Your thinking bout putting a hidden hitch on the front of your TB ... a cool ideer i had seen in Oregon the other day was they put the hitch, then mount a license plate bracket on a hitch... you put your license plate one and bam! the Receiver is gone! mind you... you dont have a license plate do you....
This idea got stuck in my head a bit and i finally figured out that i like it enough to go that route with a twist. One of the accessory shops here sells a light bar/plate mount set up that holds two lights. The idea i have in my mind is to weld a piece of square tubing to the back of one of these and then plug it into the receiver hitch to hide it like you suggested. I would run weatherpak connectors out front to connect the lights.
Heres what i figured out for organization and recovery equipment.
Cargo area first:
I will talk to my friend Spike about building an aluminum frame that will bolt down to my OE tie down points on the floor to have it mounted securely. This frame will be as wide as possible and may consist of two side pieces connected by a piece of 3/4 plywood at the front of it against the back of the seats and a top cover also made out of 3/4" plywood. Each piece will be covered with carpet that best matches the color of the area of the truck its in. The interior is a two tone set up of light grey and tan. The top cover will have a center hinged door as part of it held up by the same type of struts as used on the hatch glass. This door will be the same width as the hatch glass and the cover will be as wide as the interior will possibly allow. The point of this set up is to essentially have a locked secure area in the back of the truck for having a sealed sub box,5 channel amp and various work related items. The only two ways into it will be via the top door through the glass and by opening the Hatch itself. I may eventually mount emergency lighting onto this top panel as well for work. There are 3 storage compartments in the rear cargo area. The left one will eventually house a 12v extension cord to have a lighter socket at the back of the truck. the right side one will eventually be home to an airlift compressor for rear helper bags. the one in the floor is currently in use for stowing my tow strap, extension cord for plugging in in the winter as well as a couple other recovery related items. Most likely i will prob figure out some way of securing my battery charger and 12 v compressor on the organizer.
Aux light set up/recovery gear.
Ok as said the plan is to eventually have a receiver hitch mounted in the front of the truck. I will see what is out there for commercially available units first but most likely will be a custom set up. I plan on getting an aftermarket plate mount light bar set up and welding a piece of square tubing to the back of it as mentioned above, Which will then allow for this mount to be locked into the front receiver which solves two problems...1: it hides the hitch and 2: it gives me a secure mounting setup for aux lights.
I will also be adding a plate with tabs for aux lights between the fairlead and winch mount on the winch carrier. On these tabs will be a pair of those rubber bodied utility lights you usually see on tractors. The logic being that these lights will serve as recovery lighting when the winch is in use. All 3 of my trucks will be wired to be able to use the same carrier/light set up.
Now as for the suspension: Final plan for this.
Rough country 2" lift for stage 1
Fox 2.0 series shocks in the rear ordered from BDS
Stage 2 will consist of the Radflo coilovers mentioned in a previous post to upgrade the front end further and replace the front RCX spacers at this point.
The reason i backed off and chose to get the RCX kit vs the BDS kit is because it made no sense to pay $700 for the BDS with the Fox shocks only to replace half of it if not all of it with the Coilovers and possibly Z71 or Skyjacker springs for a Z71 less then a year later. After a good review of the terrain i am mostly driving on with this truck im going to limit lift to 2-2.5" and keep to a 30-31" tire. Thinking more prerunner style set up vs full out off road trail rig. Leave the severe off road duties to the K3500 once its truggified.