Whelen Anyone Notice Whelen Deleting Manuals?

[LuckyAstro22]

I recently was trying to do a a bunch of work on my Crown Vics with a bunch of lights, Upper inner edge, Lower inner edge, Talon Rear Desk, Mirror beams ect.. and when looking for manuals I have noticed recently the manuals for these are gone and I have a the links I have sent to friends not even a year ago that definitely worked from Whelen's site. Sadly none of the links where archived on Wayback Machine, though thankfully I have downloaded a handful. This was not exclusive to The Crown Victoria Install guides it was for it seems everything *old* is now gone

 

[C17LVFD]

Noticed this too recently. Definitely unfortunate. You maybe able to call tech support asking for them.

Seth

 

[shues]

What is the complete URL that's returning error 404?

 

[LuckyAstro22]

What is the complete URL that's returning error 404?

There's a few I have

13971: TIR3 Super-LED Trunk Mount (Crown Victoria)
https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13971.pdf

13301: Mirror-Beam Model MBCV98 (98 Crown Vic)

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13301.pdf

2005 - 2009 Crown Victoria. Model AVNCV9** Rear Deck

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/14308.pdf

13095: SA122DB/SP123DB (92-97 Crown Vic.)

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13095.pdf

Inner-Edge Rear Deck Interior Lightbar (Ford Crown Vic)

https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/14038.pdf

Threes a bunch of Google that will come up

 

[LuckyAstro22]

There's a few I have

13971: TIR3 Super-LED Trunk Mount (Crown Victoria)
https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13971.pdf

13301: Mirror-Beam Model MBCV98 (98 Crown Vic)

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13301.pdf

2005 - 2009 Crown Victoria. Model AVNCV9** Rear Deck

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/14308.pdf

13095: SA122DB/SP123DB (92-97 Crown Vic.)

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/13095.pdf

Inner-Edge Rear Deck Interior Lightbar (Ford Crown Vic)

https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/14038.pdf

Threes a bunch of Google that will come up
View attachment 254719

I know there's https://www.whelen.com/support-and-training/install-guides which is new but even here they do not show up searching

 

[shues]

Sadly none of the links where archived on Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110135246/http://install.whelen.com/139/13971.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110140203/http://install.whelen.com/133/13301.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20080908114426/http://www.whelen.com/install/130/13095.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110150027/http://install.whelen.com/140/14038.pdf

 

[LuckyAstro22]

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110135246/http://install.whelen.com/139/13971.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110140203/http://install.whelen.com/133/13301.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20080908114426/http://www.whelen.com/install/130/13095.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20061110150027/http://install.whelen.com/140/14038.pdf

Thank you, I see how you searched it, thankfully it looks like a very good amount of these where saved

 

[shues]

Upon closer inspection, a marketing advisory for the new duo and trio Whelen U-series that was published in January, 2025, and was accessible as recently as six weeks ago is also returning error 404:

https://www.whelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/MA0098_U-Series.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/2025013...p-content/uploads/2025/01/MA0098_U-Series.pdf

http://web.archive.org/web/20250316...ZMWTqGJNpg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJM7FVRD2EPOYUXBQ

Cursory research suggests Whelen is reorganizing their website, offloading some resources to a content delivery network.

From here, the PDFs indexed at https://www.whelen.com/support-and-training/install-guides appear to be hosted on a subdomain of widencdn.net, which belongs to the former Widen Enterprises, which was acquired in 2021 by Acquia CDN: https://community.acquia.com/acquia...s-should-be-whitelisted-to-use-the-Acquia-DAM

 

[shues]

https://whelen.widencollective.com/portals/jk8fha3a/WhelenLiterature

https://whelen.widencollective.com/portals/5ygetemn/InstallGuidePortal

https://whelen.widencollective.com/portals/tmde39e6/MassNotificationLiterature

 

[shues]

When using the Download All or Download Selection functions at the top right of the Widen Portals, the resulting ZIP file is created on the fly on Amazon AWS and hosted, however briefly, on Amazon S3.

Here is an archived copy ZIP file containing all 126 of the PDFs currently available on the WhelenLiterature portal:

http://web.archive.org/web/20250316144050/https://s3.amazonaws.com/orders.widencdn.net/archive-7a661606-9bff-416e-a8a7-15d18c6ea605.zip?response-content-disposition=attachment; filename="Whelen Literature (PSBC).zip"&X-Amz-Security-Token=FwoGZXIvYXdzEOj//////////wEaDBx6BW0rwtNCgwtF6iK1AegUeRBLG/DPAoSLcdKa+77zSqcpdQYIOQVtW7A3eckE+B/nIFTDcMrFJE49l5LHO029ZNHECBLRtu5g/OkAoUo8Rv/6JD+ac5UjulMbPd5KIkvybQfeHEGae00Xv4jlYnnwdy8zck6T2lDXu0HaKYMQqaDW6k9fjZmfjBzzBFXyQdPj6XxTLCfpmDW4yujZ5VL3tPsPWonfEblM9DgfCGXUAELQgRSWWQvCPv4boOrQQqXYTMcoycHbvgYyLWXwmkIDbp6iHeWm5MhHZnzWSfUNdV1V5TSD8nEYFqPsa9WLFt25QEKkLBAtYg==&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20250316T143627Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAS3BDZYJ35CK45HR3/20250316/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=30dfeb2d79605b373ae3f6f35f335a29b061e8a3718227c13387754844c12f5b

Here is an archived copy of the ZIP file containing all 687 of the PDFs currently available on the InstallGuidePortal portal:

http://web.archive.org/web/20250316144239/https://s3.amazonaws.com/orders.widencdn.net/archive-a5457ce3-ea62-42d9-a513-a7508e347744.zip?response-content-disposition=attachment; filename="Install Guide Portal.zip"&X-Amz-Security-Token=FwoGZXIvYXdzEOj//////////wEaDJWsD8ggigo1HXjVPCK1AXUvUBHXg+Ja3BnMIxuss9rmK2qF/Ie3vo2MGQhqQQojPtnySwZHScoHPRKh5dPhi3yBm4dvTwmzco1iDeHLUZaK2KvQlswgEGOpRIY+Sijm0pufpBEHMqiWLgeOOIMpWQyoca/kaFuVopZjBCpG4BuLodQDVvjCo8shujlpZa5AQP7m7A0tLc8gg1RiiYSALRabJYuqDY/N+RaIZBdQRiuicyEDE/MQQnOArKquepECU/64SIsoy8XbvgYyLS9fje43r0f9UW1ZDg/MWXAAs6TSSInmNV7PBlD9hrPXZK3G5wz8tbEWvgtUcg==&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20250316T144204Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAS3BDZYJ327LPZXT7/20250316/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=0438b45766e7e25cae8681782c6ef4b27b6290816cd6e87568ea7cb189911a37

Unfortunately, the MassNotificationLiterature portal does not offer the Download All or Download Selection functions.

Also interesting is that Whelen Aerospace Technologies hosts their install guides separately from the other divisions, on the Shopify CDN: https://flywat.com/pages/installation-guides

 

[NoLimitSquads]

This website update was an epic fail on Whelens end. They know that they screwed up, and are working on some of it. I wouldn’t give up all hope yet, some of those manuals may return, or become easier to find.

 

[t24t1000]

I don’t see how smaller lighting companies have better websites than Whelen. It’s been bad for quite awhile too.

 

[LuckyAstro22]

Unfortunately, the MassNotificationLiterature portal does not offer the Download All or Download Selection functions.

You can download them not conventionally, but though inspect element I just downloaded all of them manually. On the Massnotification page right click inspect, and click network in the tool bar, Click any of the manuals, a few items should show up click the one boxed in red in the middle of the photo attached below should say asset in it, now in the menu to the right, click the response tab on the tool bar, Now below in the text that appareard next to the word download_soruce should be a link as shown in the image below highlighted and boxed in red in the bottom right, right click copy value and past into a new tab and hit enter, This should open a new tab with the PDF and auto download it for you.