Danno,
I'm in middle NY right now in an apartment but my wife and I still own a house in Maine. I've never lived anywhere where the cold didn't suck! The thing I remember most about Minneapolis was how cold it got when the wind blows... I feel your pain.
As an aside on plugs, the 5VZFEs came with Densos on one side and NGKs on the others. There is some dispute about this, but many people have observed the Densos were in much rougher shape when replaced. I went with the NGKs for this reason. You should also gap the plugs yourself, even if they're supposedly pre-gapped. You could go with a platinum as well, but I opted out.
As far as manuals go- The non-factory manuals available for the T are so-so. They mostly cover a bunch of toyota vehicles in addition to the T, but do the job for the msot part. I personally bought an FSM off ebay (and own a haynes) for about $60. If you plan on having the truck for a while I would go this route, or wait until I digitize mine.
For your immediate use in seeing what's involved for the plug wires, download the FSM for a 5vzfe (your engine) tacoma from here:
http://www.*******.com/fsm/index.html
Everything will be the same.
For the plugs and wires, make sure you have gasketed plug wrench which grabs the plug along with a tight holding extension - they're fairly deep.
I think you can handle it, though. I'd wait for the wind to stop and the sun to shine.
Cheers,
Rob
P.S.
I wanted to add that after I read your description again, this behavior is identical to what I had earlier this year. The bad spark plugs ultimately made the truck extremely easy to flood, and that easy flooding made the problem even harder to nail down. I might even start with some new proper type and properly gapped plugs and see if that solves your problem.
