I'm a "new" Mercedes owner. I just brought home a 1989 300E today. I do my own servicing and make light repairs. Which repair or service manual do people recommend?

 

Nice that you still have an older model, since with the newer years (oh...last 5 yrs or so)
MB has ceased supporting printed manuals. In my opinion and much experience, the
factory manuals are the absolute best when it comes to detail. Tracking one down for
your car may be a little bit of a challenge but there are quite a number of different
auto specialty book shops you can hunt down via Google.

Way back in the pack would then come Hayes, Mitchell, Clymers, Chilton...which are all
aftermarket publications. They tend to publish for a block of years vs year/model
specific for factory issued manuals. Because of that, their detail can be quite limited.

eg where the factory manual might say..... remove the facia plate, then 3 torx screws,
slide off the inner cover, use special MB tool 2504698, pull out the charcoal filter

....vs aftermarket publication which may instead say: remove charcoal filter from dash

r-

 

I have the Haynes manual #3253 which is a pretty good book. The only problem you may have is some of the references are for British RHD models but other than that the book is very good. I have also seen repair CD's on eBay which are supposed to be useful too.
I ordered mine direct from Haynes at www.haynes.co.uk. I can't remember how much it cost but the price was reasonable. I would not recommend the Mercedes E-Class Owner's Bible. It's a nice enough book, but I found it had too little information for anyone who likes to wrench on their own car.
I have a '92 Merc 300E which has proved to be an awesome car. If you like working on your own car you will be impressed at how well these cars were engineered and find most jobs very straightforward.
Hope this helps.
Colin[8D]