Hello fellow LC enthusiasts. I've been around the forum since buying my first 200 series back in 2018. Since then I've only owned an LX 570. I've been a Toyota fan boy since I buying my first Tacoma back in 2006.
A little background about Rusty. He was owned by a couple of different forum members in the last decade. I believe it was a Florida/South Carolina rig. So there is a decent amount of rust in the normal areas. The worst of it is the drivers floor board. Someone did a 'repair' and just riveted a piece of tin over the gaping rust hole. Then rhinoed over the bottom to cover up the botched repair job. So I didn't notice it until taking the interior out in prep for paint.
The rest of it is rust I knew I had to repair. The drivers fender was pretty shot at the bottom, both rocker panels will need patched. Likely a couple small patches at the quarter panels and one near the rear hatch wiper. Luckily the roof and frame won't need much work at all.
Now a little bit about myself and why I'm taking on this project. I'm a farm kid from Iowa that joined the Army to run away from rural America. The real reason I joined the Army, was that I didn't want to tell my parents that I only attended one class the entirety of my freshman year. They were footing the bill and being farmers, weren't well off. So I chickened out and called a recruiter and was on a plane to The School for Wayward Boys at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) Georgia. This was also just a few months after 9/11 and I was young and impressionable.
Fast forward 17 years and I was medically retired just a few months before I would be locked in to my 20 year retirement. This part of this post is not meant for any pity/sympathy/empathy, but it's good for context about what I'm doing now. I spent almost 4 years of my career on deployments to Iraq. This lovely place is where I was messed up, had been hit by 4 IEDs in total (one that really got me was the one, i was about 6 feet above and took the blast to the face). After that I suffered some pretty severe post concussive/TBI. I refused to be sent back to the states and spent another 13 months in country after that last IED strike. Which was insanely dumb on my part, but I had to be a hard charger.
After returning I started suffering from severe depression (never experienced that before in my life) and was in constant pain from migraines. Nine months later I decided I had enough and swallowed a couple bottles of pills (was stationed in the Netherlands at the time and didn't have a handgun as they aren't legal there). Luckily for me my wife came home from work a couple of hours early and found me unresponsive. The health care system there kept me on the planet and I got to experience a Dutch psych ward for a few days. This was back in 2009 and I have since been hospitalized pretty much ever two years since then. No meds work for me and I've tried CTE and am now in Ketamine treatments.
It's now 2019 and I suddenly find myself back in Iowa with no job prospects. I ended up using the VA VR&E program to go back to school and graduate with my Electronics Engineering degree. I get hired before I even graduate in a giant tech company that has a local chip design studio with about 4 engineers and 10 techs. Was an amazing job and I loved every minute of it. If you are using anything made by Apple in the last 3 years, there is a chip that I helped design in them all.
Fast forward to 2021 and the VA thinks I might be bipolar so they try one of the meds meant for that. My brain goes berserk and I end up in a black hole of depression. They immediately take me off it (after 3 weeks), but the damage was done. It took me another 6 months before I felt like I could leave the house. I had to resign from my engineering job.
Now I'm just existing, smoking as much weed as I can. This is the only thing that gives me an appetite and helps me be functional around my kids.
This couldn't go on so I signed up at the local community college to learn how to restore Rusty. I've now almost completed the auto collision portion and will be moving on to the mechanical side in the fall. My future plans is that I want to be able to start a non-profit that will be teach other vets how to do what I'm learning, but in a condensed form and with housing while they are there. My other goal is to open a shop for the local community kids to be able to work on their cars with our tools and help/guidance. We have something like this on most major Army bases called an 'Auto Skills Center'.
I have been wanting to make this post for years now, but the depression/anxiety has kept me from doing it. Last week a kid (21) from my class was killed on his first motorcycle ride of the year. That helped put what little life I have left into perspective.
Rusty:
A little background about Rusty. He was owned by a couple of different forum members in the last decade. I believe it was a Florida/South Carolina rig. So there is a decent amount of rust in the normal areas. The worst of it is the drivers floor board. Someone did a 'repair' and just riveted a piece of tin over the gaping rust hole. Then rhinoed over the bottom to cover up the botched repair job. So I didn't notice it until taking the interior out in prep for paint.
The rest of it is rust I knew I had to repair. The drivers fender was pretty shot at the bottom, both rocker panels will need patched. Likely a couple small patches at the quarter panels and one near the rear hatch wiper. Luckily the roof and frame won't need much work at all.
Now a little bit about myself and why I'm taking on this project. I'm a farm kid from Iowa that joined the Army to run away from rural America. The real reason I joined the Army, was that I didn't want to tell my parents that I only attended one class the entirety of my freshman year. They were footing the bill and being farmers, weren't well off. So I chickened out and called a recruiter and was on a plane to The School for Wayward Boys at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) Georgia. This was also just a few months after 9/11 and I was young and impressionable.
Fast forward 17 years and I was medically retired just a few months before I would be locked in to my 20 year retirement. This part of this post is not meant for any pity/sympathy/empathy, but it's good for context about what I'm doing now. I spent almost 4 years of my career on deployments to Iraq. This lovely place is where I was messed up, had been hit by 4 IEDs in total (one that really got me was the one, i was about 6 feet above and took the blast to the face). After that I suffered some pretty severe post concussive/TBI. I refused to be sent back to the states and spent another 13 months in country after that last IED strike. Which was insanely dumb on my part, but I had to be a hard charger.
After returning I started suffering from severe depression (never experienced that before in my life) and was in constant pain from migraines. Nine months later I decided I had enough and swallowed a couple bottles of pills (was stationed in the Netherlands at the time and didn't have a handgun as they aren't legal there). Luckily for me my wife came home from work a couple of hours early and found me unresponsive. The health care system there kept me on the planet and I got to experience a Dutch psych ward for a few days. This was back in 2009 and I have since been hospitalized pretty much ever two years since then. No meds work for me and I've tried CTE and am now in Ketamine treatments.
It's now 2019 and I suddenly find myself back in Iowa with no job prospects. I ended up using the VA VR&E program to go back to school and graduate with my Electronics Engineering degree. I get hired before I even graduate in a giant tech company that has a local chip design studio with about 4 engineers and 10 techs. Was an amazing job and I loved every minute of it. If you are using anything made by Apple in the last 3 years, there is a chip that I helped design in them all.
Fast forward to 2021 and the VA thinks I might be bipolar so they try one of the meds meant for that. My brain goes berserk and I end up in a black hole of depression. They immediately take me off it (after 3 weeks), but the damage was done. It took me another 6 months before I felt like I could leave the house. I had to resign from my engineering job.
Now I'm just existing, smoking as much weed as I can. This is the only thing that gives me an appetite and helps me be functional around my kids.
This couldn't go on so I signed up at the local community college to learn how to restore Rusty. I've now almost completed the auto collision portion and will be moving on to the mechanical side in the fall. My future plans is that I want to be able to start a non-profit that will be teach other vets how to do what I'm learning, but in a condensed form and with housing while they are there. My other goal is to open a shop for the local community kids to be able to work on their cars with our tools and help/guidance. We have something like this on most major Army bases called an 'Auto Skills Center'.
I have been wanting to make this post for years now, but the depression/anxiety has kept me from doing it. Last week a kid (21) from my class was killed on his first motorcycle ride of the year. That helped put what little life I have left into perspective.
Rusty:
