No sense belaboring this point....lol but how many times have I wished I had two copies of the service manual and parts manual at my finger tips.....one for the garage to work and the other to have where my computer is so as to be able to look up things without having to chase for the other. One dirty vs One clean...the only draw back of course to this is when one makes notes so that's a bit of a issue, ie: having to make them twice....Oh YEAH, did I mention I do write in my service manuals...lol
Here is another thing.....believe it or not, I have a 2003 FXDL or Dyna Service manual and have actually found some parts of the manual quite helpful crossing over to the FXR2. The FXR2/3 [& 4 for that matter] Service Manual "feels" like it was just "thrown" together in some ways.....I seriously believe they had better tech writers in 2002 and 2003.
I also find myself drawing from my 2002 Road King/Touring Service Manual for some discussions as well...ie: the primary....heck the FXR2/3 Service Manual barely says anything about it....where as the 2002 RKC I own has the very same primary set up....minus of course the more dated "primary chain tensioner" set up given that of course the inner primary of the FXR2/3 is tying into a slightly different transmission than the 2002 touring bikes.... I must also make this distinction the reason of course that a 1999, 2000, 2001 touring Service manual wouldn't be so accurate is that during those years they were running a 24/37 primary gearing vs in 2002 they went back to the 25/36 gearing that of course is exactly in our FXR's. I might also mention that the actual friction plate part numbers are different...and to tell you the truth unless it has something to do with thickness of those 8 friction plates I am not sure why they would be different.....in fact I believe I have enough other "evidence" to support that there are no differences but that gets into even more detail than is warranted here.....lol so (onward)
I don't want to lead anyone down a path that says I review the Dyna or the Touring Service Manuals that much but there are cases where you scratch your head....because you can tell they left out some detail.....After selling my 2003 FXDL Dyna Low Rider I kept the service manual and parts manual and of course obviously still owning the 2002 RKC I have those two books as well....I simply find myself going back to both of those books sometimes as reference material in helping to clarifiy procedures for the FXR2.
So before anyone jumps out and purchases these manuals and perhaps gets disappointed that they aren't what you thought I was describing, I would recommend that you review the service manual of the FXR2/FXR3 [and actually the FXR4 uses the same Service manual except for a suppliment for the brakes, electronics] as I know most of you have much better skills working on your bikes than me...remember my shade tree mechainc skills leaves me with a tree looking like "Charlie Brown's Christmas tree on a bad day.....so you might not benefit as much as I do by the "cross referencing", but all I can tell you is that you will find the FXR2/3 Service Manual to be more criptic than for other bikes.....it's as if they through it together as an after thought as compared to a "regular" model production bike.....which of course since it was brought into production for this CVO process they probably had less time for proofing and reviewing what was going out...
Regards,
Tim