The more I play around and tweak this bumper, the more I absolutely love it.
Last night, repositioned the bumper down slightly so the lift gate does not make contact with the top of the bumper any more. A secondary benefit is the jerry can holders moved slightly away from the back of the vehicle. (Still might tweak the driver side jerry can attachment piece, tho.)
Cut the old bumper and installed; am pleased w the result. Will take some daylight pics to share.
The reposition did cause the bumper to be slightly angled down. My wife says only my ocd self would notice.
To remedy, could add some minor spacer to push the wing support down or play around w the <1/8” space still avail when liftgate is down.
The latter, I don’t really want to come up any more as I’d like to add 1/16” uhmw right in that 1/8” space and don’t want to take up any slack in the liftgate drawbridge wires.
So, that leaves do nothing or spacers at the wings.
The spacers would increase the gap between top of new bumper and bottom of the cut old bumper - which is currently about flush. Additional minor trimming would then ensue. Total gap would be about the width of the spacer - 1/8” or 1/4” at most - so wouldn’t be horrible. Actually, since currently running virtually no gap, adding a gap would give margin for error on the trails. But, given the support braces and how tight this bumper is installed, I’d be hard pressed to ever need the margin. Never dropped a decent amount of vehicle weight on the rear end before. But, that could change in the future.
So, am leaning towards running as is, install the BB sliders that just came in and upgrade to 2703 up front and 2724 out back to give some lift back after the weight gain.
At that point, I may revisit the wing spacer idea. Welcome thoughts, tho.