ThePlasticOne
First Fill-Up (of many)
- Location
- Boston, MA
Allll righty, so I had about a year of not being able to do much to my X, because there were simply not enough hours in my day. Then summer happened and I did tons! Here's the progress:
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.
New Smittybilt tire cover. Super, super snug fit on my Duratrac, was afraid it wouldn't make it but some shifting around did the trick. Think I'll paint an Xterra logo on it at some point. New backup lights in the old license plate recess.
I lost one mirror turn signal pod to an ******* parker that wasn't caught on video, so I decided to replace both with real light bars. Still need to run wiring for them, will probably tie them in to the Rigids, which have been moved from the bumper mouth to the hood via repurposed clamp-on antenna mounts.
This past weekend I got my Hardcore bumper mounted up.
Kinda sucked, I broke two weld nuts (up front) taking off my old Hefty skid. One of them broke immediately:
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I spent two hours Sawzalling through both the tow hook and the bolt to get it off. At some point I broke out the oxy-ace setup to blow some metal out so I could get the blade in better:
Once that affair was done with (three hours to remove four bolts!), the rest was simple.
As final insult to injury, my license plate screws were seized to the holder. I had to angle grind them off.
The provided hardware was too short - gonna have to run out in the morning to get longer bolts. They threaded halfway into the provided nuts with two washers - I need bolts at least half an inch longer to thread through AND use a third (lock) washer.
I'm considering trying to use both my old Hefty (for stock bumper) and Hardcore rad skids on top of each other. I'll see if I can make that happen later this week.
I'm back, baby.
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.
New Smittybilt tire cover. Super, super snug fit on my Duratrac, was afraid it wouldn't make it but some shifting around did the trick. Think I'll paint an Xterra logo on it at some point. New backup lights in the old license plate recess.
I lost one mirror turn signal pod to an ******* parker that wasn't caught on video, so I decided to replace both with real light bars. Still need to run wiring for them, will probably tie them in to the Rigids, which have been moved from the bumper mouth to the hood via repurposed clamp-on antenna mounts.
This past weekend I got my Hardcore bumper mounted up.
Kinda sucked, I broke two weld nuts (up front) taking off my old Hefty skid. One of them broke immediately:
I spent two hours Sawzalling through both the tow hook and the bolt to get it off. At some point I broke out the oxy-ace setup to blow some metal out so I could get the blade in better:
Once that affair was done with (three hours to remove four bolts!), the rest was simple.
As final insult to injury, my license plate screws were seized to the holder. I had to angle grind them off.
The provided hardware was too short - gonna have to run out in the morning to get longer bolts. They threaded halfway into the provided nuts with two washers - I need bolts at least half an inch longer to thread through AND use a third (lock) washer.
I'm considering trying to use both my old Hefty (for stock bumper) and Hardcore rad skids on top of each other. I'll see if I can make that happen later this week.
I'm back, baby.
