Hah I didn't think anyone was going to click through there... I think I'm up and running with Imgur now so I'll give this one more try.
Here's the rear bumper, tail / turn buckets made from 4" exhaust pipe and a die grinder. The trickiest part was cutting it off flush once I'd welded it in. The thinkin' man's way to do it would have been to measure for depth, cut it so the pipe would stand proud by 1/16" and minimize the cutting / grinding later. Next time, I'll do it that way.
After that, we've got some sound deadening. I used peel & stick flashing form the construction yard. It's ~1/3 the thickness of the typical Dyna Mat hot rod stuff but it's so much cheaper that I can use three layers and still come out ahead. I guess you have to weigh that savings vs the time you spend putting down three layers instead of one...? Also hung a new engine cover on the 4.8 and put the booster / MC on the firewall. Frees up a bunch of room underneath, makes bleeding easier, etc.
As an aside, I've still got under a thousand miles on the truck and man, am I looking forward to some kind of IFS setup. I don't mind the ride quality, I don't mind the handling (it's fun) and in fact I really like driving the truck as-is under 50 MPH or so. Past that... this thing gets spooky. Behaves weird. Not confidence inspiring at all.
I'm thinking longer term, i want to either
Crown Vic front end, 12 bolt rear, redrill the Vic front end to match rear pattern
Industrial Chassis' Dakota IFS, 3/4 ton Dodge rotor + 14 bolt rear axle
Or maybe a full frame swap.
It's going to be a while before the time & money come back so I guess I don't need to make my mind up any time soon. Anyway, on to the pics.
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