A few weekend ago, with the help of a few good friends, I started the project of building a drawer system and sleeping platform for the back of my FZJ80. I’d done quite a bit of homework through Mud & the web to try and glean some ideas of what features I should incorporate, and what I should change. Here’s what I came up with:
Getting an early start on Saturday morning, we started out by cutting down some ½”, sanded one side, Arauco plywood sourced from the local Lowes.
Before too long, we were starting to see progress:
Many of the drawer systems I’ve seen constructed here and elsewhere, utilized ball bearing drawer slides. While they no doubt provide a smooth drawer pull, they had two major flaws that made me to look for a replacement. First they’re expensive. Secondly, they take away storage space. By the time you factor in the width they consume, and also the height, you lose space which I think is better suited to actually storing things. My alternative? UHMWPE - Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyetheylene. Or plastic, as I like to call it. A friend of mine works for a plastic thermoforming company, and gave me a bunch of this to use – freebie! From wiki:
Once we had the basic framework of the box constructed, we stopped to think about how all this was going to be anchored down. While I never intend to roll my rig, there is always a possibility of it happening. Even a good car accident could turn the box into a deadly projectile, so I had to come up with a way to anchor it. I’d seen several other people using turnbuckles to anchor their systems, and I chose to do the same. I used 5/16” tee nuts inserted into the plywood, and installed the rearmost floor tie-downs (the ones closest to the tailgate) at the top, front corners of the box.
The tee nuts, as seen from the ‘inside’ of the box:
And from the outside:
And with the floor mount installed:
This makes for a nice, clean install in my opinion:
Once the forward anchor points were in, we cut out a lid, and temporarily installed the box:
Using an 8” turnbuckle, here is how the front edge of the box is secured (this is the portion directly behind the second row seats):
Since I had relocated one pair of the floor tie-downs to the drawer box, I was able to use the remaining threaded inserts in the body as the anchor point for the rear of the drawer box (closest to the tailgate). I cut some room in the plastic slides for the bolts heads, and bolted it down. If I remember correctly, with ½” plywood, and the carpet left in place, I needed 6mm x 45mm long bolts to replace the factory ones.
And a quick overall view from the rear – we’re making some progress!
Prior to starting any construction, I picked up a water jug from Paul at Equipt Expedition Outfitters. While a lot of people use the Scepter or MFC water jugs, I find them to be a pain to actually use – try filling a cup from them, and it’s like trying to fill a shot glass from a five gallon bucket. These 20L containers from Equipt have a large mouth for easy filling, but also provide a spigot at the bottom to easily fill smaller vessels. Brilliant! Here’s ours in one of the possible stowage positions:
Next we turned our attention to making a storage drawer. Not rocket science here, just a simple box. Turns out our water jug will even fit in one of the drawers if need be:
As a slight tangent to this whole drawer project, I also decided to build one drawer as a camp kitchen. Some people like to call these a chuck box, and the Boy Scouts out there (myself included) may know them as a Patrol Box. I did some research on these over the web as well (Drifta in Australia makes some gorgeous ones), and came up with a simple design that I could construct. It should be noted that even at 30 years old, prior to this weekend, I’d never run a table saw before – I’ve always been more of a metal worker. I’ve used jigsaws, circulars saws, routers & other small powered woodworking tools, but never tackled a project like this. Anyways, I digress. Here’s an early shot of the kitchen box:
Keeping things simple, I wanted room to store our camp stove, water container & other miscellaneous cooking & cleaning supplies. Here’s the general layout – any open space will be used for storage of other necessities:
A little more work, and I had a hinged lid, as well as a hinged front that would serve as work surfaces if needed:
A couple coats of Minwax Clear Gloss Polyurethane, as well as some Formica I picked up off Craigslist for free, and the kitchen box was really coming along:
Closed up (the shorter ‘front’ section is held closed with some inexpensive $0.87 push latches from Lowes):
And opened up:
Getting an early start on Saturday morning, we started out by cutting down some ½”, sanded one side, Arauco plywood sourced from the local Lowes.
Before too long, we were starting to see progress:
Many of the drawer systems I’ve seen constructed here and elsewhere, utilized ball bearing drawer slides. While they no doubt provide a smooth drawer pull, they had two major flaws that made me to look for a replacement. First they’re expensive. Secondly, they take away storage space. By the time you factor in the width they consume, and also the height, you lose space which I think is better suited to actually storing things. My alternative? UHMWPE - Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyetheylene. Or plastic, as I like to call it. A friend of mine works for a plastic thermoforming company, and gave me a bunch of this to use – freebie! From wiki:
Once we had the basic framework of the box constructed, we stopped to think about how all this was going to be anchored down. While I never intend to roll my rig, there is always a possibility of it happening. Even a good car accident could turn the box into a deadly projectile, so I had to come up with a way to anchor it. I’d seen several other people using turnbuckles to anchor their systems, and I chose to do the same. I used 5/16” tee nuts inserted into the plywood, and installed the rearmost floor tie-downs (the ones closest to the tailgate) at the top, front corners of the box.
The tee nuts, as seen from the ‘inside’ of the box:
And from the outside:
And with the floor mount installed:
This makes for a nice, clean install in my opinion:
Once the forward anchor points were in, we cut out a lid, and temporarily installed the box:
Using an 8” turnbuckle, here is how the front edge of the box is secured (this is the portion directly behind the second row seats):
Since I had relocated one pair of the floor tie-downs to the drawer box, I was able to use the remaining threaded inserts in the body as the anchor point for the rear of the drawer box (closest to the tailgate). I cut some room in the plastic slides for the bolts heads, and bolted it down. If I remember correctly, with ½” plywood, and the carpet left in place, I needed 6mm x 45mm long bolts to replace the factory ones.
And a quick overall view from the rear – we’re making some progress!
Prior to starting any construction, I picked up a water jug from Paul at Equipt Expedition Outfitters. While a lot of people use the Scepter or MFC water jugs, I find them to be a pain to actually use – try filling a cup from them, and it’s like trying to fill a shot glass from a five gallon bucket. These 20L containers from Equipt have a large mouth for easy filling, but also provide a spigot at the bottom to easily fill smaller vessels. Brilliant! Here’s ours in one of the possible stowage positions:
Next we turned our attention to making a storage drawer. Not rocket science here, just a simple box. Turns out our water jug will even fit in one of the drawers if need be:
As a slight tangent to this whole drawer project, I also decided to build one drawer as a camp kitchen. Some people like to call these a chuck box, and the Boy Scouts out there (myself included) may know them as a Patrol Box. I did some research on these over the web as well (Drifta in Australia makes some gorgeous ones), and came up with a simple design that I could construct. It should be noted that even at 30 years old, prior to this weekend, I’d never run a table saw before – I’ve always been more of a metal worker. I’ve used jigsaws, circulars saws, routers & other small powered woodworking tools, but never tackled a project like this. Anyways, I digress. Here’s an early shot of the kitchen box:
Keeping things simple, I wanted room to store our camp stove, water container & other miscellaneous cooking & cleaning supplies. Here’s the general layout – any open space will be used for storage of other necessities:
A little more work, and I had a hinged lid, as well as a hinged front that would serve as work surfaces if needed:
A couple coats of Minwax Clear Gloss Polyurethane, as well as some Formica I picked up off Craigslist for free, and the kitchen box was really coming along:
Closed up (the shorter ‘front’ section is held closed with some inexpensive $0.87 push latches from Lowes):
And opened up:
.
