Question about doing forum searches

[Dale Finch]

This is probably not the correct sub forum for this question, but I wasn't sure where to put it. Feel free to move it...

I was recently able to reinsert some photos to a HOW TO I had done a while back, and want to thank Dennis for doing this. This had me looking at various HOW TO's to see if we needed some new ones to help with some of the common issues with these Cubs. One task I have done several times is rebuilding the PTO, but noticed (unless I missed any) that there is no formal HOW TO for this job. We get many questions regarding issues with the PTO, and was surprised there were very few posts for it.

But my real question here is, how do you do a search for PTO posts? It appears the search box ignores 3 letter words, so if I entered PTO REBUILD, it only searched rebuild, and ignored PTO. How do I force it to look for PTO REBUILD?

P.S. This February is DSCF (Deep South Cubfest) and is always very busy with various projects and a great opportunity to gather info for additional HOW TO's, so I would also solicit ideas for tasks that could be aided with some detailed posts and photos.

[tmays]

There are some things you can do for a better search on here, but it’s more trouble than what it’s worth for me. I do a google search and works much better for me. Responses are usually a link to a post here on the forum

[Bob McCarty]

Dale, Using Thomas' method, I found this thread of your's: viewtopic.php?t=100075
There was another done by Corky. I didn't see either in the "how to " forum.

[Jim Becker]

When you want to do a search, you need to think about what words are LIKELY to be in a thread of interest but NOT LIKELY to be in a thread that isn't related. These are not necessarily the words (or abbreviations like "PTO") that first come to mind. This is application of good old fashioned library skills like we all (should have) learned in junior high school. What would you look for when you start searching "subject" cards in the card catalog?

The obvious first try would be "PTO rebuild". As stated, PTO is an abbreviation and is too short, so no good. Rebuild has potential, but hits a lot of things other than PTOs. There might be a good discussion that is missed because the word wasn't used. Maybe someone said "overhaul". So it might be productive to substitute that or other similar words in place of rebuild once a good result is obtained using rebuild. So what word is used frequently in PTO discussions but rarely otherwise? Someone new to Cubs would be at a disadvantage on that question. But someone that has worked on PTOs and posted about repairs might come up with a good word. The first one I thought of was "staked" as it is a method often mentioned in the relevant topics. There are also possibilities of variations like "staking" or the base word "stake". So you want to use the wildcard capability and search for "stak*".

I tried a search using "rebuild stak*". It returned 46 posts that included 13 relevant posts from 6 threads. This is a pretty fruitful yet manageable return. Not surprisingly, the biggest group of irrelevant posts were about carburetors. There were several posts related to a 184. This was a reminder that selecting the relevant forum is another way to focus the results. I retried the search, restricted to the Farmall Cub forum. That returned 29 posts including the same 13 relevant ones. By the way, repeating with "overhaul" in place of "rebuild" came up with nothing. How about "rebuilt"?

Another thing to keep in mind is to look for links in the posts you do find. If someone else has already found a relevant thread, take advantage of what they found. I didn't look closely at the topics I found. But I did take a quick look at one of them and found a topic my search hadn't revealed. The one I found that way was probably the one by Corky that Bob McCarty mentioned. It was a pretty good explanation but only addressed the snap ring style PTO shaft that his tractor has.

The threads I found are:
100075
97437
96090
84988
79330
72411
And Corky's topic:
32935

That should give you enough to read for a while.

[Dale Finch]

Fantastic replies!! Thank you! That should really help.