This is the place for questions about things electrical and mechnanical...or any other automotive-related hardware issue.

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cgrey8
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How to get started and Best Practices

Post by cgrey8 » Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:06 pm

The most important thing to remember about posting on this forum is to give your threads a good title. Before submitting your post, really think about the title and ask yourself if the title tells a user what the thread is going to be about or is it vague and nondescript?

Bad thread titles include words or phrases like:
Please Help
or
Newbie with questions.

In fact using the words help, questions, or newbie in your title should immediately red-flag you that your title could be better. Lame titles like this will likely trigger someone to ask you to change the title. Consider this best practice a forum rule for posting here.

If you were sent here because of a lame-title issue, then you need to edit an already created thread's title. To do that:
  1. Go to the thread
  2. Click the Edit button for your original post
  3. Change the title while in edit mode
  4. Submit the change
Once submitted, the title should be updated in the forum view.

The next thing to keep in mind is threads are free, so when you have multiple unrelated questions, start a thread for each question. This makes creating the title easy. Trying to ask multiple questions inside the same thread makes answering your questions more difficult because some people will be able to answer some of your questions. Then others will answer other questions later. A month later when people read your thread, it will read scattered and so any useful info within may be lost or at best, confusing. Not to mention, coming up with a good title when you are asking multiple, unrelated questions can be nearly impossible. Avoid that by starting a new thread for each, unrelated question that you have. To give you an example, do not ask about how to correct for a rich condition while also asking about how to configure a tune for a manual transmission in the same thread. Those are completely unrelated topics of discussion that clearly need to be their own threads.

As a courtesy, don't post titles IN ALL CAPS. There's no need for it.

Not adhering to these best practices when posting will get you introduced to this guy:
Meme_YUNoReadBestPractices.jpg
Meme_YUNoReadBestPractices.jpg (47.18 KiB) Viewed 86099 times
Now that you've read at least this much, the "password" to get registered on this forum is:
NoLameTitles

On 11/25/2014, cgrey8 wrote:The forum's emailing functionality is not working. In the meantime, you'll need to go through the activation process like normal. However because you won't get an activation email, you will need to email me directly with the username you registered with AND email me from the email address you registered with.
cgrey AT automatedlogic DOT com (weekdays during the day)
cgrey800 AT gmail DOT com (nights, weekends, & holidays)

If you are new and just need to know where to start with your tuning experience, start by reading the various related posts on the FAQ forum. If you haven't yet purchased a datalogging tuner, start with this thread:
Things to know BEFORE buying a TwEECer or Quarterhorse
Even if you've already bought a TwEECer or QH, this is a good read just so you can be aware of what you bought into.

If you've already made a purchase, then you'll want to read over this thread:
Things to know AFTER buying a TwEECer or Quarterhorse

You might also benefit from reading over the Glossary of terms used in Tuning. This thread covers terms, abbreviations, and acronyms you might already be familiar with, but also includes abbreviations and acronyms typically only used in tuning. So for someone new to tuning, it is worth looking over so all the other threads you read that contain these possibly unfamiliar references make more sense to you.

When discussing problems, often you need to share your tunes, pictures, or datalogs. Although datalogs can get very large and easily exceed the max file size to attach to a thread. The good news is datalogs are usually text-based *.csv files that compress very well when zipped. If you aren't familiar with zipping files, Google/Bing 7-zip for a free zipping utility that will allow you to compress your datalog(s) and share them on the forum as *.zip files. Also some unknown file extensions may be blocked from being attached. When this happens, zip them, and share them with the forum via zip format. Unfortunately pictures and movie files don't compress nearly as well because most are already in a highly compressed format (e.g. JPG, MPG, etc) thus zipping them isn't likely to do much for their size. To share files larger than the forum will accept, you will need to find a file hosting site such as Photobucket, Mediafire, or some other file hosting site, then share the link to your file(s) in the forum. Often DSL and Cablemodem ISPs offer their customers free web hosting space which can be used for this purpose, but often requires familiarity with ftp tools. The free file hosting sites on the Internet are usually much more intuitive and straight-forward to use.

The forum also has a Search feature to help you find existing threads that may answer your questions. So perform a search for your questions and see if it has been asked before. Some topics have been beaten to death and simply don't need to be asked again. While the search engine is helpful, there's an art to getting results from a search, and I admit, the search engine isn't as comprehensive as it could be. But even with the best search engines, it often takes a bit of creativity in your search criteria to find results, so don't give up too soon. And while searching, notice how much easier searching is when threads have descriptive titles.

If you haven't filled out the signature section of your profile, then do so. Things to include in your signature are:
  • Vehicle Year/Make
  • Engine and mods including intake, cam, heads, forced induction devices, bottle, headers, stroker
  • EEC Code, tuning device, and software used
  • Tranny
  • Any other details you are particularly proud of or that would be relevant to your tune
Your signature will be included below each of your posts so others will know what you are working with. Access your profile by clicking the User Control Panel link at the top of the forum.

One final thing to keep in mind. The people on this forum are fellow enthusiasts. People respond when they feel they can help and when they feel the person asking for help is deserving of a little of their time. Nobody is being paid to monitor this forum and respond to your needs and questions.

With that said, welcome to EECTuning.org.
...Always Somethin'

89 Ranger Supercab, 331 w/GT40p heads, ported Explorer lower, Crane Powermax 2020 cam, FMS Explorer (GT40p) headers, aftermarket T5 'Z-Spec', GUFB, Moates QuarterHorse tuned using BE&EA

Member V8-Ranger.com

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