I did or more correctly a mechanic friend of mine did the rear hitch mod on my '98. It involved cutting two inches out of the vertically-oriented plates with a sawzall and then rewelding. We did end up having to weld each plate at one of the three attachment bolt locations to the crossbar(Horizontal) This attachment hole would have been obscured by the bumper bracket when the hitch got moved up however the other two still use the OEM nuts and bolts. I then POR-15'd the whole thing and remounted to the frame. Initially I was going to have new plates fabbed but his solution and the sawzall made it SO much simpler. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

We also relocated the spare tire hanger brackets out an inch in either direction, IIRC using existing holes, to make room for the 33" spare. Brew