How we write our repair guides

Our guides draw on three things: manufacturer service documentation, standard workshop practice, and our own service experience. Where a value or a procedure comes from manufacturer documentation, we read the documentation and restate it in our own words. We never reproduce manual text or artwork, on any page, for any brand, including our own. Every diagram we publish is original, drawn from first principles in our house style, so what you see is our explanation of how a system works rather than a copy of someone else's. Where sources disagree, or a figure genuinely varies between models, we say so and give the range with the reason, rather than choosing a number because it looks tidy. If we cannot verify a value, it does not appear.

Every guide is written by the Hawke Electric Vehicles Service Team and checked before publication. Nothing is generated and published unread. Each guide carries a visible last-reviewed date, and that date changes only when the content changes substantively: a corrected value, a revised procedure, a new cause added. We do not touch dates to appear fresh. If a guide says it was reviewed on a given day, the material was genuinely worked on that day.

We revise guides in three situations. The first is when a procedure changes, because a manufacturer revises a component or our own workshop practice moves on. The second is when readers tell us something is wrong, unclear or incomplete through the feedback widget that sits on every guide; those reports are read and acted on. The third is when our engineers learn something new in the field that belongs on the page, such as a cause showing up more often than the guide suggests or a check that saves time. Corrections take priority over additions, and a substantive revision moves the visible last-reviewed date.

Some of this work carries real risk, and the guides are written accordingly. Battery packs can deliver dangerous current, and a tool dropped across the terminals can weld and burn. Charging lead-acid batteries gives off hydrogen, which can ignite in an enclosed space, so charging areas must be ventilated. A vehicle being worked on must be supported on axle stands, never held by a jack alone. Every guide that involves these risks says so at the point where the risk arises, and any guide that reaches the limits of safe DIY work says so plainly and points to professional help. In the UK that help can be booked online. Engineer call-out: £90. Labour: £85 per hour. If parts are needed, we supply them at factory cost.

Every guide ends by asking whether it fixed the problem. Those answers, gathered guide by guide, tell us which pages do their job and which need to be rewritten, and they shape what we improve next. If a guide let you down, saying so through the widget is the useful response, because it puts that page at the front of the revision queue. We read what comes in, and the guides get better because of it.