Downloadable Toyota Prius Repair Manual

[CThaler19]

I was doing some poking around the internet for a Toyota Prius repair manual, and I found a site where you can download an electronic copy. For $7.50 you get a 1607 page PDF document with vehicle specifications, wiring diagrams, detailed maintenance instructions, and more. As far as I can tell everything seems to be correct and accurate. Below are the links for the site:

ObsidianCorp

2003-2006 Toyota Prius Parts & Repair Service Manual

[FL Buckeye]

So have you downloaded it yet? Their online description page must be very generalized since it mentions V6 & V8 engines and manual clutches, torque converter clutch, etc, under the Prius heading. I'd want to see sample pages of the manual.

[seasalsa]

Looks like tha same thing thay have been selling on eBay for a while. I bought a CD and they offered a download too. It looks like a bootleg copy of the Toyota manual that you can download. It is not very user friendly, the info is there but not well indexed. It is a pain to find anything quickly.

[CThaler19]

Yes, I have downloaded it, and it is for the Prius. The majority of the PDF is from the 2004 PRIUS REPAIR MANUAL (RM1075U), but there are pieces from other Prius documents. I do have one major complaint about the manual. Upon further investigation there appears to be pages missing and a lot of the pages are not in the correct order. Since it is in a PDF, it is searchable which still makes it useable. Also, there is a ability to check for updates to the document, but for some reason I doubt there will be any. Overall, as the saying goes "You get what you pay for", but for $7.50 it is still a good deal and has a lot of good information.

[hobbit]

Did you check out what the "obsidian" website really is? It's
someone's generic Comcast cable-modem box in Virginia someplace.
And yeah, V-8 engines? Manual transaxles? Real wheel alignment?
Cigarette lighters? This guy clearly has no idea what he's talking
about, he's just trafficking in some pirated crap he got off ebay.
I hope you didn't give them a credit card, because if you did I'd
lay odds that it's in the hands of the russian mafia by now.
.
You get what you pay for, and maybe a whole lot more. You didn't
really need your identity after all, did you?
.
_H*

[brandon]

Alright, time to get to the bottom of this.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hobbit @ Oct 15 2006, 09:54 PM) [snapback]333260[/snapback]</div>

You get what you pay for, and maybe a whole lot more. You didn't
really need your identity after all, did you?
[/b]

Agreed. The SSL certificate is self-signed and clearly bogus, and they're asking for things like your date of birth. Your payment account information may have been stolen or mishandled. Please monitor your accounts closely. Having some training in IT security and knowing some of the tricks the Bad Guys ™ employ, I would have steered clear of this purchase.

Like hobbit suggested, the website is hosted via dynamic DNS on a server that resides on a Comcast cable network somewhere near Alexandria, VA. The domain name obsidiancorp.com was registered just last May to a person using the name "Joseph Holt" in San Antonio, TX. Another website omegaquest.com claims to be a web and game hosting service, run by a "Daniel Holt," who lives in Alexandria, VA, according to his MySpace Profile (isn't the Internet fun? ). Omegaquest.com is registered to the same individual as obsidiancorp.com and resides on the same web server.

*deep breath* So far we've theoretically determined the site is being hosted on a server likely operated by Daniel Holt, dba Omegaquest, in Alexandria, VA, on a Comcast Cable network node. The domain name is registered to someone going by the name of Joseph Holt (possibly a relative?) in San Antonio, TX. We know who is responsible for the server and who is responsible for the domain name, but we still don't know who is responsible for the obsidiancorp.com website, itself.

I did some further digging. I Googled the organization in question and found the person or persons representing this entity also push their sales pitch through Yahoo! Auctions, among other sites. There are no ratings available for the seller, the PayPal address is "jessica_04@[removed].com" (a free-mail account; seems very professional) or guru@omegaquest.com, and they feature customer testimonials that are so cheesy I can't imagine anyone taking them seriously. It appears their eBay account has been closed.

They also have a nasty practice of spamming forums such as this one. Sometimes they'll post the messages in such a way that it seems like they're a customer. For example, here's a comment in a thread about the Toyota Prius repair manual:

MasterGuru from San Antonio, TX: Im telling you I went to [website removed] and they had the manual I needed. I was back up and going in no time.[/b]

Why is this significant? Because the person selling the ObsidianCorp products at Yahoo! Auctions has a username of masterguru259 - that's more than a coincidence, folks. Could this "masterguru" person be the same person named Joseph Holt? If so, we could logically conclude Joseph is responsible for selling these bootleg repair manuals, among other things.

Oh, but wait, it gets better! Remember those cheesy testimonials? Here is a sample:

When advertising a PT Cruiser repair manual:

"I was having computer/electrical problems with my car that were a complete mystery. I purchased information for my car on obsidiancorp.com, and now my car is running perfectly.
Thank you, ObsidianCorp, for helping me get back on the road without having to get my car towed to a service station."

-E-Mailed to obsidiancorp.com
from Phillip S[/b]

When advertising a piece of PC disk sanitation software:

"I was having computer/electrical problems with my pc that were a complete mystery. I purchased Godz from you on obsidiancorp.com, and now my computer is running perfectly.
Thank you, ObsidianCorp, for helping me get back on the net without having to get my pc serviced."

-E-Mailed to obsidiancorp.com
from Phillip S[/b]

The similarities are uncanny, no?

The moral of this story: Buyer beware. Not everything on the Internet is as innocent and transparent as it may seem. ... Nor may it be very simple to understand!