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

Isuzu Hombre is something I’d expect to see in a Doug Demuro video. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it though.

Makes me think of the Suzuki Equator. Pointless rebadging lol

 

@6 gearT444E
@98tacoma27
@BkerChuck
@ColoradoTJ
@RustyGreen
@shakerhood
@Squatting Pigeon
@steelcity2
@Taco critter
@TnShooter
@wilcam47

One unseasonably warm Sunday in October 1998, my dad test drove a red 1995 Nissan Hardbody and the black 1990 Mazda B2600i that that he ended up buying. This is another story I've told on TW before...

My dad found almost all of the trucks we looked at in the classifieds of the paper, including this red 1995 Nissan pickup that had a price almost too good to be true for a 3-year old truck with A/C.

The sellers were a lesbian couple who had just moved to Virginia Beach from North Carolina or something; I didn't know what a lesbian was at the time (though I did know what "gay" meant, despite being 9 years old), but years later while reminiscing with my dad about that "Nissan truck fiasco" I asked my dad if he thought the sellers were lesbians and he said yes...

Anyway, the truck was only three years old and seemed to have average miles for a 1995 vehicle in 1998, but they were asking just five grand for it. The truck was in excellent shape and ran great, and since it was regular cab they let me and my dad test drive it by ourselves; I believe it was a 5-speed stick, but I don't remember for sure, and I'm sure it had a cassette deck. The truck had A/C, and it worked great.

My dad was all but ready to write a check and take the truck home. We went inside the womens' 1950s bungalow-style house and I was allowed to explore the place; I can remember being allowed to go upstairs by the women, and making it all the way up the stairs, but immediately turning around and going back downstairs because the house gave me the creeps.

So, we were in the driveway and my dad was talking business. The truck had a clean title, and everything seemed to be kosher. The truck was parked in the driveway, which like most driveways in Virginia Beach was white cement rather than black asphalt; I noticed a fresh green puddle on the driveway directly below the general area of the truck's radiator, pointed at it, and literally asked "Dad, what's that?" followed by a comment that it "looked like antifreeze"...

Needless to say, my dad ended that deal and we didn't buy the truck. We were cordial and my dad was calm, but I know my dad pretty well, and looking back on it on I now realize that he was pretty fucking pissed. I don't remember the women selling the truck saying much of anything, or least not being hostile. We left, and my dad ended up buying the 1990 Mazda B2600i from a guy in Chesapeake that night.

The truck was apparently purchased at wholesale dirt cheap by these women and used like UHAUL to move from North Carolina to Virginia, or at least that's the story they told my dad. My dad believes that the despite being only three years old, the truck had high miles and was not well-maintained by the previous owner, and that the odometer was rolled back. Whether or not the women had any part in this or even knew about it, we will never know; I personally don't think they had any part in tampering with the odometer if that was actually the case, but without a doubt I believe they detailed the truck to make it seem like it was in better condition than it actually was.

Even at 157K miles with a blown head gasket, my Taco never leaked any coolant outside the engine; I'm guessing that this Nissan had a cracked radiator or something, and cracked radiators don't just happen. These women were likely not responsible for the poor maintenance of this truck prior to them buying the truck, but rather some mechanical problems caused by the lackluster maintenance of the previous owner manifested themselves a decent amount of time after they acquired it and thus after they had any legal recourse (if they had any to begin with), and they just wanted to be rid of the headache. They probably bought the truck for way less than what they tried to sell it to my dad for, and likely would have have lost money if they were upfront about what I suspect was a pretty significant issue with the cooling system. They weren't bad people, but they just wanted to unload their headache on an unsuspecting buyer rather than be upfront about it...

The truck did not overheat or show any signs of trouble whatsoever during the test drive, even with the A/C cranked on a warm afternoon, but one thing I learned with the head gasket fiasco in my own truck in October is that mechanical issues can be pretty easily disguised if you want to be dishonest when you're selling a vehicle. My truck had literally had a blown head gasket, but as long as I drove it carefully and made sure the coolant was topped off, the typical layperson would never know that head gasket was blown.

Yeah, there's a reason my family and friends routinely consult me when buying a vehicle...

 

Cracked radiators do just happen sometimes, radiator life went down when manufacturers started making every effort to reduce the weight of vehicles in the late 70's.

Modern plastic tank radiators have a gasket between them and the radiator core, the metal is crimped around the edge of the tank.

Like any manufactured item some last better than others.

The gaskets can fail too. It is not uncommon to find a reasonably maintained vehicle from the earlier 70's and back with the original trouble free radiator, they were made of copper and brass, much heavier back then.

 

Nice!

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood

I knew what the terms "gay" and "homosexual" meant at 9 years old, but I didn't know what sex was as I hadn't gotten "the talk" from my dad yet (I got that in 2000 at the age of 11). I did not know that women could be in same-sex relationships, and I didn't learn what a lesbian was until 2001 when a couple of classmates explained it in 7th grade.



Whether or not they're gay doesn't matter in the slightest though, but beyond what I learned from my parents and the gender-separated sex ed classes in 5th grade, I was pretty naive when it came to sex and sexual terminology. Once again...



I think this was more of an autism thing than a "Charlie" thing, but there were numerous times I could have gotten laid before I was old enough to drive now that I look back on it; I didn't know what a condom was until the first half of 7th grade, and while I knew what "gay" meant, as stated above I learned what a lesbian was about the same time I learned what a condom was.

My aunt is a lesbian and even though was in a relationship with two different women from the early 1990s through about 2005. I didn't even begin to suspect she was a lesbian until about 2003, and even then I thought it was some huge secret and was afraid I would piss off my relatives if I asked; I finally asked my dad in December 2005. I expected him to be mad, but he wasn't. She had been out of the closet since the 1980s, and my two cousins had figured out that she was a lesbian years before I did...

In the last two decades, I have not been particularly close to my aunt, but this is purely because she has her own mental problems and was at times incredibly nasty to me; I love my aunt dearly, and have threatened violence against people for making homophobic comments about her.

That said, I didn't know what oral sex was until I was 14 or 15, while I learned what "69" meant in about 2003 or 2004; I did not know what "eating out" meant until about 2009.

 

Doesn't seem like it should happen in a 1995 Nissan pickup unless something impacted it or the truck was really overheated at one point; I asked my dad about that failed deal, and he does not remember the part about the truck being purchased to move furniture, but confirmed the part about the women buying it at a wholesale auction in North Carolina. The way he remembers it, the women bought it at wholesale in North Carolina with the sole intention of flipping it. These two women were dishonest, but they did not strike as the types who had the knowledge or patience to roll back a mechanical odometer. My dad only suspects that the odometer was rolled back to hide the truck's actual mileage, and my theory is that this likely was done, but prior to the women buying it; I think the women got ripped off and then just tried to sell the truck without disclosing the issues. I believe that the previous owner drove the piss out of the truck and likely put 50K to 60K miles on it without performing even the most basic preventive maintenance, then traded it in. The dealer where he traded it in didn't want to put the truck on the lot with higher miles and mechanical problems, so they sent it to the wholesale auction, which is where I believe that the odometer tampering took place. My dad doesn't remember how many miles were showing when he test drove it, but it was low enough even for a 3-year old vehicle that he suspected foul play.

 

I still have the original radiator in my Mustang, as @RustyGreen mentioned is quite heavy.

 

I can’t remember all that.

But I can remember me and my friend trying to steal a playboy magazine off the top shelf of the gas station. It didn’t work, some lady seen us and narced on us to the cashier. Who then told my friends parents. I know for a fact it was when I was in the 4th grade.

 

But in a 3-year old truck? Unless there was a manufacturer defect, the previous owner did not maintain that thing. Gwyn's 2010 Subaru was poorly maintained by the previous owner, she unknowingly bought it with a blown head gasket, and three weeks later it overheated so bad that the radiator melted and the engine seized.

 

I don't think I looked at porn for the first time until I was in middle school...

 

Yeah that truck was obviously abused and they were trying to unload it onto your dad.

 

I wasn’t a bad kid. Never did anything mean.
But I was defiantly mischievous, it didn’t help that my friends were just like me.

 

Sounds like you needed some Graham Crackers, lol.

 

Do I even want to know what the reference is?

 

You would need to look up Sylvester Graham, Harvey Kellogg, and Ellen G White. They were all literally insane whackjobs and the founders of Veganism to combat sexual behavior, they really got extreme too as in mutilating kids.

 

If you work on machinery long enough you learn that sometimes things just fail without an obvious cause - perhaps if you had the resources of an engineering lab at your disposal you could accurately trace down the reason.

For the common man we just learn to accept it, replace it, move on to the next job and file the experience under "things that make you say hmm...".

 

I agree.

Well said.

 

@6 gearT444E
@98tacoma27
@BkerChuck
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@RustyGreen
@shakerhood
@StandardTaco
@steelcity2
@Taco critter
@TnShooter
@wilcam47

What type of stove/oven setup does everybody have?

My parents' house was built in 2015-2016 and has a 4-burner gas cooktop with a ventilation hood above it, and a separate microwave and oven built into the wall. Our old house had a wall oven with the microwave and oven in the same unit; I believe that the microwave and oven being separate like it is in our current house is a better set up in case one or the other fails. This way, only one has to be replaced and it's cheaper!

 

Standard electric glass top.
Microwave with a vent above the stove.

 

Self-cleaning oven?