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

@LocoLocal
@shakerhood

Third issue...

Both of you are King of the Hill fans...

Either of you remember the episode where Hank lamented about the fact that he hadn’t been paying attention and accidentally filled his truck with 87/regular, and believed that it would be knocking and pinging? Hank’s truck definitely was not a diesel, and more than likely had the 5.4L V8, but there’s a chance it could have had that 6.8L V10. It’s a pretty well-known fact that both of these engines take regular.

However this is the same guy who changes his oil, and I quote, “Every 3,000 miles or whenever I get bored, whichever comes first”. It does not surprise me that he puts premium gasoline in a Ford F-250!

I’ve NEVER changed the oil at 3,000 miles in my Taco. Owner’s manual says to change every 5,000 miles or every six months, whichever comes first. Owner’s manual also recommends semi-synthetic oil, which I used for about eight years. I switched to full synthetic for the first time just before 80K miles and that’s what I’ve been using ever since.

@Running Man, aren’t you a “whenever I get bored” oil changer?

 

The smartphone junkie?

 

I change mine every 7,500 miles, and I pretty consistently average at least a thousand miles a month nowadays...

 

@Running Man

This girl wasn’t a manager, but she thought she was. I took a second job delivering pizzas in the summer of 2015 to make some extra money. When I took the job, I had no idea that five bucks an hour plus tips to deliver pizzas meant “we are going to make you help out around the shop for no extra pay”, at least when the owner of the pizza place wasn’t around.

On my first night there, this female cashier who was like 15 tried to make me mop the entire pizzeria while she sat at a table looking at her smartphone. Without a word, I walked out of the pizzeria and and sat in my truck reading a John Grisham book until my shift officially ended, while she had to get off her ass and mop the floor...



The one saving grace about that job was that the owner really did seem to like me, and he went out of his way to make sure I wasn’t taken advantage of after that incident...

 

Working with a bunch of immature teenage girls and an illegal immigrant who spoke very little English got really old really fast!

 

Another noteworthy thing about that job is that at times it seemed I was the only delivery driver with reliable transportation. The owner even commented once that I was his only driver whose vehicle wasn’t a piece of shit. As such, I would get called in on my days off because the driver who was supposed to work that night called in and said his car had broken down. This was far from stressful as the job was very easy, and downright enjoyable at times, but it started to wear pretty thin because keep in mind I still had my barback job at Puck and I needed my days off...

Score another one for Tacomakind, I guess!

 

When your daily driver is a pickup truck, you are generally never going to be without extra spending money!

A few people at Puck drove pickup trucks, but I was the only employee whose only job was Puck who had a reliable pickup. This one bartender named Edna had a 1996 Ford Ranger 2WD 2.3L/automatic that she literally saw by the side of road and bought on the spot for like three grand in cash. The truck did not have A/C, the heater did not work, and the tailgate did not open. The tailgate issue was particularly annoying when the Ranger was used for local liquor runs. Edna was so used to her tailgate not working that whenever we’d use my Taco for liquor runs, she’d start unloading cases of booze from my truck without opening the tailgate; I’d have to remind her that the tailgate in my truck actually opened...

I got selected to make the long-distance liquor runs (up to Lehigh) because my boss deemed Edna’s Ranger “not at all reliable”. I once put 170 miles on my truck in a matter of two or three hours because my boss forgot the check back at Puck!

Edna finally got fed up with things breaking on the Ranger, sold it privately (it only had like 90K miles when it was about 21 years old), and bought a used 2014 Jetta in 2017 or 2018. The Jetta does have A/C and Edna has vowed to never own a vehicle without A/C again.

 

Italian restaurant, but it isn’t set in stone yet...

She has two kids and a sick mom, and she caught a stomach virus from her kid and was sick in bed all weekend; I’m beginning to think this relationship might be over before it starts because she (A) lives almost an hour from me, and (B) has two kids and a sick mom to care for. The distance between us is proving to be the biggest issue.

 

One time I was tasked with getting a bunch of balloons for my boss’s friend’s birthday party. Obviously, a regular cab pickup truck with an open bed is not good for transporting balloons, so Edna gave me the keys to the Jetta for a quick run to the supermarket.

At the time, she’d owned the car for mere months and was still making payments on it, so she was understandably protective of it. When I got back, she said I’d better have been careful with her car...

I told her that I’d driven it like an elderly grandmother, but I’d blasted the stereo like a teenager with a new driver’s license (a base model Jetta has a surprisingly decent factory sound system). She started laughing and said that was fine.

A tree fell on the car during a storm earlier this year, and the insurance company wanted to total the car. Edna took the money, paid off the car, and had a friend do some discounted bodywork; I’m amazed they wanted to total a 5-year old car with like 50K miles on it over some cosmetic damage. I believe the car needed a new hood and some bodywork on the roof; There were no mechanical or structural issues, and she drove the car for weeks with the damage...

 

Edna always has been one of my favorite coworkers; She became the de facto assistant manager/bar manager in the last year and a half or so that Puck was open, and I routinely opened with her on Sundays during the summer. My reward for faithfully showing up as early as 9:30am on Sunday mornings was whatever I wanted from the Starbucks around the corner (almost always a vanilla creme frappuccino and a cake pop or two) on her...

I miss working at Puck just about everyday!

 

I am a by the book type when it comes to maintenance.

 

Yeah, me too, but not every time we get bored...

 

Going back to Edna, she used to bartend at another place around the corner from Puck, and I always remembered her for her name...

She even poked fun at herself by saying “I’ll bet you never met anybody under 80 named Edna!” She was born in the same year as me, by the way.

When she was tending bar at the other place, there was this one time I came in and started feeding my extra change into the TouchTunes jukebox. Edna loved my taste in music so much that she just started giving me money from the tip jar to put in the jukebox!

 

Interesting. I always imagined Hank's truck was an extended cab Ranger. Just doesn't seem to be as big as an F-250. I guess he did have two trucks throughout the series though?

 

The Ranger got hit by a train in the episode Chasing Bobby, after breaking down on the tracks.

For the first five or six seasons (1997-2002), Hank’s truck was a 1993 Ford Ranger XLT supercab 2WD, with an automatic transmission and presumably the 4.0L V6. The truck was pretty well loaded, with power windows and other “luxury” options. The series prominently takes place in Texas, which pretty much guarantees that the truck has A/C.

For Chasing Bobby, the truck is retconned to a 1982-1988 model with a manual transmission. The episode premiered in 2002, and due to the series’ floating timeline, it can be presumed that’s when the episode took place. Hank consistently says his truck is 20 years old, and that would make sense since the Ranger debuted as a 1982 model; However, this is when the glaring inconsistencies begin; The Ranger was not available as a supercab in its debut year, and I don’t think that configuration became available until 1984 or 1985. On the show’s fandom/wikia page, the truck is referred to as a 1986, which means it would be 16 years old in the episode.

The truck is shown to have a carburetor, and this makes sense because I believe Rangers first got EFI in 1987, at least in the V6 models.

 

Hank’s truck was typically shown with 1993-1997 exterior styling, but the earliest episodes showed Hank’s truck with a floor-shift automatic tranny; 1988 was the last year for floor-mounted gear selectors on automatic Rangers. All automatic Rangers from 1993 to 2011 had column shifters. The Ranger got a partial exterior redesign and a full interior redesign for the 1989 model year. I believe 1990 was the last year for the 2.9L V6, and the 3.0L and 4.0L became available in 1991. The exterior was fully redesigned for the 1993 model year, but the 1989 interior carried on until 1994.

 

Another example of design cues from different generations of the same vehicle being used would be Dale’s van...

Dale’s van was consistently drawn with the exterior of a 1991-1995 Dodge Caravan C/V; The year is confirmed as 1992 when Dale says in the 2002 episode Chasing Bobby that his van is ten years old. In some episodes, the van has a 1984-1990 interior; In at least one episode, it clearly has the 1994-1995 interior.

 

Going back to my “Issues of the day” discussion, there’s one thing I forgot; I’ve discussed my one Aspie friend regularly in the past...

I’ve known him almost 11 years, and I will never desert him, but he consistently manages to get on my nerves!

When we first met, he’d had his driver’s license about a month and I had a long-expired learner’s permit. When I finally got my license, he insulted my driving habits until it became clear that I was the better driver; I now refuse to ride in a vehicle when he’s driving so that problem is solved.

The biggest issue is that I’ve grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade, and he hasn’t changed much. Even by autism spectrum standards, he’s very rigid and set in his ways, and will often react belligerently if you criticize him, his habits, or his interests.

 

Everyone on TW who knows me well knows that my former boss from Puck is one of my closest friends. I credit her with giving me willpower to get off my ass and work; She gave me my first real job, working for her at the bar!

Yesterday, I hung out with her at the home of her and her fiancé for about four or five hours; She is horrible at wrapping presents, so she regularly has me do this for her and compensates me with food or beer. When I do a lot of driving for her while running errands, she compensates me monetarily...

Anyway, she wanted a very specific type of wrapping paper, so she gave me some cash and sent me to the Rite Aid that’s like mile from her house. I took pictures of the wrapping paper, as per her request...

Reception in this area is not the greatest, so I ended up going outside to make the pictures send quicker. While I was waiting for the pictures to send, my Aspie friend pulls in his dark red Altima. He is attempting to start up a bakery business, and one of the pharmacists at this Rite Aid (which is like 5 minutes from his house) is a regular customer who he delivers to. That’s why he was there yesterday...

 

Back when I was with my Ex-Fiance she worked in a restaurant and was always miserable so I always tried to nudge her to going back to school. Eventually she agrees but ridiculously chooses bartending school and only ends up hosting 2 or 3 parties over a 2 year span. After realizing that move was not very smart she finally chooses to go for an X-Ray Tech, I helped her with her classes and stupidly bought her a new car to help her get through the travel part of her schooling. Today she works at the hospital and makes about 70K so it sure worked out well for her.