Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

Another reason I stay close to home. My anxiety can't take that white knuckling chaos like it use to.

 

During yesterdays solar event, with full cloud cover up here my solar took an amazing hit in output. Obviously we need to push for more petro-chemical production...

 

Hey Y'all I have a question too ask ! Do we have any body men in this group ? Don't know if I should just order a new door from Pony Parts or try to fix what's here. Just not sure of the small dents just under upper panel groove. I don't want to make it worse. So Help please !

 

Thats an easy fix. If the rest of the door is good no worries. You should be able to get at it with the window up from inside. If not worth it to take window out. Been to many years since I have been in the door of an old Mustang... Work with dollys and domed hammer. Then straighten body line with wood or spoon tool. (Grew up in a body shop. Worked as a frame tech until mid twenties. Chief Frame Systems certified... Then painted for a few years. )

 

ok , so I should be able to get them out from the inside of door panel , cool got most of what I'm thinking I need to get in there. Now will see what comes of it. I guess if I fuck it up its only another Door, lol thanks for the input

 

The only thing I've done was removed one from the inside, like pearing said, but using a baseball to roll it out.
I saw that crease you have there and figured....that isn't going to work on that spot.

 

@peaing That worked out good . Thanks ! Just letting the fiberglass cure then finish sanding then you won't even see it. Just ended up with two small dings

 

You sir, are a man of mystery and talents.

 

Lol, not really sure how to respond to that. Just a old farm boy that joined the Army and don't like paying someone to do something I can do myself. They say you tell a Combat Grunt he can't , he'll prove you wrong every time

 

step it up a notch


Or two:

 

It's funny, while there were a few uncomfortable moments yesterday, my anxiety was well in check. Between the long day of driving on Sat and yesterday, I've slept better the last couple of nights than I have in the last couple of weeks.

 

I was so close to going for the 2017 eclipse but the trip felt too long to the closest spot (near carbondale Illinois) and then there were the weather uncertanties that made it hard to plan this as a set in stone trip. That and my laziness overwhelmed my interest.

This time around, I didn’t want to let it go by, so I was kinda planning on trying a little harder to go. Weather was the only thing that made me hedge my bets. But Sunday night, weather looked good, so I decided on going. I’ve been seeing some awesome dslr pics from the last eclipse, and decided to dig out my old camera and zoom lens in case l lucked out.

I got lucky with traffic too. I was planning on going to Albion IL for max totality, but an eclipse app I found showed marginally better chances for clear skies in Palestine, IL. It was a few seconds less of totality, but good enough. I decided to take county highways and farm roads once south of champaigne/urbana. I ended up diverting around some small towns due to 20 min to pass each stop sign. One of those bypasses ended up being a really narrow gravel road that, come to find out, looked dry but was completely saturated by floods rains on Sunday. I floated over mud (with a thin gravel topping for at least 2 miles), hoping to God I didn’t have to stop or end slipping off the road. Made it through with some nice mud spray to mark the day as an adventure.

Apple maps was really pretty good with finding shorter routes around slow traffic as I moved south. I took any that apple showed me, and I made a few reroute calls on my own. Got to palestine just as the eclipse was starting, with enough time to have a snack and set up the camera.

Wow, was it worth it!!! Just absolutely jaw dropping. The difference between 99 percent eclipsed and totality was HUGE! They say a full eclipse usually makes people feel some odd primal “lizard brain” feelings for a split second once the shock of totality hits. I didn’t get fear, or fling poop like a monkey, but it still hit me for a split second. It was like a second of disbelief and sadness that the light went away. Really very weird unexpected feeling.

After the initial awe I got to taking pictures. Earlier, I set up my phone to video that last few minutes. I locked the exposure setting so the camera would not auto adjust light levels, hoping it would show the amount of light drop. Well, it showed it!!! This series of screen shots starts a couple of minutes before totality, with the sun probably 98 percent eclipsed












I also took some screen grabs with the auto exposure set to on. The phone even tried to add some fill light with the light.






Last ones are my grail shots. Being a space geek, I never imagined I would have pictures like these. There was some blurriness because I was fumbling like a neurotic monkey, I was shooting braced against the car door, and I haven’t used the camera for a while, but they’re salvageable. These are right off the back of the camera until I get time to process these:







It’s only through dumb luck I’m not blind from being lasered in the eyeball with a zoom lens. I had a timer set to warn of totality ending but it either didn't go off or I didn’t hear it. Sun poked through as I bumbled through settings.

Once the light came back, it took me a good half hour to recombobulate lol. I was expecting that it wouldn’t be that much of a emotional experience because I had been reading up and knew what to expect. But after word, I was bordering on the edge of calm and the double rainbow guy.

The next 2.5 or 3 hours were spent picking my way through some very nice farm roads (by nice I mean pitchy, rolling, and full of satisfying smooth bumps and dips). The 4runner felt like a very entertaining handful the whole time. God I love how this thing feels on roads like this! Had a lot of smooth farmland county highway all the way to Kankakee, with one stretch being flat and dead straight as an arrow for 30 miles. Despite that, it was still entertaining with my 4runner because I drove in “covered porch” mode (all windows and rear hatch window fully open) until I got on the interstate in Kankakee. Glorious drive… Didn’t want it to end…besides the cramping in my legs lol.

 

Post a picture of that sweet jump you did to show how well they work!

 

The 4Runner forum is going nuts. I think I like it, overall. But, I'm disappointed (not surprised) they made it as big as the LC/GX.

 

WOW really kool pics!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yeah, it’s kind of dawning on me how big it actually is. I wonder if it will still be considered small enough for Tigerton lol. I say that only half joking.

 

WIG craft are wild

It's only like 4 inches longer than the 5th gen.