Unfortunately in most cases they're not available free. There is some really old equipment with service manuals available for free, but mostly from manufacturers that no longer exist. Also, if a model was produced for many years, and there were changes made during those years, having a manual from an early model is partly useless if you own a newer model (and vice-versa). If you go to Deere for the manual, they will ask the serial number of the unit to ensure they provide the exact manual for your unit. My in-laws have two service manuals for their Deere, one that they picked up somewhere along the way, and a second they had to buy at Deere to get information specific to their unit due to changes that had been made over years during the production that wasn't in the other manual they had.
