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

I think the Explorer Sport-Trac had a MT option too.

 

I'm glad you mentioned the Generator as mine has a dead battery, need to order one but just hate spending the cash.

 

More odometer patterns!

 

Yeah, but only 2001-2005, and on base models. The Explorer Sport (2-door only) was available with a manual transmission all the way up until production ended in 2004; 2002 was the last year one could get a 4-door with a manual transmission...

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@Taco critter

Everyone who knows me well knows that my favorite song of all time is the 1989 remake of "Once Bitten Twice Shy" by Great White. Jack Russell, the original frontman, split from the original band years ago and joined up with a new band to form Jack Russell's Great White. One of the original band members, guitarist Ty Longley, perished in the 2003 Station Nightclub fire. The remainder of the original band, minus Jack Russell, still performs as Great White with a different lead singer.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out when I heard the song for the first time; I was "reacquainted" with it in November or December 2012 after hearing it on the in-game car radio while playing Saints Row, and it has been my favorite song ever since, but I know I heard it numerous times prior to that.

The band was at the height of their success from about 1987 to 1992, so it is highly plausible that I heard it in my mom's 1990 Toyota Camry or my dad's 1992 Dodge Dakota. My dad said he never had Great White on cassette or CD, and I didn't buy a Great White CD of my own until like March 2013. This would mean that it had to have been on the radio. I know for sure that I heard it on the radio in my dad's 1993 Chevy S-10 Blazer and definitely in the 1990 Camry because I spent a significant portion of my childhood prior to the age of 7 in those vehicles. What does everyone else think? Where in the hell did I first hear my favorite song?!?!

 

Probably on the radio.

For me, it would probably have been in the basement/garage of my dads house.
I had a little Honda Z50 and spent hours restoring it in that garage. The whole time the radio was on and playing classic rock.

 

Yeah, but in what car? I'm thinking the Dakota, the Blazer, or the Camry...

 

Definitely not MTV, and more than likely in a vehicle older than 1995...

 

Odds are 1 in 3.
So I’d go with the one you spent more time in.

 

I know I heard it when it was first released.

 

The first album to feature Great White's cover was released in April 1989, literally two days short of a month after I was born. My dad had a 1983 Toyota Celica (along with a 1978 MG and a 1983 Datsun 280ZX, but I only rode in the Celica), and my mom had a 1985 Ford Escort when I was born. It is highly possible that I heard Once Bitten Twice Shy in either of those cars when we were living in California, but I obviously would not remember any of it. My longterm memory first kicked in around 1992; I can actually vividly remember being potty-trained, and I can also remember the night my dad brought the aforementioned 1992 Dodge Dakota home after buying it. I have very vague and fractured memories of 1991, but my truly vivid memory kicked in around 1992, when I turned 3 years old; I also remember my cousin breaking her arm that year, also at the age of 3 (I was born in March 1989 and she was born in July 1989).

We moved to Pennsylvania for the first time in 1990. My parents bought a brand new Camry, which my mom drove, and my dad bought a 1986 Mazda B2000 pickup from his brother. The Camry had a surprisingly decent stereo with a cassette, but the Mazda was no-frills and only had an AM/FM radio, so my dad had a cassette deck installed at Circuit City; I definitely heard it in the Mazda, which my dad owned from 1990 to 1992 and traded for the Dakota, and don't remember it. I definitely heard it in the Camry at some point, so I could have heard it and subconsciously remembered it years later anytime between 1992 and 1996. We owned the Camry from 1990 to 1998, with the first six years of its life being spent in Pennsylvania.

 

Well, Now I’m going to go dig threw some of my dads old albums. Lol
I’m curious what he has in the collections.

 

@shakerhood

Also, I definitely spent the most time in the Camry from 1990 to 1998, because my mom went on maternity leave from her job when I was born and didn't go back to work, preferring to stay home and raise me.

Throughout the 1990s and well into the first decade of the 2000s, my dad owned nothing but pickup trucks and SUVs, in this order...

• 1986 Mazda B2000 (1990-1992)
• 1992 Dodge Dakota LE (1992-1993)
• 1993 Chevy S-10 Blazer (June 1993-May 1996)
• 1996 Nissan Pathfinder (May 1996-September 2009)
• 1990 Mazda B2600i (Owned concurrently with the Pathfinder; October 1998-May 2000)

I cannot recall ever hearing Once Bitten Twice Shy in the Pathfinder, which my dad bought when I was 7 and traded for the Tacoma when I was 20, but I more than likely did at some point. However, we are talking about the first time I heard the song ever and it imprinted on my subconscious...

I spent more time in the Camry than other vehicle during the 1990s because during the period of 1990 to 1998, it was the vehicle we owned the longest; I obviously couldn't ride in the backseat of the first Mazda pickup because it didn't have a backseat. In the 1992 Dakota, even though I was still in a carseat and probably should have been in the backseat, I never rode in the backseat unless both of my parents were in the truck. My mom preferred to have me in the backseat of the Camry, but I can remember riding shotgun in the Camry as early as 1992.

None of our cars had airbags until the 1996 Pathfinder, and I was in a booster seat until the late 1990s due to being small and underweight for my age. However, with the exception of the Pathfinder for the first five years we had it and the GMC Safari for the first nine months we had it (purely because of the airbags), I always rode shotgun.

I was a truck guy from the time I was probably three years old, from the time I got my first toy trucks, to the age of 20 when my dad said he would buy me a new vehicle and I told him that I wanted a truck. I was three when my dad bought the Dakota, and just three months past the age of four when he traded it for the Blazer; I preferred the Blazer to the Camry because I thought the Blazer was cooler.

In order to keep me happy, my parents rotated cars a couple times a week so I would could get driven to preschool in the Blazer. No doubt because little boys often want to be like their dad, and my dad drove a Chevy SUV, I always preferred Chevy to Ford.

My dad bought two mode trucks for me in December 1993, with the intention of giving one to me for Christmas, and saving the other one to give me for my birthday in March 1994. One was a Chevy and one was a Ford. On Christmas Eve, he asked me if I wanted a Ford or Chevy truck for Christmas, and without hesitation I said "Chevy!"

There was a model Chevy 1500 under the tree the next morning...

 

My dad traded the Blazer in primarily because he wanted something with 4 doors; I was growing rapidly and getting into and out of the Blazer's backseat was becoming rather cumbersome. By early 1996, the Blazer's numerous issues seemed to have been hammered out and it was trouble-free, but he decided he wanted something newer and traded it for the Pathfinder in May 1996. If it was just my mom or dad driving, I regularly rode in the front seat of the Pathfinder for probably the first five months we had it. In late 1996, after we'd moved to California, all of these stories started coming out about kids being seriously injured and even killed by airbags. My parents made me ride in the backseat of all vehicles with dual airbags until I got bigger. The general rule was 12 years old or 60 pounds, and the first time I rode shotgun in a vehicle with dual airbags was in February 2001, right before I turned 12.

When we lived in California from 1996 to 1998, I preferred to ride in the Camry when it was just one of my parents because the Camry had no airbags and I could ride in the front. We lived in military housing from 1996 to 1998, so my dad didn't have much of a commute to work and both of our vehicles also got serviced at an on-base shop for military and their families. As such, the Pathfinder didn't get a whole hell of a lot of miles put on it despite being our family vehicle for the first four years of its life. It hit 100K in 2007, and when we traded it for the Tacoma in 2009, it had like 113K miles. It was relegated to "third vehicle" status in late 2005, when my dad bought the S2000 and intended on giving me the Pathfinder once I got my license. From September 2005 to September 2009, my dad owned three different cars. He had a 2003 Honda S2000 from September 2005 to June or July of 2007, a 2002 BMW 325Ci which he bought in the spring of 2006 and owned concurrently with the S2000 for roughly a year, and a 2008 Acura TL which he traded the BMW for in August 2008.

 

This is how we listened to our favorites back in the day, I had one identical.
Often called a "6 transistor", they ran a long time on a 9 volt battery.



Even the batteries were commonly called a "transistor battery".

 

Well, I started and ran out of floor space. Lol

You can zoom in and see the rest.

 

My dad sold the Camry privately in 1998, right before we moved from California to Virginia Beach.

Since my dad was traveling a lot for work from about August to September of 1998 and generally didn't need a vehicle, we made due with just the Pathfinder for a couple of months. My dad did not want car payments on two different vehicles, so he decided to buy an older vehicle in cash, and almost immediately decided he wanted a pickup. He didn't care if it was 4WD or not, since the Pathfinder was 4WD and winter weather in Virginia Beach was mild, nor did he care that if it was a stick shift. The biggest requirement was that it had to have air-conditioning. My dad wouldn't even test drive anything that didn't have A/C, and I've got a funny story about that soon to come...

We looked at and test drove two 1989-1992ish Ford Ranger super cabs, and I know they were that specific year range because they had the same front end as a Ford Explorer. Both of the ones we test drove were 2WD, but the first one was lifted; I remember being pissed on that test drive because the salesman insisted on coming with us and wouldn't let me ride in the front. That Ranger was either black or dark blue with a gray interior, had chrome American Racing wheels that were typical in the 1980s and 1990s, and it had a lift kit despite being 2WD as previously mentioned. It was a V6, which was one of the things that appealed to my dad for the price they were asking, and it was also a 5-speed; I have no idea what V6 that Ranger had, as three had been available in the range of 1989-1992, but I believe it was the 4.0L.

It definitely had A/C, because also as previously stated, my dad would not test drive anything if it didn't have A/C, and I guarantee you that if my dad had gotten in that truck and found the A/C to not be working he would have walked. The truck ran and drove okay, and the price was good, but it was a shitbox that had been ridden hard and put away wet. Once thing I remember about that specific truck was an aftermarket four-outlet cigarette lighter plug-in thing that had been haphazardly spliced into the electrical system. My dad walked purely because the truck was in such rough physical condition.

The great truck search took place in September and October 1998, and all but one of the trucks my dad actually drove were old enough that they had R-12 Freon. None of the trucks we looked at were newer than 1995, and he found all of the trucks he looked at that were newer than about 1992 to be too expensive for a vehicle he would likely be selling in less than two years.

The second Ranger my dad actually test drove was much nicer, in much better shape, and had an automatic transmission. The shitty Ranger had been a trade-in on a new truck at a big dealership, but this one was at a smaller mom-and-pop dealer.

It was a V6, but once again I forget which one, and this was probably the only truck my dad test drove that wasn't a stick shift. The truck was gold with a beige interior, in excellent condition both mechanically and physically, and met all of my dad's basic requirements including having A/C that worked great; I believe that was even one of the few trucks we test drove that had power windows! Unfortunately, the dealer was asking way too much for a truck that at the time was at least six years old (Again, this was 1998 and the truck was no newer than 1992).

 

Trucks that met my dad's requirements of being in good shape and having A/C, but which ended up we walked away from due to the seller asking too much...

• A 1986 Nissan pickup that had a clean title and was in good shape, but showed obvious signs of having been repainted and which my dad suspected had been in an accident as a result (We did not test drive this one).
  
• The aforementioned 1989-1992 Ranger SuperCab.
• 1993 Ford Ranger regular cab (Didn't drive)
• 1993 Toyota pickup (We actually did test drive this one).
• 1995 Toyota Tacoma at AutoNation USA (Didn't drive).

 

@ABA180
@BkerChuck
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@RustyGreen
@shakerhood
@Squatting Pigeon
@steelcity2
@Taco critter
@TnShooter
@wilcam47

That the brings us to the tale of the of the used car lot full of identical white Isuzu Hombres, which I have told here many times before. For those of you who do not know, an Isuzu Hombre is a rebadged 2nd Gen Chevy S-10. The redesigned S-10 and Sonoma debuted for the 1994 more year, and I believe that the Hombre came out in 1995 or 1996. They had a different front end and Isuzu badging, but were otherwise identical. They had the same engines and transmissions as their GM counterparts and even came off the same assembly line. The Hombre was produced until 2000 or 2001 and is virtually nonexistent today because it never sold particularly well when it was new. It was possible to get a loaded extra cab Hombre with a V6, 4WD, and power everything. However, most of the ones I've seen are no-frills 2WD regular cab 4-bangers.

This dealer with a huge inventory of Hombres was one of the first places we looked, in September 1998. My dad saw an ad saying that this dealer had several Isuzu Hombre pickups for five grand each. No other information was given, but these trucks were no more than three years old. My dad was ready to write the dealer a check and drive one home; I went with him and sure enough there was a dealership at the listed address, which had been a McDonald's or other fast food joint in a previous life, and it was full of identical white Isuzu Hombre pickups. I can't remember if they were manual or automatic, but my dad was one blank check away from buying one. My dad knew how to drive a manual transmission since before he got his driver's license, but at $5,000 he didn't give a shit what transmission any of these trucks had. All of them were identical and all of them were five grand, so he planned to pick the one with the lowest miles.

We didn't even test drive one. My dad asked the guy why they were so cheap and immediately found out.

No A/C. In Virginia Beach.

Hell, it was late September and in the 90s that day, and not one of these goddamn trucks had air-conditioning!

These trucks were only a few years old and in excellent shape, but even at that price it would have been more cost effective to buy an older truck with A/C than to go through the trouble of installing it in one of the Isuzus.

I have no idea where the dealership got like a dozen identical pickup trucks with no A/C, but they weren't shitboxes; I was thinking fleet trucks, but if they were fleet trucks they were very lightly used fleet trucks, because they were clean and in great shape. I have no idea what the mileage was, either, but needless to say my dad thanked the salesman for his time and we immediately walked. I can actually remember, even more than 24 years later, my dad saying "what a shame" as we walked out.

My dad briefly considered buying an older Jeep Wrangler YJ, but while all of the ones he looked at were decent, he found it impossible to find a reasonably priced one with A/C. I know it's a Jeep, with a removable top, but A/C is pretty much obligatory in Virginia Beach during the summer. My dad could have afforded to buy a brand new 1998 Jeep Wrangler, but that would have been well over twenty grand and my dad didn't want payments.