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

If there were, they were probably picked clean. I couldn't tell because they were so overgrown...

 

Pictures taken with my iPhone; A look in the door jamb confirmed it...

This van is a 2002, which means it’s got a 7.3L Powerstroke!




This van probably had the factory cruise control and tilt wheel, and I'm guessing someone cannibalized it for their van that did not have these options...




The legendary 7.3L diesel is still there, so I'm guessing there's something wrong with it (which in itself is impressive, given the durability of these engines)...

 

A recently-totaled '09 Charger (note the inspection sticker); Sadly it's not a Hemi...

 

This Impala is obviously nothing special, but I'm including it in this thread to show how a good number of seemingly decent vehicles ended up in this salvage yard...




All those parking tickets are a dead giveaway...



This car was obviously locked when it was towed, and it had only been there for five days at the time the pictures were taken, so they hadn't bothered to make an attempt at getting into it...

 

How did you not get pulled over?!?! My dad drove my grandma's 1987 Mercedes 300E from Boca Raton, Florida to Centreville, Virginia in August 2003 with busted A/C. The car was insured and registered, however...

 

They never put V10s in the 1500s during this generation...

 

Me at the end of the week...

 

You're getting it mixed up with a Ram SRT-10, which was two generations away and made from 2004 to 2006 if I remember correctly.

The SS/T was a Pace Truck replica with a 360cid/5.9L V8 and 4-speed automatic...

 

This 1969 AMC is the car my uncle was getting parts off of that day; He is building a restomod SC/Rambler clone!






Old-school tape deck FTW!









"Ain't no car gonna keep me from branching out!" - Tree




My uncle took the trunk, a door, and I believe the hood...












Last inspected in June 1994...

 

A 1999 Chevy Astro that was cannibalized for its engine...






The front part of the chassis was just a few feet away in the bed of a 1994ish Chevy 1500...










Also, this one's inspection expired in May 2019, so it hasn't been off the road a terribly long time...

 

If you're looking for a head unit, and want to pay next to nothing, a salvage yard is a great place to start!

 

A 2001 Ford Ranger that has been stripped of its engine, tranny, rear diff, and bed...

The inspection sticker expired in 2012, so this one has been here for a while!

 

@NMTrailRider

 

Dodge Neons and Ford Tauruses are the official cars of being poor because of substance abuse.... my local yard has tons of both and chevy cavaliers haha

 

Ah yes the Chrysler V10, one of the worst sounding high performance engines in recent history, so bad they make kits to make Vipers and SRT-10 rams quieter.... my uncle has so many special edition Mopar things and the v10 ram started his addiction, still has it from the day he drove it off the lot, and a hellcat charger and a demon.... the man has a problem

 

I only saw one original Taurus there...

The inspection sticker only expired in May 2019 and there was no significant body damage, so yet another victim of abandonment!

 

Then they had one of these Tauruses too (it's a 2006; Pretty sure the original Taurus was still production, so it would have still been called the Five Hundred then)...

 

Oh and he bought my aunt a trackhawk... seriously Mopar junk must be addiction

 

This van brings back memories...

My aunt and uncle finally replaced their past-its-prime 1986 Plymouth Voyager LE with a brand new Plymouth Voyager Rallye in 1997. Their van looked exactly like this one, except it was dark green, and obviously a Plymouth (this one is a Dodge Caravan). I was 8 years old when they bought the green Voyager, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world! Why? Primarily because it had an AM/FM radio with a cassette player and a CD player!



My aunt and uncle are a lot like me in that they will drive vehicles until they either die, or it is no longer economically feasible to pay for maintenance. The green Voyager served as the family car for 12 years, racking up somewhere between 150K and 180K miles (I forget what the exact figure was). As mentioned above, their van had a cassette/CD player combo, with a factory Infinity sound system. When the older of my two cousins from that aunt uncle got his driver's license in 2003 or 2004, he drove this van a lot. We would plug our iPods into the cassette player via a car kit adapter, and the sound system in that van was actually pretty damn good. When the van was only 2 or 3 years old, my aunt backed it into my Grandma's 1988 Buick LeSabre. The Buick strangely had absolutely no damage, while the right quarter panel on the Voyager was bashed in. They had the van for about another decade after that mishap and never got it fixed.

The Voyager finally met its end in August 2009 when my aunt and uncle traded it for a new RAV4 Limited under the "Cash for Clunkers" program, and I'm assuming it ended up in a junkyard like the purple Caravan seen here. The Voyager was still in running and driving condition when "clunked", and I'm assuming capable of passing inspection (they have lived in Virginia since 1994 and the van spent its whole life in the DC suburbs); The A/C still blew cold and everything (including that kickass Infinity stereo) worked great! But, a high-mileage 12-year old minivan just cannot compete with $5,000 cash towards a brand new Toyota...

 

My aunt and uncle's 1997 Voyager obviously had air-conditioning (they lived in Northern Virginia, where A/C is obligatory). However, it did not have a true dual A/C system, with separate vents and controls for the rear passengers. What it did have was these two bizarre vents in the back of the front armrests (in the doors. This purple Caravan had the same setup, and I could kick myself for not getting a picture of those vents.

I actually do not believe that rear A/C was available on the short-wheelbase 1996-2000 Chrysler minivans . This is a Caravan, not a Grand Caravan; My aunt's was a Voyager, not a Grand Voyager. On the flip side, rear A/C was an option in the long-wheelbase Grand models. My other aunt and uncle, who lived in (and still live in) Northern California, ordered a new 1994 Dodge Grand Caravan without rear A/C. It did have conventional A/C in the front, because it gets hot in NorCal from time to time, and they regularly drove it to visit family in Texas. My aunt and uncle's van (the 1994) is a testament to times long past, when you could pick and choose the options you actually wanted and needed, and not have to order them as part of stupid option packages that included features you didn't want or need. My uncle had bad luck with power windows on past vehicles he'd owned, so he made a point of ordering his new 1994 Grand Caravan with crank windows; strangely enough, it still had power mirrors and I believe power locks. I forget whether it had the LE or SE trim (I believe it was an LE). Believe it or not, A/C was actually an option even on the Grand Caravan, and my uncle ordered that. He also got cruise control and tilt steering, which I believe were part of the same package, and an AM/FM cassette player (I rode in the van in 2003 and remember being impressed with the quality of the factory stereo system). The biggest thing about that van was the quad seating (better known as "captain's chairs"). It had two buckets in the second row instead of the standard bench seat, and my aunt and uncle ordered this layout for the sole purpose of keeping their two daughters (then about 11 and 14) from fighting on long trips. The Mitsubishi-built transmission was replaced under recall in 1996 or so, and the van did have its share of electrical problems, but that van was their family vehicle for a whole decade. The A/C had to be recharged once or twice, but from what I remember the front-only was more than sufficient to keep the van cool. That van had about 180K miles on it when my uncle got rid of it. The reason he got rid of it was because the A/C quit working for good and I believe the compressor was shot. My uncle sold it privately and bought a brand new 2004 Honda Element as its replacement. He sold the Element in 2016-2017 to make way for his two VW Buses, both of which are featured fairly prominently here on TW and one of which I have driven...