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

Also, I gotta know, where did you find the clip in your signature of the American Bulldog biting the guy's leg?

 

It's my dog chasing a green laser and biting my GF's leg when she was sleeping!

Just kidding its on a website I will look for it!

 

LOL did you end up on the couch for that one? I thought giving one's girlfriend a Dutch oven was bad!

 

4gifs.com

 

This is a picture I took of the HVAC controls in my best friend's 2003 Toyota Highlander in July 2011 during a heat wave (note that the outside temp is 93°F). The Highlander was 8 years old at the time and probably had about 175K miles on it, but the A/C in that thing worked like a dream (at least up until the summer of 2013). My friend unfortunately rear-ended somebody at about 40 MPH and totaled the Highlander like 2 days after I checked the A/C for him and told him needed a recharge...

 

Agreed, just have one awesome thread, you could call it "classifiedInfo's wandering thread of things and stuff, pick heavy"

 

I just had an eye muscle surgery 2 weeks ago and am not totally recovered... On top of that it's winter. I worked less than 30 hours this week (29 to be exact; that is LOW for me; my typical range is 40-50 hours, sometimes more in the summer). On top of that it's too cold for car shows, my favorite thing when I'm not working... Do you need any other reasons why I haven't "Gone outside to play or something?" It's the off-season, and TW is fun to browse...

Once it warms up outside, you will not be seeing many posts from me beyond maybe a picture or two a week unless something. I have a feeling some members will miss me...

 

What do you think of this car? My uncle built it himself! It's a 1967 ERA Shelby Cobra replica, about $75K OTD. Under the hood is a junkyard 351 producing about 550HP. Sadly my uncle sold it not long after these pictures were taken in 2008...

 

My uncle's $75K Shelby Cobra replica that he bought as a kit from a company called ERA and built himself! Pictures taken in 2008 right before he took me for a ride for the first AND last time... Sadly he sold it not long after... My cousin (his oldest daughter) was jealous because she never even got to ride in it!

 

Preparing for alzhimers by documenting random memories?

 

My cousin's 1998 Audi Cabriolet that she bought with her own money in 2006. This detail is important because for Christmas in 2008, I bought her a license plate frame that said "I'M NOT SPOILED... I PAID FOR IT!" The Audi is long gone but she still has the license plate frame, which has been repurposed as a picture frame. My cousin got such a good deal on this car that she may as well have stolen it...

In my opinion, a car is not very well built if bits and pieces of the interior fall off, most notably when the interior door handle comes right off in your hand (even more annoying was that my cousin threw a fit because she thought I "broke" it). We had the 1996 Pathfinder for 13 years and the door handles most certainly did not just fall off in your hand. This car had FREEZING A/C and the top-of-the-line Audi Delta/Bose stereo, and it was convertible... Those were about the only positive things.

Sometime in 2006, my cousin somehow managed to start this car with the key to her mom's 2002 Volkswagen Jetta, but couldn't and my uncle had to come home from work and forcibly remove the key; no damage resulted...

The car was reliable in that it always started and never left my cousin stranded, but it had countless electric problems and the aforementioned interior that randomly fell apart. On top of that, my cousin could only afford to put regular in it, and that magnified the issues the car already had... She sold it and bought a 2006 Scion xA in 2009...

 

Bust my balls all you want, but DO NOT bring up Alzheimer's Disease, EVER. My Grandpa (who I'm named after) died of Alzheimer's 7 years before I was born at the age of just 61. I know you had no way of knowing, but that's a VERY touchy subject...

Basically, I got bored while I was recovering from an eye muscle surgery and started using a certain Tacoma owner/enthusiast forum to share stories about having Asperger's Syndrome... some people were annoyed by this (and many members were doing what this emoticon is doing: ). However, the number of people who read my blog-like threads and actually liked them, including the moderators, surprised me... Moderators then decided to give me my own thread and I am slowly transitioning into using it...

I work at a bar right now, and the two "normal" careers I'm looking into are either HVAC tech or USAA insurance adjuster (two things I'm good at that don't require MORE college education). However, it took a few long-ass rants and raves on TW to realize that a career having some to do with writing is probably the way to go. I plan on writing an autobiography/memoir someday, and putting certain stories from my past on TW for all to read is a great way to get started (the moderators seem to agree).

 

That's cool man. Keep up with the threads. Unfortunate about your grandpa.

 

BTW I saw your little icon...

My dad is retired Navy (1982-2007). Joined right out of college and retired as a Captain. Now he works for a defense contractor that builds drones!

 

The 2001 Jeep Cherokee you see me leaning against in the picture below is one the most pointless vehicles ever in my opinion, kind of like a building a new 2017 minivan with only one sliding door. This Jeep DOES NOT have 4-wheel drive!

My uncle (yes, THAT uncle) bought this Jeep for a particularly kindhearted reason. He wanted to spend more time with his daughters and his regular cab pickup obviously wasn't practical (or comfortable) for daddy-daughter time.

He bought this Jeep in like 2006 or 2007 from the 2nd owner who'd bought it for his daughter but if I remember correctly the daughter cared more about grad school than having a vehicle so he sold it to pay for that. The original owner had been a Japanese consulate in South Florida (which explains the lack of 4WD), and the 2nd owner bought it for next to nothing with ridiculously low miles. When my uncle bought it, it already had an aftermarket Aiwa CD player with an AUX input that been installed by the 2nd owner for his daughter. Keep in mind that my uncle bought this Jeep in 2006 or 2007, when aftermarket receivers with front AUX inputs were still a fairly new thing, so I was impressed with this feature.

My uncle still had the original hubcap and wheel store so he easily got his hands on a set of pre-1997 base model Cherokee steel wheels, then he got the factory code for the Jeep's exterior color, and painted the rims in that color. My uncle is never leased all of the family vehicles except the 1990 Volvo since my cousins came along in 1989 and 1992, respectively (2 Grand Cherokees, a Dodge Durango, and a Honda Pilot), and the only vehicles he buys new (or close to new) and holds onto for years are the special ordered pickup trucks (1994 Ranger XLT, 2002 Tacoma S-Runner) and his Harley motorcycles. It is rare that he keeps anything else (muscle cars he builds from the ground up, ANY muscle car that isn't a GM product, the various DIY shop trucks, 2 jet skis, and the 5-speed Caravan, to name a few) for more than a year. My uncle has owned more than 100 cars since he got his driver's license at the age of 16 (his first car at 16 was a 1970 Pontiac GTO), and the Jeep became just another statistic. I don't remember what he replaced the Jeep with, but when someone in Hummer totaled his twin sister's 1998 Monte Carlo (which she also bought from him), he sold her the Jeep. Believe it or not she assumed ALL Jeeps had 4WD and found out the hard way that this one didn't when she attempted to drive it in the snow for the first time. It does have a posi/limited-slip rear (I think it's called Trac-Lok in a Jeep?), but it does worse than my Tacoma in the snow. She bought the Jeep in like 2008 and the picture below was taken in January 2009).

My aunt still has the Jeep, and though it smells like a dive bar because my aunt smokes in it, it is the first vehicle my aunt has managed to keep in once piece for than 5 years. It also has less than 100K miles, and still has the color-coded wheels and the Aiwa CD player.


A shot of the Aiwa head unit:

 

I totally forgot that my uncle did this. In the picture below, you see the same Alpine head unit installed in the Ranger that he sold when he bought the 5-speed Caravan. This was NOT a cheap head unit, so he took it out of the Ranger and sold the Ranger with the speakers still installed but no radio (a dream in the case of some audiophiles who would prefer to put in their own receiver)...





Here is that photo of the same head unit in the Caravan. The reason it doesn't fit very well is because that is a Ford single-DIN retrofit kit in a the dashboard of a Chrysler product...

 

Gorgeous kid

 

My uncle has this ability to track down the most obscure vehicles, and turn them into something that is truly unique, even a 20-year old 4-banger Dodge Caravan with a manual transmission.

 

What you say if I told you that someone I know actually does have their own helicopter? It's just not the coworker with the 2007 Camry...