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

Two different kinds of fun, but between the S2000 and Miatas I've driven there's not a better example of a fun driver's car.

 

I've seen thousands, and it is great for families. I'd rather buy an SUV, when that time comes for me. Ex. 4runner

 

And I'm always going on about how cold the A/C in my Taco is...

This S2000 had FREEZING nipple-hardening A/C. The A/C was the biggest thing, so you could drive it on hot days...

 

Haha great description!

 

Also, this car was in a significant wreck before my dad bought it, where it got sideswiped and there was extensive damage to the left front area. Front left fender was apparently shredded and and entire front wheel was ripped off (control arm, brake rotor, etc). However, it missed everything important (including the A/C condenser and radiator) and the airbags did not deploy. The only reason my dad found out it was wrecked is because a coffee table fell on it in the garage right before he sold it, and my uncle's friend who owned a body shop discovered it while fixing the dent... Whatever idiot repainted it used the wrong shade of blue on the front fender!

Another red flag was the left front wheel vibrated a lot during the test drive, but it came and went. Within a week, the vibration became so bad that my dad brought it back to the Honda dealer a week later. The car came with a 7-year/100K mile warranty offered exclusively by that dealer. They put it up on the lift, took the wheel off, and realized that the rim was from a 2002 Honda S2000, which looked the same but was slightly different. They had another 2003 Honda S2000 that had just been traded in, so they took the wheel/tire from that and put it on my dad's, then ordered a new one for the other 2003 trade-in. The car never had any problems after that, but my dad sold it because it was not very comfortable for long drives...

 

My dad wanted a BMW 3-series convertible, and his older brother happened to own one that he was getting ready to trade in for a new SUV...

My uncle bought this 2002 BMW 325Ci brand new at a local dealer near his home in Florida, and it had every option except the cold weather package and a limited-slip rear differential. It was black with a beige interior and it had Harman/Kardon speakers (that stereo KICKED ASS even with the top down; shame there was no iPod hookup), sport package, and premium package. Again, it had very option except cold weather package and limited-slip differential (which considering it came from Florida made sense). My dad got this car when it was only 4 years old, for well below what it was worth. Unlike the S2000 which he thought was too much car for me, he actually let me drive this one...

This picture was taken at Montgomeryville Acura in August 2008 the day my dad traded the BMW for a brand new Acura TL...


Pictures from April 2008 in the driveway of our old house:

 

Oh wow, yeah i can see plenty of reasons your dad would only keep it for 6 months.

 

You don't say.

 

IGNORE THIS FIRST PARAGRAPH; BY LOOKING AT OTHER PICTURES I HAVE REALIZED THIS TRUCK WAS LONG GONE BY THE TIME I GOT MY LEARNER'S PERMIT: This almost became my truck! I FINALLY got my learner's permit in August 2009, right around the time my uncle was getting ready to sell this. My uncle knew my dad was buying me a pickup truck as my first vehicle, that a Ranger was one of two at the top of that list (the other being the Tacoma), and offered this one to his older bro at a ridiculously low price. The truck had automatic and ICE COLD A/C, the only two things that were really a requirement for us. However, being family didn't mean my uncle was willing to part with his super expensive Alpine head unit. So the truck would come WITH 4 very nice aftermarket speakers, but my dad would have to buy a radio. This truck still had less than 100K miles on it back in 2009, but it was about 6 years older than the oldest trucks my dad had been looking at. On top of that, my dad wasn't wild about the paint color. Within a month I had the Tacoma I have now...

STILL TRUE: It's a 2001 or 2002 Ford Ranger XL regular cab long bed 2WD that was originally white and had body damage on the right side when he got it. My uncle bought it from a company that was updating its fleet (I think they had a few identical Rangers but only this one was damaged so my uncle got it dirt cheap). Since he purchased it from a corporate owner and not an insurance auction, this truck came with a clear title. He repaired the damage, painted it in his favorite "Harley theme," and added custom wheels and a killer stereo. The best thing about this Ranger is that even though it was a base model Ranger, it had the 4.0L V6 and a limited-slip rear end...

This once-nondescript fleet truck could seriously smoke the rear tires!

Also, this truck was very basic, but did it have A/C, the A/C in this truck was above average in my opinion. Ford trucks always seem to have really good A/C...

My uncle was going for a "1970 Boss 302" theme when he chose those wheels:


Interior, stock except for the stereo/speakers and neoprene seat cover:


And the Alpine head unit that my uncle took out when he sold this truck, and installed in this (he did leave the 4 aftermarket speakers in the Ranger, but the Alpine receiver was NOT CHEAP and he didn't feel like spending money on another one):

 

This was the S2000's replacement

Unlike the S2000, the BMW had a slushbox and my dad actually let me drive it...

 

I've owned an 05 AP2 and an 01 AP1. The 01 had only 27k miles when I bought it in 2014. Ended up getting rid of it to pay for my wedding.

Great cars. Really driver-centric.

Never actually took the AP1 to 9k RPM but even going to 8K felt pretty wicked.

The greatest Honda I've ever owned with the BB6 prelude being a close second

 

When I got my learner's permit in 2009, a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder SE my dad bought new was supposed to become my first vehicle. It was in mostly mint condition, everything worked, and it had less than 114K miles. My only complaint about it was the lack of an AUX input. I had enough money to buy a new head unit (as in pay for it myself), but my dad traded the Pathfinder for a Tacoma, so I didn't complain. However, I always joke that my dad could have saved about $15K if I'd just bought a new head unit for the Pathfinder...

As you see the Pathfinder already had an aftermarket head unit installed (an Alpine from 2005; no front AUX input); It just had the factory 6-speaker sound system that sounded pretty good (not Bose)…

 

My dad traded the 2002 BMW 3-series for this car, and ever the master negotiator got it super cheap. In my opinion, Acura ruined the TL with the 2009 redesign, and this 2004-2008 is best TL ever built. This was the first car my parents owned with navigation and also the first one with a backup camera.

In 2012, a woman in a RAV4 made an illegal left turn and clobbered the left rear section of this car. The driver's wouldn't open and my dad to exit through the front passenger door. The airbags did not deploy, but the car had to be towed because the sheetmetal was rubbing on the tire...

I took one look at those pics and thought for sure it would be totaled, but the total cost to fix was about $5K.

This picture was taken back in August 2008 the day we brought it home...



My parents traded it for the 2013 Murano in September 2014.

 

I have one of those created by the moderators, but I thought this had to do with general automotive...

 

@El Duderino
@Running Man
@shakerhood

Convenient Karma:
This happened back in 2001 or 2002 (probably September-October 2001). I think I was in 7th grade. My dad was stationed at NAS Whidbey at the time. I was eating lunch with some friends (contrary to popular belief I did have friends). This kid who NOBODY liked but still tolerated sat down at our table. You see, the difference between this kid and myself is that kids teased me for my various behavioral quirks, but I had friends and even the kids who teased me seemed to have an unspoken respect for me. This other guy, everyone genuinely hated him. Even teachers found him annoying... He also didn't have Asperger's, so he didn't have many excuses for the shit he pulled...

So... I'm eating lunch with my friends and this kid sits down at the table. Without provocation, he just started telling me that he didn't like me and what a loser he thought I was... I lost my temper, grabbed what I thought was my backpack, and hurled it at him as hard as I could... As much as I hated this classmate, I'm glad the backpack didn't hit him, but it did land in his lunch, and it was at this point that I realized it wasn't my backpack. Someone else had placed their similar backpack next to mine... I was more afraid of what the backpack's owner would do to me...

The classmate everyone hated grabbed the backpack and hurled it over his shoulder. Somehow the owner of the backpack completely missed that I'd mistakenly grabbed his backpack and thrown it at a classmate, but witnessed my intended target throw the backpack into the lunch line. He jumped up from his seat, demanded that this guy go get his backpack, and made it clear that serious injury would probably occur if he didn't do as he was told. The unloved loser classmate went and picked up the backpack while I kept my mouth shut. Amazing no teachers witnessed this and all of my friends kept their mouths shut as well...

Thinking back on incidents like this today made me realize that my peers may have respected me more than I was capable of recognizing back then...

 

Another time at that same middle school (but in 2002 towards the end of the year), a former tormentor named Richard actually witnessed another kid picking on me and chased him down. Richard was no MMA fighter, but quite physically fit for a 13-year old; the kid he'd seen picking on me was short and overweight. The look in Richard's eyes was borderline homicidal, and I sincerely hope that Richard didn't actually catch the poor bastard even though he was very deserving of a beating...

This reformed bully was a kid in my grade named Richard (I'm using his name because I actually liked him by the time I moved) who used to pick on me mercilessly but then realized I was actually kind of a cool guy. Proof that most so-called bullies are not the sociopathic morons people think they are...

 

One time my neighbor told me a story about when her daughter was a baby... While changing her daughter's diaper, she was suddenly overcome with diarrhea and a geyser of liquid poo came shooting out and got all over the wall... And it gets better. She thought she got all of it, but when they moved out of the house two years later and packed up the kid's bedroom, mom and dad found a whole bunch of previously unseen dried shit stuck to the wall!

 

This happened in either 2010 or 2011 in a friend's basement. I'm pretty sure I had my driver's license at the time, but I did not drive to this friend's house more than likely because I was drinking. Even if I was drinking, I probably didn't have more than a couple beers and was pretty much sober by the time the following events took place. This was also the same friend (now ex-friend), with Asperger's, who I banned from from riding in my Tacoma because he stunk up the interior with his B/O and refused to improve his personal hygiene when confronted.

So another friend of mine, who I am still friends with, worked at a haunted hayride in the fall. His job: He dressed as a zombie and scared people. He knew that sneaking up on me and scaring me was not a good idea. Also, if I'm at a haunted hayride, I expect someone dressed as a zombie to jump out and scare me. When I was 10 or so, I was chased by a guy with a fake chainsaw (probably dressed as Jason) in a haunted maze, and while it scared me, I knew in the back of mind it was fake. If Tim pulled the shit he pulled at the haunted hayride, I'd be fine with it. Hell, the first couple of times he practiced his "scare technique" on me, I put with it and just told him to stop. He had done this to me numerous times before I finally lost it with him in my other friend's basement.

The first time he did it, I thought it was kind of funny and we all had a good laugh, even though he had done it before on a couple different occasions. I then told him to please not do it again and thought was the end of it.

To my shock, he did it AGAIN a short time. I glared at him and said something like "Don't fucking do that again!" I kept my cool, but ny body language and the look on my face should have told him that there was a good chance of bodily injury on his part if he didn't stop. He didn't take it that way.

A short time later, HE DID IT AGAIN! This time I don't think I even said anything to him. I vaulted over the back of the couch, actually grabbed my friend around the neck, and slammed him up against the wall (actually it was a freestanding support pole with drywall around it, not the actual wall; you know what I'm talking about). My friend with AS intervened and got between us, saying that if we didn't stop, he'd make us both leave. I told my friend that if he "Pulled that shit again," not only would I kick his ass, but I would also just keep the two DVDs he'd let me borrow recently. That shut up him and he never "pulled that shit again."

I told my mom about this and she worried that I could have been arrested. My response was this; "Mom, do you think he's really going to call the cops and say that his friend almost strangled him when he provoked it in the first place?"

I told my dad about it, and my dad said "If he actually did that then he deserved it!"

 

Luckily in the townhome neighborhood where we used to live, the HOA hired the landscaping guys so it was their problem...

Luckily I've never lived in a neighborhood where the HOA was like the gestapo...

However, any HOA that bans pickup trucks from the neighborhood deserves to be overthrown... As in all pickup trucks, not commercial/company trucks or nonfunctional project vehicles... My step-Grandma has a condo in Florida with a no pickup truck rule...

Somebody needs to take their pickup to the common area and do donuts on the grass in neighborhoods like that...

 

This guy was a Ret Lt Col US Marines and he told everyone to call him Colonel but I asked him if he was not a Colonel why did he want to be addressed as Colonel? I always addressed him as "half Colonel".....

He also tried to dicktate what color blinds people could hang on their windows inside their own unit....