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

Does your wife ever drive your truck or can't she drive stick?

 

Truck is an auto, and she drives it from time to time. She can’t drive stick

 

I thought you had a 6-speed? Also, I do believe that Oregon requires you to take a knowledge test when transferring an out-of-state license. Please do report back to me on what you to have to do to transfer your driver's licenses! I am aware of eight states that require a knowledge test for new residents even if the out-of-state license is valid/unexpired...

1. California
2. Hawaii
   
3. Illinois
   
4. Indiana
5. Minnesota
6. Oregon
   
7. North Carolina
8. Utah

 

Yes you have to take a knowledge test when transferring out of state to Oregon. It cost 5 bucks to take the test

 

The cost isn't what I care about...

I think it's stupid that someone who has maintained a flawless driving record and has a valid, unexpired license would have to take anything other than an eye exam to get a license in a new state.

Also, no state will require anyone with a valid and unexpired out-of-state license to take a driving/road test unless they have a physical disability or something.

For example, a friend of mine was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair. She got her license in her early twenties (I think) and is my age. She drives a 2012ish Toyota Sienna with hand controls and a ramp that allows her to pull her wheelchair right up to the steering wheel. She would probably have to take an actual driving test in many states if she ever moved from Pennsylvania.

 

I guess I’m too easy going cause I could care less. Just go in take the test pass it and be done with it

 

@RhodeIsland4bang

Couldn't help but notice you have a similar truck to mine. Nice! What year is it? I saw you looking at my T4R post and then after I made this post I saw your name on my main thread...

 

Haha nice! Just dm’d you an hello, mine is a 2006 and your truck makes me reminisce about my first gen 2 door stick shift 5 lugger!

 

I've only ever had this one; As I said in the PM, it was a gift from my dad. I've had it since new, and it has almost 106K miles on it now. I've had to replace a master cylinder and an A/C evaporator core (while I know my way around a vehicle, those are two jobs I could not undertake myself, so a trained tech was overpaid to do it).

 

@RhodeIsland4bang

I've got a build thread of sorts dedicated to "Emma" as well!

 

@ALI3N_123
@El Duderino
@Plain Jane Taco
@RhodeIsland4bang
@Running Man
@Taco critter

For the first time ever in more than ten years of owning my truck, I had a dead battery today! I was parked in the newly renovated garage so I could clean the inside of the truck and vacuum it, and also touch up the white lettering on my tires. I turned the key to "ON" but didn't actually start the truck, and listed to the radio while I worked. I also plugged my phone into the cigarette lighter to charge. Maybe an hour at most after I started working, while I was touching up the tires, the radio shuts off (or so I think).

As most TW members know, my radio is not the factory radio, but a Pioneer touch-screen head unit with Apple CarPlay and probably more computing power than PCs of two decades ago. I open the passenger door, look at the radio, and find the radio on. I put it on a different station and nothing. I switch to iPod; Nothing. My radio sometimes shuts down and reboots itself at random, and other times it will have to be reset by shutting off the truck completely and restarting it. At this point, the radio starts shutting off and then rebooting itself, repeatedly. I go around to the driver's side and being fiddling with the radio. It keeps shutting down and rebooting, so I shut the truck all the way off and attempt to start the engine. A dull click and then nothing. I turn it again; Nothing.

It took me a fraction of a second to realize I'd killed the battery. But why did the speakers quit while the radio had power? A very good question...

With factory stereo systems, the radio and speakers are part of the same system and the radio will function normally as long as the battery has enough juice. A factory system will not distort (at least not in my experience), but it most factory systems totally lack balls. Most people installing an aftermarket stereo system wire the speakers directly to head unit. This is typically okay, but distortion will result if the system is pushed to its limits.

With my system, the Rockford Fosgate amp is wired into the head unit, and my JBL component system is wired into the amp. Both my amp and my sub are run off the battery. The battery had enough juice to run the radio and a few accessories, but not the amp, which in turn meant that the speakers had no power.

I told my mom, and she happened to be texting with my dad who was at work. She told my dad what was going on, and I got into a bit of a disagreement with my parents about how to handle the situation. Pushing the truck out of the garage while my mom steered and braked was a no-brainer, but my parents were overly cautious and insisted on moving my mom's Nissan Murano out of the driveway before the Taco came out, lest we lost control of where it was going.

So, my mom got behind the wheel and I pushed my truck out of the garage with incredible ease.

Then, my mom had to pull the Murano back into the driveway so we could use it to jumpstart the Tacoma. Let me tell you something; I know that is "positive before negative" and I was ready to hook up the jumper cables. My dad was on speaker phone, and he's like "no, it's negative then positive." About a millisecond later, he realized he was wrong, because he's the one who taught me it was "positive before negative". I got annoyed at my dad. Honestly, I didn't even need my parents to help. I just needed my mom to help me get the Tacoma out of the garage, and then start the Murano. My parents only succeeded in complicating things in my opinion.

Then, my mom wants to put on safety goggles before hooking up the jumper cables; I just blew her off and connected them anyway.

My mom started the Murano and revved the engine, and the Tacoma started on the first try. I let it run for another twenty or thirty minutes while I finished vacuuming, then I took it for a spin. I shut off and restarted the truck twice before parking it for the night, and it fired right up, but I think I'm gonna need a new battery. Right now I have an Interstate Mega-Tron battery that was installed in late 2014 or early 2015. It has definitely proven itself to be a good battery!

 

@El Duderino
@Taco critter

I'm pretty sure a few well-known TW members know about this through an old thread, but it's never been discussed in this thread...

There is a Shell gas station on Route 611 in Doylestown, on the corner of Edison-Furlong Road. It's a nice station, with a convenience store, a public restroom, and a car wash. The gas prices have never been the cheapest in the area, but they've never been the priciest either.

I had issues at this gas station beginning in maybe 2015, when a fast-talking salesman walked up to my truck and started demonstrating this FW1 waterless detail crap on the front fender without asking me first. I had a stain in my seat that nothing had been able to get out, so I bought another product from these guys for a ridiculous sum of money, and it sorta worked.

This was not an isolated incident, either. That was the only time any of these assholes actually touched my truck without my permission, but there was a good period of time where I went out of my way to avoid that particular Shell station. On one occasion, I pulled up to refuel my truck, and they were demonstrating the product on a woman's car. Not only that, the guy was in the woman's car demonstrating a particular product on either the windshield or the upholstery. I think there were two guys there that day, but they were preoccupied with the woman. I got the hint from looking at this woman's body language and facial expressions that she had been ambushed much as I was the one time, but was too nice to tell them to fuck off.

So, I got out of my truck and started pumping gas, continually looking over at the salesmen to make sure one of them wasn't heading my way. We made eye contact a few times, but they never came over, and I left without incident.

There was the one time in 2017 or 2018 that my truck was at the dealer for state inspection (pretty much the only reason the old girl goes to the stealership nowadays), and I had a new Corolla LE as a free loaner. You are required to refuel the loaner before bringing it back, or else the stealership charges like five bucks a gallon to refuel it even if gas prices are well below three bucks. I stopped at yet another Shell station down the street from Thompson Toyota, and no sooner had I stuck the nozzle in the Corolla than an eager FW1 salesman started approaching me. I had to tell him that this was a rental, and I'd already purchased some of the stuff. He left me alone.

The FW1 guys disappeared from Shell stations for a while, and I felt comfortable enough to start getting gas there again. Then one day in either 2017 or 2018 (I'm pretty sure it was right before the Carlisle Truck Nationals and my friend had just helped me detail the truck for the show), I stopped there to get gas and there was what appeared to be an FW1 salesman talking to a woman in a Chevy Trailblazer. He walked away, and I could tell immediately that she had not been interested. I pulled up to one of the gas pumps, and sure enough he started walking my way. The salesman was not one of the younger guys I'd dealt with in the past, but a rather ragged-looking middle-aged man who could have easily been older than my dad.

He started talking to me about his product, and I forget exactly what I said, but then he started asking if I "used Meguiar's or something." At this point, I just looked at him and said "Dude, I'm not interested." He said "Okay" and walked away without incident, and that is the last time I ever encountered one of those FW1 guys there.

 

At roughly the same time I was encountering the FW1 salesmen, I would also be having run-ins with windshield washers who would seemingly come out of nowhere and start using the squeegee provided by the gas station to clean my windows without even asking. I was almost always driving into work when I stopped at this station, and generally after 8am but before 10am. On one occasion, I stopped to get gas and this black guy wearing what appeared to be a Shell shirt.

As if it wasn't bad enough that he was touching my truck without asking (the only reason I let it slide was because it was just the windows), he started trying to make conversation with me...

1. It was early and cold, and I was still half-asleep.
2. This guy was a complete stranger.

Something about this guy didn't sit right with me, but I let him squeegee the windows. I knew he was hoping to get money, but he wasn't going to get any. Like I said, it was cold out, so I sat down inside the truck while the gas was pumping. This guy comes around the passenger side of truck to do those windows. I've owned four Nikon DSLR cameras since 2009, and I believe I had a D5300 with a Tamron 18-200 zoom lens at the time. As was usually the case, my camera was sitting on either the front seat or on the floor. Squeegee dude peers down through the passenger side of windshield, sees the Nikon, and comments on what a nice camera I have. This really sets off alarm bells, but luckily my tank was full, so I just brushed the guy off and got the hell out of there.

There was another encounter that wasn't as worrying to me, but I forget whether it happened before or after the Nikon incident mentioned above. Like the incident with the guy commenting on my camera, this occurred when I still worked at Puck as a barback. Once again, it was super early (for me, on a weekday, at the time) and rather cold. I had just woken up and was barely awake. All of a sudden, this fat white guy came out of nowhere and said that he was "just going to wash my windows." I thought "Okay, but don't expect me to pay you."

This guy attempted to converse with me, but it was too damn early for me to process a conversation with a complete stranger while trying to put gas in my truck. He asked something like "How're you doing?" In a deadpan monotone voice, I said "I just woke up, and now I'm filling up my truck before I head into work." He got the message, didn't attempt to talk to me anymore, and disappeared after finishing my windows.

My theory is that these guys were not just random degenerates posing as gas station employees, and that they did in fact have permission to be there. The black guy was wearing a Shell uniform, but I don't think he was an official on-the-books employee. I don't remember what the fat white guy was wearing. My theory is that these were down-on-their-luck people who called in a favor with either the owner of the gas station or a high-ranking employee who worked there. I'm willing to bet their presence wasn't well-regarded by other customers, and I haven't seen them at that Shell station in the better part of two years...

Now if only New Jersey would people to pump their own gas!

 

Hawaii heat lets my battery go about 2-3 years then they are done. However I had a 03 Jetta that’s OEM battery lasted till 2010. Still scratching my head on that one.

 

@El Duderino
@Running Man

I think Ali3n is pissed at me because of some of the stuff I've said about police. I say again, I am not "anti-police". I've just had less than pleasant dealings the police in a specific department (Doylestown) and am weary of law enforcement in Doylestown as a result.

 

What would you say then?

And it makes me pissed when people purposely spell it pist...

 

So where is he?

 

At work...

 

@ALI3N_123
@booted
@El Duderino
@LocoLocal
@Plain Jane Taco
@Running Man

I’d like to share a story from elementary school that I don’t think I’ve shared before. For starters, as many people on TW know, my dad was in the Navy for 25 years and we moved A LOT. I lived in four different states between 1990 and 2005. I was born in Northern California in 1989, and then we moved to Pennsylvania in 1990. We moved back to California in 1996 and lived there until 1998.

Northern California has historically been a gem compared to the blighted Southern area of the state. Santa Clara County in the mid-1990s was actually quite nice. I attended 2nd and 3rd grade at Edith Landels Elementary School in Mountain View.

That school, and pretty much every school within 100 miles, was different than anything I had ever seen. There were no indoor hallways and all classroom doors went directly outside. The hallways were technically breezeways, covered to protect people from the rain, but that was it. There was no cafeteria, just a few designated areas where they had seemingly endless rows of wooden picnic tables painted in rust red. There was also no kitchen, at least not a permanent one. If I remember correctly, all of the equipment was brought in by truck and the food was cooked onsite. I always brought a lunch packed by my mom, so I never dealt with this, and thus have no memory of what students who bought their lunch did when it rained.

What I can tell you is that on the rare occasion it did rain, recess was cancelled and we ate lunch in our respective classrooms.

Only the “multipurpose room”, which was used for assemblies and awards ceremonies, among other things, had central air. The only reason I even know it has A/C is because I looked the school up on Google Earth probably twenty years after I last attended classes there and saw a packaged unit or two on the roof. The library, the art class, and a few other classrooms were in portable buildings, and I believe those had A/C as well, but the only permanent part of the school with A/C was the MPR. None of the classrooms had A/C, but they did have rectangular vent windows that were so high off the ground that you needed a special pole with a hook on the end to open them. As for heat, I’d imagine the buildings had something just in case, but I can’t remember it ever being cold enough to need heat. I’m thinking the MPR’s rooftop units are probably gas-packs (central A/C and a gas furnace in one outdoor unit; the sole purpose of these units is to save space when indoor space is at a premium; heat pumps are virtually unheard of in Cali because electricity is so expensive, and central air in residential homes and buildings is uncommon in NorCal because it rarely gets hot enough to need it).

Anyway, please scroll down for the actual story...