Went back to the last page and I'm going to read every page. Wow, the first 100 pages sure had a lot of repeat questions though, mainly: whats my truck worth? how do I get more mpg/hp and what is a soup bowl? lol

 

Bet you're going to keep seeing those again and again.
Along with: why doesn't my truck start? replacing glow plugs? starts then dies?

Lots of reoccurring themes from people not searching first!

Let us know how much time you waste, errrr... invest in learning!

 

And of course "how do I convert my truck to powerstroke".

I started this because I know there were useful threads I meant to bookmark and couldnt remember what they were even about, and it got a bit out of hand lol

 

Search is a bit hard because in the process of diagnosing a problem, the subject evolves from one topic to another.

Kind of the nature of the beast when you have a non computer vehicle.
Often that one crutial piece of information that points you in the right direction has to be drug out of the original poster, not because they were being hard to work with, but because they did not know it was relevent to the issue they were having.

Way back when, the stickies were removed from all the forums, most were converted to articles in the "tech guides" section.
Given how hard some problems are to figure out, I never put any of them back.
As a side effect, I also noticed much more posting and more people in here on a regular basis, so that was good as well.

 

almost 250 pages in. The interesting thing is that I've found reference to Bronco fuel tanks and the work required to get a ZF6 to fit, but haven't found threads about them specifically. Maybe they're coming up in the next few pages lol

 

i agree with dave. I have only been on this site for about 18 months and i have a hard time with searching for something.. Might just be my computer skills.. i have found it way faster to ask a question, when searching you get pages that are related but many times i have had to go through many pages just to get started on what i was looking for much less find the problem

 

The reason I'm reading everything is to bookmark anything of interest whether I need the info now or not, then I'll be organizing the information by category for easy reference in the future. I probably have around 30 or so bookmarks now.

 

Seems to be a bigger issue in this section then when I used to frequent the dentside forum for years. Here it's the same questions, with the same checklist and repeated answers from post to post, daily.
I'm absolutely guilty of it as well though; truck kept blowing smoke, read as much as possible (I clip and paste to a TXT document when I find useful info), then just got frustrated and posted a new topic about it (figured it out on my own the next day and asked the thread just be deleted). Hate doing stuff like that, but also reading through 5-10 pages of chat and repeat info to get to a useful post wastes a lot of daylight...

It'd be good to compile a sticky of basic Q&A answers for the most frequent problems (I'd do it myself, if I only had the time )

 

You have alot of time on your hands......

 

When I get the truck back on the road, I'll have some free time...

 

When the wife's at work and the baby's sleeping I have nothing but time since it's too cold and dark usually to do anything outside (except the last few days but it's been raining lol)

 

I used to get frusturated because we would get off topic and I wouldn't find the information I needed for a few hours, when I really needed to know that info. right then and there.
But, after you learn enough about your truck and work on it enough to know it inside and out...you get to know more than ya need to.
And with more posts flying about, it makes it a fun place to hang out and chat about truck stuff.
The forum isn't designed to be a place to fix your problems...it's a place to chat about IDI stuff.
Yep, we can all put our heads together and solve just about anything...but it's not our job to fix your truck for ya. That's the point I'm trying to make.
It's tough when the original poster doesn't include enough information, but it's not always their fault because they may just not know that other issues are even there. It's actually nice when the first post is really long and has a bunch of stuff, it helps for diagnosing an issue.
I enjoy the "different" threads that relate to the IDI, like Warozz's headlight thread, or F250's dump bed thread and Superduty springs thread, or the Earning its Keep thread from David85, and the Member picture thread from rupe. Those ones are fun to read and reply to!
I've also learned most of what I know by just reading though the pages like Vervepipes is doing right now. I've really only started posting frequently since August....