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

I caught the owner and his family as they were about to leave, and he let me take some pictures inside. This thing is almost twenty years old, but has only like 44K miles. The current owner is not the original owner, but he tricked this rig out. It has a custom stereo with a backup camera, and headrest-mounted TV screens with DVD players for the kids...

 

Note that this is not an "Alpha", and thus it has a the 6.5L Turbo rather than the Duramax. It is nowhere near as fast or as refined as a Duramax, but later pre-Alpha H1s were much more refined than the older ones. Early civilian models had a naturally-aspirated diesel V8, and the A/C system was reportedly very lackluster according to the owner of a 1996 H1 who I talked to at a car show in July 2021. The owner of this 2003 had the engine running and let me feel how cold the A/C was in this one. Like any R134a system when the vehicle is idling, it wasn't as cold as it would have been if the Hummer was moving, but it was crisp and cold like you'd expect a properly serviced A/C system to be; I was impressed! As you can see, this rig has a custom stereo system...

 

Yes, @Taco critter, my friend Jeff fixed my hard drive and I have access to the photos again. Here are the pictures from the show at Bergey's last Saturday...

I figured you'd appreciate this particular picture, @ColoradoTJ...


September 10th, 2022:

Colmar, Pennsylvania

 

@Taco critter

1990 Ford Bronco II


September 10th, 2022:

Colmar, Pennsylvania

 

That thing is pretty sweet, those seats remind me of early 80 to mid 80's Mustang Seats.

 

Safety inspections are good on my opinion, but Pennsylvania has nitpicky shut like "illegally wired" foglight that cause vehicles to fail...

 

Awesome!

I have always been on the fence if I like the curved rear windows or not, on the IIs.


Charlie, is the front of that Bronco updated? I can't recall if the Ranger facelift occured while the II was still in production.

 

Charlie, that law is actually federal and PA has to follow it.

 

I looked into it, last two years of production 89-90.

 

What about the states that don't require inspections? I can't even tell you how many people I know whose foglights are "illegally wired"...

My foglights are illegally wired, but my mechanic installed my foglights, so he puts an inspection sticker on the truck. I'm smart enough to switch my foglights off when I turn on the high-beams...

 

They replaced the Ranger with the Explorer in 1991...

 

Pennsylvania doesn't have to force people to pay $50-$60 a year to get their cars inspected, and my mechanic has said that it's too much of a pain in ass to "legally" wire it. The dealer wanted something like $350 to "make it legal"...

This is the same dealer that expected me to pay $570 for a remanufactured Denso alternator, when I got the same one from my mechanic for $250.

 

@BkerChuck
@Taco critter

My truck is impeccably maintained, and I don't think having "illegally wired" foglights is harming anybody. This setup also proved useful when I was doing DoorDash at night, and a customer forgot to turn on their outside lights. I have been pulled over once since I got the foglights installed, and the cop didn't ask to check my lights...

Also, this is something I regularly discuss in my thread, since it is partially about Aspergers and all. I feel like I was given a bum deal by most of the public schools I attended, and I got detentions for bullshit reasons between 6th grade and 12th grade.

I didn't take shit from people in school, so I am definitely not going to let unelected bureaucrats tell me what I can and can't do to my truck, which is one of the few things in this miserable fucked up world that brings me any joy. I don't see their name on the title, and they don't help me pay for the maintenance or insurance, so they can all kiss my ass.

 

@ABA180
@BkerChuck
@ColoradoTJ
@Plain Jane Taco
@shakerhood
@Squatting Pigeon
@steelcity2
@Taco critter
@TnShooter

PLEASE READ AND RESPOND

Who wants to hear the most fucked up thing I ever encountered in school?!?! This was in 2007, towards the end of my senior year of high school, and I was in economics class.

There was this cute blonde girl who sat next to me, and a rumor had circulated around the school that I had a crush on a black girl who was also very attractive.

So, the blonde girl turns to me in economics class one day before class started and says she heard I had a crush on the aforementioned black girl, mentioning her by name.

I told her I did not have a crush on this girl (though I did think she was cute), and not fully grasping where she was going with this, I asked "So what if I did, you got a problem with that?"

She (the blonde) said "Yes I do" or "As a matter of fact I do", or something along those lines.

I thought for a second she might be joking, but I quickly realized she was serious. I was too shocked to respond, and then she went on his racist rant about how white people needed to date only other white people. For a second, I thought I was in the Deep South in 1957, rather than Southeast Pennsylvania in 2007.

I believe I called this girl either a "racist bitch" or a "racist cunt", and gave her a death glare, which got her to back off. I never talked to her again after that.

She had a younger sister at that school, and I ended up telling her what had happened. Younger sister apologized for older sister's behavior and said that she had been influenced by the beliefs of her redneck boyfriend. I haven't seen either of them since 2007, but I graduated high school on good terms with the younger sister; I really hope that the older sister got her act together and found a guy who isn't a racist asshole.

 

@Taco critter

As stated above, it had the Explorer-style front fascia (and interior) from 1989 to 1990, the last two years. This is also a base model XL, with crank windows and literally no options except for A/C. Most of the Bronco IIs that I see are fully loaded XLT and Eddie Bauer models. This silver one does not have cruise control, tilt steering, or power locks, but thankfully it does have A/C.

I have not seen any Bronco IIs without A/C recently, but my grandma's friend in New Hampshire had a convenience store in the tiny little town of Milton Mills (still there, but under new ownership). There was this mechanic named Jeff who rented the garage on the property from my grandma's friend and did everything from oil changes and A/C repair all the way up to engine rebuilds and replacements. He even did New Hampshire state inspections.

In the summer of 1999, I spent probably a month with my grandparents at their lakefront vacation home in Maine. That house was probably 10 or 15 minutes from the NH state line and Milton Mills. My Grandma had this 1987 Mercedes 300E that she'd bought new, and the A/C had stopped blowing cold. Being a 1987, the car used R-12, and in 1999 R-12 was still fairly easy to find at a somewhat sane price. Grammy hates the heat and wanted the A/C fixed, and I knew that Jeff had R-12, so my grandpa and I took the Mercedes to get the A/C fixed.

It was during this excursion for Freon that I believe I saw a 1985-1986ish Bronco II in Jeff's garage. It had some minor rust issues, as to be expected from a vehicle in New England that was about 15 years old, but it was in decent shape. I believe it was silver and white two-tone with the classic 1980s porno red interior, and it was a 5-speed stick. Jeff let me wander around the garage looking at vehicles, and I was absolutely shocked to see that this Bronco II did not have A/C! I have seen a couple of Bronco IIs with factory A/C that was either inop or totally ripped out, but to date that has been the only one that came from the factory without A/C that I have seen in person. I forget what it was in there for, but I believe it was a head gasket or something. It had the temperamental (in my opinion) 2.9L V6; I remember Jeff the mechanic being impressed that at ten years old I knew exactly what engine a 1985 Ford Bronco II had...

But yeah, that's the one and only factory A/C-delete Bronco II that I've ever seen!

 

to both, brother

 

@Plain Jane Taco
@Taco critter

My aunt on my dad's side is a lesbian, a couple of my friends are gay, and another friend of mine is a transgender woman; I don't care what someone's seuxal orientation or gender identity is, as long as they are not an asshole (or a pedophile, or a terrorist).

 

New England and the Pacific Northwest have two things in common, and that would be a lot of cars and trucks that you would expect to have A/C not having A/C!

When we lived in Washington state, I saw an incredible number of vehicles without A/C. The last time I had a babysitter before my parents deemed me old enough to stay home alone was in December 2000, not long after we moved to Washington. My babysitter that time was this attractive brunette "girl-next-door" type; I was 11 and she was probably 16 or 17, so of course I was attracted to her. I know she was at least 16 because she had a driver's license. In typical autistic car enthusiast fashion, I asked her what kind of cars her family had, and one of them was Subaru station wagon (I think the other was a Honda or Toyota of some sort). Both were over a decade old (this was 2000, so late 1980s), both had manual transmissions, and neither one had A/C! In December 2000, my dad was driving a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder and my mom was driving a 2000 GMC Safari conversion van. Both had A/C, though the GMC Safari may as well not have had A/C because it had to be recharged every year and was barely adequate to keep the van cool when it was charged.

My babysitter did not come from a poor family, my Tacoma is likely older now in 2022 than her family's cars were in 2000, and if they're anything like my dad they simply didn't like buying a new car every three to five years and having payments all the time. As for no A/C, summers on Whidbey Island were rarely above 75 degrees. We lived in a beautiful 2,300 square foot, 4-bedroom rancher with a 3-car garage. It had gas forced air heat and was set up so central A/C could be added later if the owner wished, but it didn't have central A/C and I think we had one or two days a year over 90 degrees. Also, my dad was renting the house from a Navy buddy who owned it, and we were only staying there for two years, so there was no point in dropping thousands of dollars to add A/C.

The point I am trying to make is that A/C was rarely needed on Whidbey Island, and my babysitter's family decided that not having monthly payments was more important than having A/C!