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

I had two of the sets that changed from colored to white on the bull bar, and straight colored lights on the wreath, but the wreath still seemed to blend in at night; I put one of the colored-only sets on the bull bar and a white set on the wreath to "bring out" the wreath a bit more...

 

I went to two different Home Depot's (not including the one in Warrington since that's been sold out of the sets I use for a while), and settled for the white lights I found at the Bensalem Home Depot; Light sets seem to be made in Cambodia, China, and Malaysia, so I would not be shocked if the next shipment of them is sitting on a cargo ship in LA harbor right now...



Regardless, I think I'm gonna like having white lights on the wreath better, so people can actually see where the wreath is at night!

 

Much better!

 

Moved one of the other colored sets to the window, to replace the set that quit working for unknown reasons...

 

Also, some of you probably noticed that I took the wheel skins off; This is because the original gunmetal gray ones my uncle made me got beaten to shit during the harsh winter of 2020-2021, and I don't want these ones to suffer the same fate!

 

Further irony is that after owning the Tacoma for nearly the same amount of time as the Pathfinder it replaced (Pathfinder from May 1996-September 2009 and Taco from September 2009 to the present day; 12 years for the Taco and more than 13 for the Pathy), it's average MPG is only marginally better than than the Pathfinder's; The Tacoma has held up a lot better than the Pathfinder for sure, but it's gas mileage is nothing to write home about!

The key difference is that the Tacoma takes regular while the Pathfinder preferred at least 91; Also, the Pathfinder's Carfax shows that it failed an emissions test in 2007. My dad doesn't remember for sure, but he believes it was due to a hole in muffler; The Pathfinder was very reliable, and I would have been happy driving it as a first vehicle, but it was just time for something new...

 

I cannot for the life of me remember how many times I decorated the Tacoma for Christmas between 2012 and 2019...



I must be getting old!


Anyway, 2011 was the first time I put lights on the truck; 2011 was also the year I finally got my driver's license, and by the first weekend after Thanksgiving I hadn't even had my license for 7 months! I believe it started when I decorated the house, had one set of colored lights left over that I didn't need for the house, and decided to see if I could put them on the truck...

I ended up plugging them into an AC/DC converter which was in turn plugged into the cigarette lighter, and running the wire through the rear slider; The rear slider would not close properly, and my mom made me remove the lights citing safety concerns. Also, keep in mind that the truck was still in my dad's name and he was still making payments on it...

 

I actually found a post containing pictures of my first decoration job 10 years ago, back in 2011!

 

This was 2012's decorating job, which again utilized a plug-in lights and a converter with two household outlets plugged into the cigarette lighter; I believe I left them on all season long that time, and even parked it in front of Puck on open mic night one time in what proved to be a very successful attempt to lure in more customers!

 

Here she is parked in front of Puck; Since these were conventional Christmas lights that you had to plug in, and I didn't want to burn gas or kill the battery, the sound guy ran a heavy duty extension cord up to the truck and into the cab to keep the lights on...

He even used special tape to secure the extension cord to the ground, so people wouldn't trip over it!

 

I've put about 63K miles on my truck in less than four years!

 

Alright, back on topic; I definitely did do the lighted wreath in 2017, but it does not appear that I went all out with the Christmas lights...

I definitely did do the lights on the bed and rear window in 2019, and I think have gone along the rubber strips on the roof, but I stopped at the top of the windshield; Gonna see if I can find pics of my truck from Christmas 2019!

 

By the way, this was our second Christmas in the current house...

 

Definitely had lights on the wreath (post from December 6th, 2017); They were definitely battery-operated because I didn't feel like running a cord all the way back to the cab...

 

This post confirms it; From 2013 to 2017 I did a simple lighted wreath on the front of the truck; I now just realized that I definitely put Christmas lights on the back of the truck in 2018 because that's when I was still working at the detail shop, and my coworkers who left before me thought it was funny to turn on the Christmas lights before I clocked out and got out to the truck. Again, since 2013 I have used battery-operated outdoor sets that do not require the truck to be on to work...

 

I did not become ridiculously active on TW until almost three years after I joined, but the more I think about it, the more I think that I simply ziptied an unlit wreath to the truck in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016; I may have put lights on the wreath in 2016, but I can't find pics at the moment...

 

This was taken in mid-December 2020, in front of my friend's house in Perkasie; This was the first time I literally decorated the truck from front to back!

 

This was my truck's final incarnation for 2020; The biggest difference is that I didn't put the lights around the windows...