I have had my plastic removed for awhile now, and I was more suprised with how much more space the metal interior body paneling wastes than the plastic. If youre doing it for trail rig purposes, you could easily cram in an air compressor, your first aid kit, fire extinguisher, and all kinds of other seldom use goodies in that space between the internal and external body sheetmetal. I was planning on doing cover panels as well for the holes, have you considered using Dzus fasteners for them? Also on a side note, I was planning on coating mine with a product called lizardskin. It pobably doesn't have the antiskid/wear properties of the Herculiner/Rhinoliner/Bedliner type products, but it does reduce interior heat/cold and noise. You may be able to topcoat it with the conventional bedliner products too since it has a rough finish.