PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

You are preaching to the choir! He can drink himself to death for all I care, but I think he should lose his license for life!

 

If I were to be an uber driver, I'd buy a beat up vehicle for $500 and use that

 

What goes around comes around, and he'll run out of luck eventually. One can only hope that if he causes another accident while driving drunk, not only will nobody get hurt in the initial accident, but that the vehicle he hits or the property he damages belongs to a bodybuilder or an MMA fighter who gives him a serious beating.

 

The guy who hit my Tacoma was 70 years old and a repeat offender. Sadly, I don't think he'll change his ways. He'll just drink himself to death (hopefully before he can legally drive again), and we can only hope that he doesn't take another innocent person with him.

 

They have a terrible insurance policy. My friend who is a Lyft driver got involved in a hit and run during a fare. He did not know their insurance has a $2500 deductible until that accident.

 

No. They have requirements on the age and the condition of the car that can be used.

 

I'd put a qualified car down but then use the $500 car.lol

 

If they throw up you get $300 plus uber pays for a complete detail of your vehicle. Lol

 

My Uber experiences have been great. Used it all around the country. MUCH better than taking a taxi from someone who can most of the time barely understand me and then gets on the phone and talks to someone in a hostile manner in another language the whole ride. My Uber drivers have been kind and personable everywhere I've used them.

Felt I needed to comment bc some seem to not be able to fathom the idea of using Uber opposed to a taxi.

 

I doubt the passenger would ride with you because it says what care they're gonna be picked up in. If you show up in something else that would be a fed flag for them. Hopefully.

 

I did lyft for about 2 months when I got laid off. The first 2-3 weeks I made "not horrible" money working full time. $800/week. After that I'd be lucky to pull $200-300/week. It's like they purposefully give you more rides in the beginning to make you wanna stay.

 

They absolutely do that. I use uber a LOT as a passenger, would never drive it. Especially in my gas hog of a tacoma now. I've heard mixed reviews from drivers, I personally wouldn't want to deal with the riff raff. However I'll be the first to admit my friends and I are that riff raff sometimes.. Uber rocks. As a consumer.

 

I want a heavy-duty rear bumper bumper that is rugged enough to deflect all but the hardest impacts without getting damaged itself and protect my truck from body damage. I also want a bumper that is lightweight enough that my gas mileage will not suffer. The window sticker said my truck got up to 19 MPG in the city and 25 on the highway. I drive kinda fast and I also use the A/C extensively during the summer, so my best guess for my typical gas mileage is somewhere in the range of 17 to 21 MPG overall. I fill up at least once week, but never more than two times a week.

I drive a 2010 Toyota Tacoma regular cab 2WD 2.7L automatic, and I absolutely love it! However, in 2015 I had a string of bad luck. In March 2015, near the end of a 40-minute drive from a car show in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania to my home in Bucks County, I was rear-ended by a 45-year old woman in a 2006 Toyota Highlander. She was very apologetic and took full responsibility. This actually worked for the best. My original rear bumper was very beat up from backing into things and just everyday use. There were spots where the black paint had been scratched and rust was starting to form. I was close to having the bumper refinished, but then I got rear-ended. This eliminated the need for redoing the original bumper because I got a brand new bumper, courtesy of this woman's insurance company! I couldn't have been happier.

At some point during the summer of 2015, I backed into a flagstone wall thing outside the rear entrance to the bar where I work, and left a little white mark that would have easily been touched up.

However, in October 2015, my truck got hit by a drunk 70-year old career alcoholic who ran a stop sign while I was making a left. I have multiple posts about this incident with pictures. My truck has since been fixed, but new problems keep revealing themselves. Some of them are the result of internal parts that were damaged in the impact and will never be perfectly straight again. Two problems have been the result of the body shop not doing something correctly. First, the new bumper was not mounted correctly and was crooked. Now, my bumper pads have come loose and my neighbor took one look at them and determined my pads were attached with epoxy when they should have been secured with a mounting bracket and bolts.

Something annoying happened today (Thursday, August 25, 2016). My boss lives in an old house on a crowded residential street. Off-street parking it for residents only. I parked my Taco across the street from her house and took her dog for a long walk. When I dropped the dog off and came out to my truck, I noticed a scuff mark on the left corner of my rear bumper, consistent with somebody cutting it close while parallel parking or pulling out of the space behind me. It also could have happened in the parking lot of any number of places I've been in the last few days, but the important thing is that I have NOT backed my truck into anything since BEFORE the drunk driver hit me, and I would remembered and impact hard enough to scuff the bumper. I'm also pretty sure the scuff wasn't there when I parked the truck and went into my boss's house to pick up the dog.

I work at a bar/music venue, and one day a few months ago my boss sent me to the local electrical supply store to pick up some light bulbs. While there, I had the opportunity to chat with the owner of a 1994 Chevy C1500 pickup that he'd special ordered and owned since new. He had found a wrecked Mack truck in a junkyard, had a section cut from the truck's frame, and had that section turned into a bumper for his Chevy. I would like to do something like this.

Does anyone know any companies that specifically make custom steel bumpers for 2nd gen Tacos?

 

You realize a heavy duty steel bumper will just transfer more impact directly to your frame and result in a complete and total loss in an rear end accident over 20 MPH, just like everybody else's truck who got hit at that speed?

They're heavy as hell, also. Aluminum bumper is lighter and not as strong, so I'm not really sure what you're envisioning, but I think you're looking for a solution that isn't going to exist and definitely isn't going to be cost effective to produce.

 

I know lots of people have posted things about this, but here's my issue...

I have a 2010 Toyota Tacoma regular cab 2WD that my dad bought brand new for me when I got my learner's permit. My parents and I did not realize it DID NOT have intermittent wipers until like 2 days after buying it.

My local Toyota dealership (Thompson Toyota in Doylestown, PA) refused to install intermittent wipers no matter how much money I offer them.

At one point I heard that the airbag and the clock spring must be disconnected?

I've heard that the whole system must be replaced, which involves extensive disassembly, and I've also been told that making the conversion is as simple as swapping out the base 2-speed control stalk for a variable-speed one from a higher-end Tacoma. Which is it?

How hard is it to install variable/intermittent wipers? Should I do it myself or pay a mechanic or mechanically-inclined friend to do it?

As for cruise control, my dad tells me it's not worth it to install cruise control. He drive's a fully loaded Honda Pilot Touring and he never uses the cruise control. My mom is the same way. I think cruise control would be worth it if it is easy to install. I drive to car shows that are far away from my house, mostly notably in central Pennsylvania and North-central New Jersey. The Carlisle shows are more than 2 HOURS away. My cousin to whom I'm extremely close is moving to West Virginia with her new husband and that's a 5 hour drive, so cruise control would definitely be nice.

I noticed that my Taco has a removable "blank spot" on the steering wheel in the same spot where the cruise control would go in higher-end Tacos. Is it possible to retrofit a Toyota cruise control system or would it be better to install an aftermarket system?

 

The other thing that annoys me is because the drunk guy who hit me lied to his insurance company, his insurance company refused to pay, and my insurance company (USAA) had to pick up the tab.

My rates did not go up and USAA waived the deductible, but USAA has a policy for vehicles over 2 years old where they use non-factory parts to cut costs. Because of this, my truck has a generic rear bumper instead of a Toyota one. Could a generic bumper be weaker than the Toyota one?

Are you telling me that if my truck gets rear-ended at over 20 MPH, even with the STOCK bumper, it will be totaled?

 

My truck currently has a little over 65,000 original miles as of this post. It is on it's third set of front brakes (calipers and rotors in addition to brake pads were replaced in December 2015). However, the rear drum brakes are completely original and always get a clean bill of health when I bring the truck in for it's annual emissions test/safety inspection (I live in PA).

I was wondering if it would be worth it to convert it to disc brakes?

 

There's a surprisingly large group of members who had their trucks totaled after a 20MPH rear end collision, and they were nowhere near 6 years old at the time. One that I can rattle off at the top of my head with certainty, his truck was 2 years old.

Tacoma frames are extremely weak, and a 20 MPH hit tweaks them pretty good.

The Toyota bumper is alarmingly flimsy. When I installed a hitch on my truck, I could twist the factory bumper with my hands. It is not a "bumper" IMO.

 

I keep hearing no from those that did it. I would leave it alone personally