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

Just for the record, I put speeding tickets in the same category as income taxes, and that's legalized theft. Same thing with towing a vehicle if it's parked anywhere but a fire hydrant or a handicapped spot. If someone touches my shit without my permission, I'm reporting it stolen and making things miserable for them; I would not feel bad if I got a SWAT Team to show up at a tow yard with automatic weapons if they towed my truck, but I don't park illegally so that should never be an issue.

I know tons of people who probably should not have a driver's license, but they've managed to avoid suspensions and revokations because they know the right people or they have the money to hire a really good attorney.

 

Head Gasket. 180,000 miles. Just wasn't worth fixing. I really liked it , dvd factory player , think only 1 power sliding door , air auto level suspension in rear, 2 tone blue gray color.

 

@BkerChuck
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@Taco critter

One of my friends and former coworkers had a miniscule amount of beer at a party, but the problem was that he was 17 years old. My friend was born in 1991 and his first car when he got his license in about 2007 was a late 1990s Ford Taurus which, among other things, he lost his virginity in on his 18th birthday...

Anyway, my friend had some beer at a party when he was 17 and stopped at the old Wawa on Main Street in Doylestown (the new Wawa is right down the street, and the old Wawa was torn down and replaced with a Peoples Security bank) for a snack on the way home. He hopped in his car, reclined the driver's seat back, and proceeded to eat his mac and cheese. Unbeknownst to him, a cop was sitting in his patrol car in the Wawa parking lot; I don't know if it was marked car or not, but this cop got it into his mind that my friend had seen him and was trying to "duck" him.

It is worth noting that probably five years after my friend's encounter, I met this same cop in like 2013 while wandering around Doylestown on a Friday night taking pictures of trucks; Doylestown used to have this thing called "First Friday" on the first Friday of every month all year long, weather-permitting, but they shut it down for reasons I have forgotten. I have no idea how I started chatting with this cop, named Hotham, but he was just patrolling on foot and said hello to me as I walked past him with my camera. We started talking about trucks, he told me how he had a Dodge Ram with a Cummins diesel, and we parted ways. He very nice.

As soon as my friend said that an Officer Hotham had arrested him back in 2008 while telling this story, I was like "I met him!"

Anyway, so Officer Hotham came up to my buddy's Taurus and accused him of trying to hide from him...

My friend was below the legal limit, but he was still a minor so that in itself is a crime even if no actual driving is involved. He got arrested, spent several hours in jail, and had to be picked up by his mom. His mom was not happy. He did not lose his driver's license, but had to do community service or something.

Many of my friends lost their license for simple possession and consumption of alcohol when they were nowhere near a vehicle just because they were underage. In 2012, one of my friends got pulled over three weeks shy of her 21st birthday, got arrested for DUI because she blew a .02, and got her license suspended for six months. She was driving her shitbox 1992 Saturn and had at least three other people in the car, so no doubt she was pulled over being a college-age driver with college-age passengers in a shitbox after dark. The whole fiasco cost her about ten grand when all was said and done, she had never been arrested before or since, and it left her feeling very embittered toward law enforcement. Some people may disagree with me, but I think she got screwed over.

I drank underage more times than I can count, but I didn't get my driver's license until I was 22, and I didn't go crazy and attract attention from police!

 

It would probably cost more than that van was worth to do a head gasket job, especially if both needed to be replaced; I really lucked out with my truck because it has only one cylinder head is still worth decent money.

 

Seems that underage drinking arrests in PA are abnormally high. Feel like everyone I know from PA at the very least knows someone with an underage DUI (or has one on their record).

Can’t say the same about any other state.

 

Pennsylvania got sued a few years ago by a couple of guys in Philly whose driver's licenses were suspended for simple possession of weed, even though they weren't driving; Pennsylvania lost the lawsuit and was forced to not restore driving privileges for both men, but dropped this pointless law. The practice of suspending the driver's licenses of people under 21 for non-driving underage drinking offenses has also come to an end, so possession or consumption of alcohol by minor still results in a fine and possible jail time but not loss of driving privileges. I didn't get my license until I was 22, so if I ever had to take a breathalyzer and blew under the legal limti, I would have been fine. Unfortunately, if a minor blows a .02 or higher and they've been driving, it's still an automatic license suspension; I think it's bullshit.

 

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) is a government-funded beast that needed to be put out of its misery at least three decades ago. The LCB was founded in 1933 after prohibition ended, and Pennsylvania's governor at the time stated that the sole purpose of LCB was to make purchasing alcohol as inconvenient as possible. The LCB is universally loathed by residents and visitors alike, the biggest hurdle has been the unionized employees who want their pensions and other benefits, and only in the last decade or so has its liquor monopoly been loosened.

Years ago, state troopers would hang out at the state lines of Delaware and New Jersey, pull over people leaving the private liquor stores in those states who had Pensylvania plates, and confiscate their booze. This does not seem to be the case anymore from what I have read, which is good, because I would hide the booze out of sight and it would be inaccessible without a warrant; I would likely end up with a disorderly conduct charge at a minimum if a police officer and attempted to confiscate something from MY VEHICLE that I used MY LEGALLY EARNED MONEY to PURCHASE LEGALLY.

When I was younger, I would drink hard liquor when out at bar with friends and/or family, mostly in the form of shots but also in the form of mixed drinks. When it came to buying alcohol for personal at-home consumption, I have always been more of a beer guy though, and I still am. Until less than a decade ago, it was only possible to buy beer at a beer distributor, and only by the case. Beer distributors are privately owned and do not sell wine or hard liquor, and they got so used to having no competition from grocery stores and gas stations that they lobbied hard to keep their monopoly as well. Finally, maybe eight years ago, enough people must have complained because beer stores started selling beer by the 12-pack, 6-pack, 4-pack, and even individual bottles. Grocery stores and convenience stores have even found a loophole that allowed them to operate as a restaurant and thus sell beer. Some grocery stores are even able to sell wine now!

I almost never shop at the the grocery store beer gardens for numerous reasons...

• They are required to ask for and scan your ID every transaction, even you are obviously over 21 and/or are a regular customer; I go to the local beer distributors near my house so often that they never card me anymore.
• You are only allowed to buy the equivalent of two 6-packs of beer per transaction, so if you want more than that, you have to bring the beer out to your vehicle and come back for more.
• Repeat reason one. Even though you were just in the store, they have to scan your ID again because they can't complete the transaction without doing.

At least one time, I cheated the system at one of the grocery store beer gardens by giving money to a friend of mine and not making it obvious to the store employees that we were together; I bought two 6-packs of beer and then my friend, who was behind me, showed his ID and bought the other two 6-packs.

For a time, the beer garden at the Wegman's in Warrington was just openly defying the system and allowing people to buy more than two 6-packs at once; I forget whether they actually allowed them to buy more on the same receipt, which was likely not possible because of the way the computer was programmed, or if they just allowed you to complete multiple transactions without bringing the beer out of the store. At least one, I was told by a cashier to hide the beer I'd just purchased behind a cardboard cutout advertisement and buy more.

 

@Just_A_Guy

And then don't even get me started on dealing with the LCB during my four years as a barback at a popular Doylestown venue. It wasn't particularly bad, but it was annoying. The old state store was located on North Main Street in Doylestown, directly across from the old Bucks County Courthouse. A brand new shopping center was built on Veterans Lane not even a mile from the old state store, and this included a new state store. In PA, these are called Wine and Spirits stores, by the way...

The new, much larger state store operated concurrently with the old one for several months if I remember correctly, but it closed sometime in 2018 and the space has been vacant ever since. At one point, an older middle-aged female employee actually seemed to get annoyed with me because the bar where I worked was ordering most of its liquor from the new Veterans Lane store; I would understand if these were two competing liquor stores, but is a government monopoly where all of the money goes to the same agency and she is getting paid no matter what...

 

Okay yeah, but Pennsylvania was probably the only state where you couldn't go to a beer store and buy a 6-pack. The grocery stores are forced to follow the "192 ounces or less" bullshit. Bars and restaurants also have a much more limited quantity than the beer distributors...

 

What ever happened to buying a whole bunch of beer and crashing a some ones house?
No need to drive then?

They sell 24pk of beer here in Tennessee?
We’ve had 100+ cans at one time?

Of course, all that’s over for me.
Haven’t done any of that in years.

 

I missed the symmetry moment, but I think I'm gonna hit 176K next week!

 

Ready for Carlisle!

 

I am really glad that my truck runs on tried and true recycled dinosaurs...

 

This is the line for the goddamn electric car charging stations at Sheetz on Harrisburg Pike in Carlisle, while I was able to pull right up to a pump...

 

Indeed.

 

I've already got pics of an '88 4x4 with a custom stepside bed and 67K original miles!

 

Looks like good argument towards not taking an electric vehicle on a long road trip!

 

Looks like a L O N G wait.