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

This is one thing that drives me nuts about doing Doordash in Doylestown...



The area of New Hope, Pennsylvania and Lambertville, New Jersey is included in the “Doylestown” area. The section of the “Doylestown” area that looks like a guy’s erect wiener is New Hope/Lambertville and the stretch of road it takes to drive there.

New Hope/Lambertville is generally busy enough that it could be it’s own area, so I don’t know who’s bright idea it was to add it to Doylestown.

My acceptance rate is suffering because I sometimes decline up to three New Hope orders in a day due to the fact that I’m in Doylestown and don’t feel like driving 15-20 minutes to No Hope (more if there’s something going on in Peddler’s Village, a glorified tourist trap I have to pass through on my way to New Hope, that generates traffic)...



If I can make $100 a day in Doylestown and the surrounding area (Chalfont, New Britain, Plumsteadville, Warrington, etc), why should I waste my time hoofing it out to No Hope when there’s a good chance I’ll only have that one order and then have to drive all the way back to Doylestown?!?!

 

And in case you couldn’t tell, I do not much care for New Hope. It’s a nice place, and fun to visit if you’re not the one driving, but let’s see here...

Parking is expensive and hard to come by.

A perfect example would be the valet company that has taken over two parking lots in town; This same company used to handle the valet parking at Puck when we were open, and they charged $5. They charge $20 in New Hope.

Parking enforcement never takes a vacation in New Hope, unlike in Doylestown, handing out tickets on Sundays and even some holidays.

Restaurants are ungodly expensive.

New Hope is practically the San Francisco of Bucks County, minus the human poop everywhere, and is obnoxiously liberal compared to other places nearby.

 

One thing I've learned over the years is that I would prefer to have a job where a valid driver's license is required for employment. Granted, there are normal people out there who can't drive or choose not to drive for whatever reason, but I'm talking about entry-level jobs at department stores and supermarkets, etc.

I have nothing but empathy for low-functioning intellectually disabled individuals, but I have a hard time working with them and just do not have the qualifications (or the patience) to deal with them on a regular basis. From 2006 to 2009, some of my coworkers were "special needs." One such individual was a kid about my age who was severely autistic. I worked with him at both CVS Pharmacy and the Bucks County Public Library. This kid barely spoke, and he was barely even toilet trained, among other things. On at least two separate occasions, he shit his pants while we were stocking shelves. The smell was unbearable, but when I complained to the job coach, she didn't really seem to give a damn.

At subsequent real jobs (Real meaning jobs that I went out and got my own, and weren't sublet out to me by the Central Bucks School District special ed department), my coworkers and I would engage in all sorts of juvenile activities, including farting in each other's presence. This was common both at the bar where I worked from December 2014 to January 2019, and at the detail shop where I worked for all of 10 months, from September 2018 to June 2019. Farts are one thing, because the smell eventually goes away. If somebody soils themselves and it isn't dealt with, then the smell obviously lingers.

This same kid also put a DVD in the book section when we were working at the library, and I was never able to find it and put it in the correct section. Long story short, he was not a bad person, but he was incredibly low-functioning and downright infuriating to work with at times. I'm not saying to this be mean, but this kid really had no business doing the jobs he was given.

 

Generally, low-functioning special needs individuals cannot drive. As such, they are unable to get a job at a detail shop because a valid driver's license is required. Jobs at grocery stores and other retail establishments don't require the ability to drive, so these places are full of special needs employees.

I am thrilled that such individuals are able to get jobs, in the process earning money and learning valuable life skills. I just do not have the patience to have them as coworkers.

 

I would also like to bring up something else that has been a relatively hot topic in my mind recently...

Law enforcement.

I do not have a problem with the police in the slightest. There have been numerous police officers in my family, both current and former (one, my grandfather, lost a battle with lung cancer in 2007). Most cops are good people who are just trying to do their job. My annoyance with police comes not from the police themselves, but the fact that a lot of agencies have devolved from law enforcement to revenue generation. The ticket I got for unwittingly treating a red light like a stop at midnight last January really pissed me off, because I was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy who had no authority to write me a ticket and then embellished the truth to a responding cop in order to make sure I was ticketed.

Don't even get me started on civil asset forfeiture! Obviously, I've never been a victim of the policing for profit known as civil asset forfeiture, but it pisses me off reading about what some people go through.

 

My annoyance with police started back in March 2013 when I was stopped by the police in Doylestown for taking pictures in public. I encountered a DUI checkpoint in March 2017 while driving home from work, which was particularly nerve-wracking even though I was 100% sober and had nothing to worry about.

NOTE: I do not count my first encounter with police as it was pretty straightforward...

 

By May 2017, I'd had my license for almost 6 years and never been pulled over (I don't count the 2006 incident as that had happened about five years before I got my license and more than ten years before I got pulled over again). In just over four years (March 2013-May 2017), my dealings with police had been less than pleasant, so I was extraordinarily weary of police by May 2017. I'd also gone over a decade without being pulled over (nonconsecutive; the period of time between December 2006 and August 2009 does not count since my permit had expired and I didn't start driving again for almost three years), and figured that I must be doing something right and that a traffic stop just couldn't happen to me. I REALLY FUCKED UP when I got pulled over in May 2017.

It was late May, and I was driving home from the bar where I used to work, albeit as a customer and not an employee. I'd only had non-alcoholic beers that night and was totally sober, so drinking and driving was not an issue. It was a nice spring night, so I had the windows down and the A/C off. Anyone who is familiar with Doylestown Borough knows that one stretch of Main Street where the speed limit is a harsh 25 MPH even though there's a hill. Keystone Volvo, the Shell gas station, Dunkin' Donuts, and Wawa, among others, are located on this stretch of Main Street. It was a nice night, I'd just gotten a new head unit installed in my Tacoma, and I was driving home. It was 11:30 or so at night, and there was nobody around. I just jamming to Great White and have a grand old time, and I failed to monitor my speedometer. I hauled ass past a hidden police SUV, and the cop clocked me at 43 MPH, 18 MPH over the speed limit. The problem is that I didn't realize I was speeding, and by the time the cop flipped on his lights and pulled onto Main Street, I was so far away from him that I had no reason to believe he was after me. There was an early 2000s Ford Taurus in front of the police Expedition, and this driver pulled over to let him over. I assumed this cop must be headed to an emergency somewhere. When you're headed South out of Doylestown on Main Street, there's a neighborhood called Doylestown Hunt (consisting of oversized tract homes built in the late 1980s and early 1990s) on your right. Assuming the cop was on his way to a call and not after me, I pulled onto the shoulder just past Doylestown Hunt, expecting him to just blow past me. Imagine my absolutely shock when he pulled in behind me and stopped. My first thought was "What the fuck did I do wrong?!?!"

My first instinct was to make sure my lights were on. They were.

It was May; My registration expired in August and my inspection stickers expired in October; Also, there's no way in hell he would have noticed an expired inspection sticker at night and from that distance anyway.

Back in December 2016, I'd been blatantly tailgated by a Doylestown cop on the same stretch of road while driving home late at night; No doubt he was running my license plate and waiting for me to swerve out of nervousness so he could pull me over on "suspicious of drunk driving." Going back to May 2017, I had no idea what I'd done wrong, and I was 99% sure this was just a bored and overzealous cop fishing for drunk drivers.

 

**It is important to note that back in June 2015, the exact opposite of the May 2017 incident took place. I was driving to a car show in a rural part Berks County, in an area I'd never been before, and I had my best friend with me in the truck. It was broad daylight, and I'll admit I was hauling ass. I knew I was speeding, and all of a sudden, a marked Dodge Charger roared up behind me with its lights and siren on. I freaked out and immediately assumed I was getting pulled over, but I actually knew why. I was seriously speeding. The problem was that we were in the country with landscaping on either side of the road and no place to stop easily. I started to pull over, and the Charger just blew past me. It quickly became apparent that this cop was headed to a legit emergency and either did not realize or did not care that I was speeding.**

 

Going back to 2017, I started to fume and fume as what seemed like an eternity ticked by. When the cop finally got out of his Expedition, I exploded before he even made it to my window. I bellowed "I don't know why the hell I got pulled over!" and if there had been any chance of me not getting a ticket, that outburst ruined it.

Also, at that point the cop was so pissed that he wanted to find any reason he could to give me another ticket. He shined his flashlight on the lower left corner of my windshield and, probably to his dismay, he found two inspection stickers that were good for another five months. Everything on my truck was 100% legal and up to date, and he never even asked me if I'd been drinking. I was just going to pay the ticket, until I found out that it carried four points on my license. Having never fought a speeding ticket before (or been to court for any reason), I didn't want to do it alone. Luckily, the owner of the bar where I work is a very good lawyer. I immediately consulted him, and since I'd never had a ticket before he was pretty sure he could help me. My lawyer had a couple of things come up, and my court date got pushed back to September 2017 as a result. When I finally did make it to court, I was able to shake hands with and apologize to the cop who'd stopped me. I explained the whole Aspergers thing, and things were good. My offense was reduced from 18 MPH over to 5 miles over, which was no worse than a parking ticket and did not carry any points.

 

Ironically, less than a month before the court date for my first traffic stop, I got pulled over again.

It was Labor Day, and I was driving home from my Grandma's house in Bethlehem (about a 40-minute drive. It was close to midnight, on Labor Day, prime hours for drunk drivers. I'd consumed entirely too much water, but no alcohol. I came to a three-way intersection a little over five minutes from my house, which had one of those stupid setups where the left turn light operates independently of the "straight" traffic lights. I had the misfortune of ending up at this intersection when the straight lights were green, but the left arrow was red. I had gotten away with this once before, and there was nobody around (or so I thought), so I just went left on red. A few minutes later, I got pulled over. Learning from the mistakes I made during the first traffic stop, I did the complete opposite of what I'd done in May. I was super polite, played the part of the tire motorist driving home from Grandma's, and got off with a warning...

 

Last night, my dad borrowed my truck to pick up some stuff at Home Depot. Today, he mentioned that the brake pedal felt "mushy" and that it seemed as though he head to really push the pedal to the floor to stop. I didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary before, but my dad's observation has caused my OCD to kick in...



The other issue is the incessant squeaking/squealing that has come and gone for the last six years or so, and today it got really concerning. My friend, who is not a formally trained mechanic but has more mechanical know-how than many actual mechanics I've dealt with over the years, thinks this is normal because my truck has ceramic brake pads. This same mechanically-inclined friend believes that the pedal symptoms I'm describing are indicative of a bad wheel cylinder on one or both of the rear drum brakes.

My dad and my friend who helped install my stereo system and backup camera believe that my brake system is low on fluid, which is possible but doesn't make much sense because my truck shows zero signs of a fluid leak. My neighbor also believes that one of my brake pads might be cracked.

I made the mistake of getting brake work done at the stealership in March 2018, but this has worked out quite well because if it turns out to be a defective part, the warranty on parts and labor is good through March 2020. I am taking the truck to the dealer tomorrow.

 

Did you check the fluid level in the reservoir? Personally, I thought the Tacoma brakes were pretty squishy compared to my prior car, but I got used to it as normal (same feel as my dads taco)

 

I’d start with checking the fluid and bleeding the breaks. I have ceramic pads and my pedal isn’t mushy at all. Also check your master cylinder, it could be going out

 

I'll check that tomorrow morning...

Also, I've got a funny story about the brakes in my truck. I used to work at a bar, and my boss also happened to be one of my closest friends (we are still friends and the bar is merely closed for renovations so I intend on going back there). My boss is this very pretty Korean woman who moved here from Nebraska. She procrastinated for years on transferring her Nebraska driver's license to a Pennsylvania one, finally getting it done when her Nebraska license had been expired for a month. Luckily, Pennsylvania has a 6-month grace period for transferring an expired license without taking any tests. I took her to the DMV two days before Christmas in 2014, and she got a shiny new PA license in a little over an hour (absolutely amazing in my opinion; this is the DMV we are talking about here). My boss had never driven a Tacoma before, and to celebrate the momentous occasion of her finally getting a PA driver's license, I tossed her the keys and let her drive us home.

My boss's daily driver at the time was a worn out 1999 GMC Safari that owned by the bar's owner and used as a mobile billboard/errand running vehicle. This van had less-than-stellar braking performance, especially compared to my Tacoma. Luckily we both had our seatbelts on, because my boss didn't even make out of the DMV parking lot before almost putting us through the windshield. She looked at me and said "Damn, you've got good brakes!"

 

Things that can cause a low squishy pedal with more than normal travel..

- leak in hydraulic system
- severely mis-adjusted shoes or missing / broken hardware
- sticking or frozen sliders in the (5 lug) calipers

Things that can cause squeaking/screaching..

(Rear)
- dirty, mis-adjusted shoes
- broken hardware rolling around in the drum

(Front)
- pad hardware rubbing against rotor
- poor quality pads
- overheated/scorched pads caused by a sticking/ tight caliper slider or piston

 

Master cylinder was actually replaced back in February 2014 after a freak occurrence. I was still in college, and it was one of those days when classes should have been cancelled but were not. We had gotten a significant snowfall the night before, and even with 4-month old BFG A/Ts like what I had at the time, a 2WD Tacoma isn't the best vehicle for driving in the snow. Well, I was on a tedious stretch of road, and a Chevy Tahoe Z71 braked suddenly. It took every ounce of strength to keep from rear-ending that Tahoe. I slammed on the brakes and my Tacoma did not merely stop; It slid! I finally came to a stop mere inches from that Tahoe's back bumper. About a mile and a half later, I stopped at a red light. The light turned green, and I took my foot off the brake and hit the gas, but my truck wouldn't go anywhere. The rear wheels were obviously spinning, but the truck would not move. My "breakdown" occurred in front of the home of an older man who had a 1st Gen Tundra, and while he was attempting to use said Tundra to pull my truck off the road, he noticed that my front wheels were not spinning at all. We determined that the brakes had somehow locked up. Luckily, I had AAA, and I had the Tacoma taken by flatbed to a dealership near my house. It turns out that when I braked with all my might to avoid rear-ending the Tahoe, the pushrod got jammed into the master cylinder and clamped the calipers down on the rotors, rendering my truck immobile. The brakes were not damaged, but it cost $1,200 to replace the master cylinder.

 

dont forget worn pads will eventually hit the low pad indicator and start squealing, another symptom of low brake pads is low fluid, when you havent lost any fluid but the pistons are extended and this will cause the fluid level to go down.

 

So my brake pads were so worn down that they were overheating the rotors...

 

May also be worth while looking at the brake booster.
The 05 Sequoia I drove started having squishy brakes and the brake booster was the cause of this, although it did throw false ABS every now and again.

 

hmm just like I said