute for Firefox to get all of the results. Adobe Acrobat was significantly slower (still searching after 5 minutes). Now I have 160 results to sift through, yay.
  • That search performance was on my powerful gaming desktop, by the way. On a mediocre laptop expect that search to take even longer.
  • Want to save your spot? Make sure to open up that PDF in a new window before you start scrolling around! The Helm manual saves you by automatically opening a new window.
Another place interactive helps is acronyms. In the Helm manual you can hover over an acronym and get a definition, as seen here:

1675387359752.png


Screenshot didn't capture my mouse, but all I did was hover over the acronym and that definition appeared. All of the things underlined on that page can be hovered over to see a definition. And of course that applies to far more than just this page.

I'm sure there's more instances, but I think those are pretty good examples.

Let me know if there's anything you want me to check specifically in the Helm manual, PDF, or AllDataDIY. I have access to all of them for now (AllDataDIY subscription will expire in roughly a year and no promises I'll renew; but that's a ways out).

Edit: I will only check for features/abilities of the manuals. Due to copyright I'm not going to go taking screenshots of all the pages and share them on the internet. :)
 
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Got the Ebay USB stick in! Agreed with others on being wary of security, but figured there's been enough of them bought/plugged in without tanking the seller's reputation that I wouldn't worry too much. Here's what I did check once I plugged it in:
  1. Wrote a quick PowerShell script to output just the names of processes that have open network connections on my computer. Ran that just before plugging it in and a few times after. Saw no changes.
  2. Checked for any hidden partitions on the USB drive. There are none.
  3. Checked for hidden files on the USB drive. There are none. Just a singular, massive PDF file containing the manual.
Certainly doesn't eliminate all risk, but that would have caught some basic stuff.

Now, onto the comparison of Helm vs Ebay, along with a taste of AllDataDIY.


At the end of the day, without comparing the actual contents of the documents (first glance they seem the same) the difference between the two are the pages in the Helm manual are interactive (I'll get into that more below). By far the biggest impact for this is wiring diagrams, but it still plays a role elsewhere.

They both have Tables of Contents that can be used to navigate around fairly quickly at a relatively macro level. They both have the same contents, in full color.

I'll put my conclusion up here so it isn't buried. Do I regret paying roughly 10x the price for the Helm manual? I don't.

I plan on doing a lot of work to my truck over the years, particularly wiring stuff. I like to diagnose my own problems (especially out of warranty), and I plan on keeping this truck for a lot of years. I also bought a $70k+ truck and am outfitting it with lots of stuff. Compared to all of that, this is pretty cheap for the quality of life improvement.

If I were even a semi-professional mechanic working on these things regularly (e.g. owned a small fleet, or worked on friends and family trucks) the Helm manual would pay for itself extremely quickly. The interactive nature provides more than enough quality of life benefits. And of course it would be even more of a no-brainer for a professional mechanic.

Now, how does this compare to AllDataDIY? In short: the Helm manual has no true search feature. AllDataDIY does. That alone makes AllDataDIY worth a lot.

Of course the PDF also has generic search, but it's painfully slow (example of that below). And the search isn't categorized/organized like it is in AllDataDIY, which is pretty valuable.)



So, what does interactive mean in practice? It means on a page like this, everything blue is clickable and will take you to more information about that thing.

View attachment 111528

As an example, if I click on S118 ('s' is short for Splice), I get this window:

View attachment 111529

Clicking on Location I get a new window showing the location visually, and highlighted in red:

View attachment 111530

Could I accomplish the same thing with the PDF? Sure. But it's more of a PITA:
  • Searching a 17,000+ page (that's not a typo) PDF is painfully slow. I tried searching for "S118" (trying to find that splice) and it took a solid minute for Firefox to get all of the results. Adobe Acrobat was significantly slower (still searching after 5 minutes). Now I have 160 results to sift through, yay.
  • That search performance was on my powerful gaming desktop, by the way. On a mediocre laptop expect that search to take even longer.
  • Want to save your spot? Make sure to open up that PDF in a new window before you start scrolling around! The Helm manual saves you by automatically opening a new window.
Another place interactive helps is acronyms. In the Helm manual you can hover over an acronym and get a definition, as seen here:

View attachment 111531

Screenshot didn't capture my mouse, but all I did was hover over the acronym and that definition appeared. All of the things underlined on that page can be hovered over to see a definition. And of course that applies to far more than just this page.

I'm sure there's more instances, but I think those are pretty good examples.

Let me know if there's anything you want me to check specifically in the Helm manual, PDF, or AllDataDIY. I have access to all of them for now (AllDataDIY subscription will expire in roughly a year and no promises I'll renew; but that's a ways out).
Oh, I should also address the question: do I regret getting the Ebay manual on top of the Helm manual?

Not at all. The Ebay manual was so cheap that it's worth adding another tool to the toolbox. I can't trust that Helm manual to keep working 10-20 years down the road with it's stupid DRM, whereas the PDF will almost certainly continue to work. I can't lose the PDF (I have backups) whereas I can lose the Helm CD. Etc.

And there could be things that the PDF is just better at for some reason. Heck, I could see having the PDF open alongside the Helm manual.

If I could only have one, as a hobbyist, I would take the PDF purely because of its resiliency. But I'm happy to have both.
 
I hope the Ford factory manuals are better than Subaru factory manuals. I borrowed a Subaru factory manual from a mate who was head mechanic at a Subaru dealership to do electrical work. Not only was it missing important information, it had wrong information so I found myself looking for a wire that didn’t exist. It takes a long time to find something that doesn’t exist. As I said, hopefully the Ford one is better but be prepared….
My truck quit with the trailer running lights so naturally i look up my wiring on mitchell at work which is expensive af everymonth and it was dead wrong. Took me to the underhood fuse block cant remember what number but it was total wrong amp fuse and everything. So i opened up trucks manual and found what i was looking for in the kick panel fuse box. Been burned a few times on blind trusting that stuff
 
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Just installed my DVD version into my desktop, was able to copy it to the hard drive and is searchable. It's about 750 meg, a pretty large, single .pdf file. Also scanned, no threats found. It takes around 30 seconds to open, still lots to learn here. I'll have to experiment with it for a while, I did find out you can go directly to any page by typing the page number in the search field. The "quick links" embedded don't seem to work all that well, but you can search with key words. Using the index, I copy and paste the keywords describing what I'm interested in, and it jumps straight to each page with those key words.

Hopefully this will come in handy in the future.

1675418964852.png
 

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So that ebay product is either the deal of a lifetime or is fraudulent/unlicensed.

Do I regret paying roughly 10x the price for the Helm manual? I don't.

do I regret getting the Ebay manual on top of the Helm manual?

Not at all. The Ebay manual was so cheap that it's worth adding another tool to the toolbox. I can't trust that Helm manual to keep working 10-20 years down the road with it's stupid DRM, whereas the PDF will almost certainly continue to work
Agree with you on purchasing the Helms. I also bought the book form of the wiring thinking that it may be handy to have that portable in and around the truck where a laptop may not be convenient... We'll see...

I haven't received my eBay .pdf/USB yet so can't compare but I will also revert to my previous statement quoted above. I would not want just the eBay version as I question the legitimacy of it for the price. I feel that since I also have the official Helms it somewhat covers me (although I'm still funding the other source, unfortunately).
Everyone can make that decision for themselves, without judgement from me, but my largest complaint about counterfeit/copy/illegal products is that they take money/profit away from the businesses that deserve it... I've covered myself from that perspective.

As an example, I gladly spent the money on the official Builtright products for the same reason. I know they have been the target of many copies on the market.
 
Agree with you on purchasing the Helms. I also bought the book form of the wiring thinking that it may be handy to have that portable in and around the truck where a laptop may not be convenient... We'll see...

I haven't received my eBay .pdf/USB yet so can't compare but I will also revert to my previous statement quoted above. I would not want just the eBay version as I question the legitimacy of it for the price. I feel that since I also have the official Helms it somewhat covers me (although I'm still funding the other source, unfortunately).
Everyone can make that decision for themselves, without judgement from me, but my largest complaint about counterfeit/copy/illegal products is that they take money/profit away from the businesses that deserve it... I've covered myself from that perspective.

As an example, I gladly spent the money on the official Builtright products for the same reason. I know they have been the target of many copies on the market.
Agreed with everything you said. I focused on the functional differences between them but there’s no question in my mind the EBay product is illegitimate. There’s no way they could sell that PDF for the price they are legitimately.

In addition to buying the Helm manual, the other factor that makes me feel better is how ancient the Helm manual software is. They clearly aren’t paying anyone to work on the software itself, and haven’t for the last 20 or so years.
Just installed my DVD version into my desktop, was able to copy it to the hard drive and is searchable. It's about 750 meg, a pretty large, single .pdf file. Also scanned, no threats found. It takes around 30 seconds to open, still lots to learn here. I'll have to experiment with it for a while, I did find out you can go directly to any page by typing the page number in the search field. The "quick links" embedded don't seem to work all that well, but you can search with key words. Using the index, I copy and paste the keywords describing what I'm interested in, and it jumps straight to each page with those key words.

Hopefully this will come in handy in the future.

View attachment 111574
Wait, I’m confused. You say DVD version but then talk about a single PDF file. Did you get a different EBay version than was linked earlier in the thread (it comes on a USB stick)?
 
Wait, I’m confused. You say DVD version but then talk about a single PDF file. Did you get a different EBay version than was linked earlier in the thread (it comes on a USB stick)?
I believe he purchased the optical media because we bought all the thumb drives in stock.
 
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Agreed with everything you said. I focused on the functional differences between them but there’s no question in my mind the EBay product is illegitimate. There’s no way they could sell that PDF for the price they are legitimately.
Agreed and agreed. If I actually do anything that requires referencing it for a personal project I will also pick up the Helm disc and a stupid external USB drive. Too bad they don't offer it as a software download or thumb drive, I would buy it on the spot; $226 for a one-time purchase is very reasonable. Plenty of DRM solutions for software out there these days that prevent pirating this stuff if they're concurred about it. Heck, even requiring registering a physical Yubikey type device that the software verifies against would be better than a distribution media solution from 1998.
 
Agreed with everything you said. I focused on the functional differences between them but there’s no question in my mind the EBay product is illegitimate. There’s no way they could sell that PDF for the price they are legitimately.

In addition to buying the Helm manual, the other factor that makes me feel better is how ancient the Helm manual software is. They clearly aren’t paying anyone to work on the software itself, and haven’t for the last 20 or so years.

Wait, I’m confused. You say DVD version but then talk about a single PDF file. Did you get a different EBay version than was linked earlier in the thread (it comes on a USB stick)?
I ordered from the link listed earlier from @RedZilla but clicked on the cheaper version. The same seller offers it in the DVD version for 13.49. The DVD has nothing but a .pdf file on it. It's searchable but not interactive. It certainly looks like a copy, pen written title on the DVD. But also came with a populated RMA number on the envelope. Strange.

I don't know the legitimacy of this seller or how they sourced the product, but if you look at the store and seller, VORT_8275, there are hundreds of models covered. If you surf further, you see other people selling the same or similar product at a similar price. The seller is also listed as a "sponsored" seller on Ebay.

I don't know how much one would search to determine legitimacy, but I would believe this would have raised a concern to the Ebay legal team if it wasn't legit. Still, it is questionable.

I would imagine that the "Do NOT contact..." form may be because the options for Ebay returns/inquiry is limited. If I was selling hundreds, maybe 10s of hundreds of USB/DVD, particularly in this form, I would be getting a lot of inquiries. But to determine that the seller is illegitimate because of this, may be pre-mature. Interesting, the letter says they resolve problems "98% of the time!" via contact through autonationtech, but their Ebay rating is 95.1% positive.

That being said, my spidey senses also vary on this, a search for "autonationtech" only brings up a Gmail account, no store front. Still, he/she has hundreds of listings on Ebay and sold over 11 thousand products.

You know what they say, if it looks too good to be true... It's the old "buyer beware" scenario.


1675448520809.png
 
Anyone on this thread willing to share a wiring diagram to the homelink garage door opener (GDO), and perhaps a switched 12V source that is controlled by Accessory or Ignition On? Looking to move the GDO to a switched 12V source so it isn't always on.
 

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