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

It's a bit hard to tell during the day, but the trademark Mercury lightbar is fully operational!

 

1969 Dodge Kurbside turned into a food truck!


June 10th, 2023:

Chester, Pennsylvania

 

Oh yes the digital dash !

 

My memory from back then says the hatchback bodystyle of that was fairly rare.

 

A car wash near my old house in Mongtomeryville, PA did a "haunted a car wash" every Halloween. In 1994 or 1995, they had a bunch of junkyard cars stacked up with a propane line that shot out fire. One of them was a 1980s Cavalier hatchback that didn't appear to have any major body damage and likely got scrapped to a mechanical failure that required an expensive fix. That proves that most 1980s Cavaliers were junkyard fodder before the start of the new millennium!

Even less common than an old Cavalier would be the 1985-1991 N-Body Pontiac Grand Am. When we lived in Washington (state) from 2000 to 2002, another military family in our neighborhood had a 1989ish 4-door Grand Am that was in surprisingly decent shape; I remember that they replaced the factory tape deck with a modern CD receiver and unsuccessfully tried to sell the Delco tape deck at garage sale...

 

I worked with a guy that had that generation Grand Am and he hit a deer, the body shop put the badges on backwards, it said Am Grand LOL!

 

@shakerhood

I actually remember the last name of the family with the Grand Am; Hernandez!

Mr. Hernandez was in the Navy, just like my dad, though I think he was a white Hispanic because the whole family was white and his daughters both had hair that was redder than Chuckie Finster's...

The older daughter was Kelly and she was my age; Jamie was the younger sister, who literally looked like a "Mini Me" of Kelly, and she was like 6 or 7...?

The mom drove the gray Grand Am, and had a newer (1997-1998) blue GMC Sierra K1500 extended cab with a cap; I remember that the truck had rollup windows, so it must have been an SL, but it was definitely new enough to have dual airbags (at least 1997). Kelly and Jamie were not outright mean to me, but we weren't exactly friends, and Kelly would from time to time join in with some of the kids who did pick on me. The parents were very nice though...

 

Our neighborhood in Oak Harbor, Washington was built in stages over the course of more than a decade. The section we lived was larger houses, mostly single-story (including ours, located on Kalama Loop), and built in the late 1980s. According to Zillow, most of the houses in that general area seem to have been built between 1975 and 1977, and the newest house in the neighborhood that I'm aware of was built in 2001 because the original house (also built in the 1980s) literally exploded as a result of a gas leak or something; I believe it was being rented by a Canadian couple, who was not home at the time, and the house was rebuilt in the exact same footprint.

The Hernandez sisters, along with my friends Justin and Cody (brothers by adoption), and this douchebag named James all lived just around the corner on London Terrace. This portion of the neighborhood was built in the 1970s and the people who lived in this neighborhood tended to be older couples who had lived there for years, or younger families who didn't have a whole lot of money. The yards alone in my part of the neighborhood were nicer than the yards where my friends lived, and the houses were considerably larger. London Terrace alone has really been gentrified, as the houses on that street range in value from $360K to almost $430K; I would like to say again that these are small houses! The biggest house on London is just under 1,500 square feet, and all of these houses are on relatively small pieces of land. It goes without saying that I would love to buy a house like this in my area, but they would probably be the same price here in Southeast PA if not more.

 

I opened the Zillow app and took this screenshot...

My parents and I lived in the house on the corner (circled in red), the house that blew up in 2001 is circled in yellow, Justin and Cody's family lived in the house next to the park (circled in blue), and I don't remember which house the Hernandez sisters lived in, but it was definitely one of the two circled in orange, and two other friends of mine lived in the two houses both circled in lime green...

 

I don't 100% remember, but I believe that James' family lived in the house across the street from Justin and Cody's, and the Hernandez family lived next door to James; I was never friends with James, and he wasn't an outright bully, but he did pick on me. One time on a snow day in February 2001 Justin and Cody, along with James, joined forces with some of the neighborhood punks and they ganged up on me with snowballs. The problem was that they weren't true snowballs. They were hard-packed icy snowballs that really hurt when they hit you, and I very quickly transformed into the Incredible Hulk when hit with a few of them; I flew into a rage and chased after the whole group, who took off like the cowards they were. Justin, who was just over a month away from his ninth birthday at the time, wasn't fast enough; I tackled Justin, causing him to land on his back with me on top of him, and I proceeded to beat the shit out of him. Justin started crying and screaming, and at this point I realized that the rest of the group had stopped and was watching this; I could handle one or two, but not a whole group, so I got off Justin and ran to my house.

I met Justin and Cody on the day we moved to the neighborhood in August 2000, the iceball incident happened in February 2021, we remained friends until we moved back to Virginia in July 2002, and I am still in communcation with both of them. Everyone in that group learned a lesson about fucking with me, with Justin literally taking the brunt of it, and none of them every did anything like that again!

 

One time on April Fool's Day in I believe 2002, I told James that he had a bee on him and he started screaming like a prepubescent girl; I ceased to take him seriously from that moment until we finally moved!

 

@shakerhood

Summers were mild in Oak Harbor (and on the whole island), and no house that I was aware of had central air, including my house and all of my friends' houses. The Hernandez family Grand Am definitely did have A/C, though the car was well over a decade old by then and I don't know if it worked. Another friend's dad had a red 1989-1990 Honda Civic hatchback that did not have A/C, and one of the things I remember distinctively about living in Washington was that A LOT of pre-OBD2 vehicles (1995 and older) DID NOT have A/C...

I was 11 when we moved to Oak Harbor and 13 when we moved away, and though I was growing rapidly by then, I was still small and nontreatening enough that I could get away with looking through the windows of parked cars in my neighborhood; I did it on an almost daily basis and didn't have an issue.

The last time I had a babysitter before my parents started letting me stay home alone was sometime in December 2000 (I know it was near Christmas because I rented a Grinch PlayStation game at Blockbuster and she played it with me). My babysitter had a driver's license but was under 18, so that would have made her either 16 or 17 at the time. In typically Charlie fashion, one of the first questions I asked her was what kind of car she drove, and was quickly impressed...

Her family had two cars from the 1980s or very early 1990s, both stick shifts, and neither of which had A/C; I remember being both impressed that a hot teenage babysitter could drive a stick shift and shocked that a family in the 21st century would not have A/C. I did not got the impression that her family was poor, and she told me that her family didn't see the need for new car or one with air-conditioning for the matter. I believe one of the cars was a 1980s Subaru wagon, but I don't remember what the other one was or what she drove to babysit me that night...

In my own neighborhood in Oak Harbor, I saw a 1980s Mercedes 240D (I think; I know it was a diesel, but I forget exactly what model) that had crank windows and no A/C! I also a 1991-1993ish Jeep Cherokee Sport 4-door with no A/C, and I remember seeing a 1980s Jeep Cherokee 4-door 2WD in Friday Harbor that did not have A/C...

One of my teachers in 6th grade had a red 1993 Mazda Protege with a 5-speed stick that did not have A/C, and another teacher at my middle school had a silver Subaru Justy that did not have A/C. In the parking lot of the local Starbucks, I remember seeing a 1996-2000 Chevy Astro cargo van that did not have A/C. This was in 2000, so the van could not have been newer than 2000, but I knew it was 1996 or newer because of the dahsboard/interior; I looked through the window and even though it was dark, I could see that did not say "A/C" and "MAX A/C" like the nearly identical HVAC controls in my parents' 2000 GMC Safari conversion van. I would not learn this until I read a brochure years later, but A/C became standard in the Astro and Safari by default beginning in the 1995 model year; I believe that the passenger van had it standard no matter what, but according to my research, it was possible to order a cargo van without air for a roughly $1,000 credit until at least the late 1990s.

 

@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood

At the camp I went to for a week in May 2001, one of the camp counselors (a woman in her 20s) had a 1991 Nissan Pathfinder 5-speed with no A/C. My dad had a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder at the time, which was downright luxurious. It had power everything, heated leather seats, a sunroof, and not only A/C but automatic climate control; I considered the Pathfinder to be a luxury vehicle as a result and was absolutely shocked when I saw that this Pathfinder had no A/C! Despite being ten years old, this woman's Pathy was in great condition, and she loved it, but that was the first and only time I've ever seen a Pathfinder with no A/C; I have seen some pretty stripped-down Pathfinders over the years, like for example having crank windows, but I have never seen one even online without air!

On another note, vehicles in the Pacific Northwest tend to not rust, so vehicles that would have been rusting to pieces in the Northeast by the start of the 21st century looked great!

 

@shakerhood

In the early summer of 2002, right before we moved, I attended a summer art camp at Coupeville High School (Coupeville is another town on Whidbey Island). The teacher was a middle-aged woman, and she drove a blue 1988 Chevy Celebrity station wagon that did not have A/C. It also had the reliable but underpowered 2.5L Iron Duke, and she didn't want a newer car with payments, so she chose to make due with air-conditioning; I even took a picture of her car with a 35mm film camera, then painted a picture of it with a tornado in the background (random, I know), as an assignment which the teacher actually loved!

 

And that brings us back to James...

James had an older sister, and I forget whether she had just gotten her driver's license or if hse was going to college, but her parents bought her a car. This was sometime in 2001 or possibly 2002, and the car was a white 1992 Toyota Tercel 4-door with an automatic transmission. The car was in excellent condition, but it did not have A/C! I saw their dad working on the car in their driveway one day as I walked past and asked about; I was told that it was his daughter's new car, and he was replacing the factory radio with an aftermarket head unit that had a CD player. It was during the course of this conversation that I found out the Tercel did not have A/C.

I lived in Oak Harbor for two years and I can tell you from experience that summers were mild compared to everywhere else I've lived, and on the end of the spectrum, winters could be chilly but were also incredibly mild. Our house had forced air gas heat, but no air-conditioning, and during the time we lived there I did not see one house in our neighborhood with central air or even a window unit. However, also from experience I can tell that A/C is something that it's better to have and not need, than to need and not have!

We had a couple days per year where it got above 90 degrees, including one day where the A/C in the conversion van wasn't working and the dealer couldn't fit us in right away. The van was only two years old at the time, and as such this was covered under warranty, but the A/C had to be recharged every spring and no dealer could find the leak so they just recharged it. My dad and some officers in his squadron were invited to tour the USS Abraham Lincoln prior to a meeting, and he got permission to bring me along. It was a drive of well over an hour, so my dad let me bring PlayStation and plug it into the van's rear entertainment system. It was not in the 90s but it was warm, and I don't remember if this was before or after the one day when it was over 90 degrees, but the A/C wasn't fixed; I was in shorts and a T-shirt, but my dad and the other guys were in their dress whites and not exactly comfortable...