Picked up a gas tank skid plate in decent shape from a 2001 at the junkyard. A little bit of rust and one minor dent but it should clean up well. Think I paid too much for it.



I took the 4runner to the paintless dent repairman today to fix several minor dings along the doors, one on the hood, and an ugly dent on the rear hatch by the windshield wiper. It bent the horizontal ridge under the wiper which is a lot more difficult to fix than a flat panel. Also, there is a reinforcement piece inside there and there is no way to access this area from taking the inside panel off, so luckily I had the rear bezel off to access it through the key cylinder hole.

Before:





After:





Pretty impressive what a good dent repairman can do. You can still see some slight rippling there but you have to know it's there to see it. It cost a few hundred bucks for everything but so does a good detail. Otherwise I'd be looking for a new rear hatch... Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist.

Now to fix up the scuffs from the bezel, repaint it, fix the rust on the latch, and put it back on.



The most important question of all: what colour should I paint the rear bezel? I am liking the chrome wheels and bumpers and I have some silver rim paint I like. Would silver look weird? Or should I paint it that dark grey like it is now? Black to match the bumper plastic trim?