New guy who's secretly used this site to solve most of his problems!

Hey all!
As you can see from above, I have been a stalker of this forum for a while now without ever posting anything. Luckily I was able to figure a few things out just from perusing the site, but decided to become an active member. I've had a 2006 Tundra for a couple years, but recently traded it in so I could get my wife the suburban she wanted.
I was lucky and purchased a 1997 Tacoma for $3500!
Specs: 151,500 miles (purchased with 151,000)
Manual transmission
4WD
2.7L 4 cylinder engine
not much body rust (woot woot!)

I'll post pictures, but what I've done so far.
First things first, I replaced the key cylinder because the guy I bought it from said not to take the key out of the ignition. I guess the issue was the tumblers were worn and when you put the key back in it's hard to get the key to turn. Found one online for $25.

Purchased new Evaporator core (same website as the key cylinder for $60) because the A/C wasn't working. Found out that it was the Low pressure pipe (was snapped in half just inside the firewall). Drove to a pick-n-pull and found a perfect high and low pressure pipe from a Tacoma they had there. Bad news, truck overheated on the drive to pick-n-pull. Thank goodness for this site at that point.
Replaced the thermostat, still overheated
Replaced the radiator cap, still overheated
Flushed and drained radiator, still overheated
Replaced the radiator and boom, truck works perfectly now!

I was going to sell the truck after this, but just love it too much.
Emergency parking brake wasn't working, replaced the rear brake shoes only to realize the shoes that were on there were just fine.
Adjusted the emergency brake cable, sprayed off the e-brake actuators on the inside of the tire. E-brake works now. (I still leave it in gear when I turn the truck off because I don't want to risk it rolling away).
Oh, I also used a buffer and some stuff my dad had in his garage to buff the truck so it was smoother. At some point I want to get it re-painted, but have absolutely no idea how much it costs.

I'll post another post in the forums about my next question and leave this here for now. If anyone has questions about any of the jobs I did, I will post the pictures and maybe video's

 

Welcome!

 

That thing is legit for $3500! I love me a good beater truck.

 

Me too! I won't even be sad if it get's another ding in it! Fixed a ding in the plastic bumper already.

 

Welcome to TW!!

 

Welcome aboard. Great lookin little work horse ya got there, Here's one to ya

 

Welcome to TW!

 

If you don’t care about dings, why not LineX the whole thing? It’ll be bulletproof then

 

No need to repaint...looks great the way it is

 

Welcome to TW! ^^^^ like a above but may also consider plasti-dip. There is a thread floating around here on it and several YouTube videos about it.

 

I thought about doing that. Do you know about how much that would run me?
For now I was going to try out getting herculiner and putting it in the bed for now.

 

I’ve only see one video about plasti-dip, then fell off the herculiner vs this vs that spiral of videos haha. I’ll have to see if I can find some of those videos. Thanks!

 

Probably quite a bit do have a shop prep and lineX the whole thing. But maybe no more than an acrual paint job would be. I’d say DIY is your most cost effective option but your results may vary. I honestly haven’t looked into it very much. I know there are good videos on YouTube though.