In recent news, I stripped the PlastiDip off the rear plastics, bedlined, and redid the green with a new custom mix that matches the roof stripe and other green vinyl:
Also started on my Phase 2 front end:
Next step is to remove the 'Dip on the hood and redo it in the same pattern as a Viggs decal. Considering doing it in charcoal instead of black this time.
Now that my license plate has been moved up to the swing arm, I thought about putting the 12" light bar in the plate recess on the rear bumper, but then had a second thought which I liked better. Old and busted: 12" bar in the recess. New hotness: Duallies mounted on either side, cutout for a hitch receiver in the recess!
Since my swing arm is based on extended bolt-on recovery tabs, I won't be using an OEM hitch. I'm hoping to find one off a Pathy (banking that it has the same bolt pattern) so I can shorten it and bolt it on between the recovery tabs, but the cost-effective way to do it would be to simply fab my own and weld it into place behind the stock bumper, which makes the whole thing into a weird, large assembly (and I may as well just weld the bumper to the recovery points as well).
Also, coincidence of the day...the mockup image above features Ernie in the background on the right during a snow run last year. Look what's in the corner of my old mockup back when I was planning out the bumper: