First post on here and super excited to get going.
Coming from Defenders and Pajeros, I purchased my first Cruiser in April this year. A grandpa spec FJ62 Sahara with 384,000 ks on the clock. She was pretty mint, other than the heavy amount of rust in the roof.
I moved from my Gen 1 Paj to a 60 for a number of reasons. The Paj was gutless and I had adored 60s for years, but also, I had planned for a long time to do a road trip from Gold Coast to Perth and I wanted something I could build a fun camper interior in for our travels. Wasn’t food of roof tents.
I got the girl registered in Early May. I sat on her as was for a month and a half then started the build process, after spending time planning and storing inspo pics.
I shall be posting the build thread up until the current day here.
After getting the usual service items ticked off, the first step was to strip out the old 12v system from the Paj and remove the roof rack before sale.
I wanted to reuse the same rack, but the mounts were for a low roof rather than a high roof such as the Sahara.
A few hours of chiselling the existing mounting plate holes, and I was able to flip the mounts 90 degrees, resulting in a super nice low profile roof rack.
After a brief house move (You move around a lot when on a Working Holiday Visa in Australia), it was time to begin stripping the interior for the fitout.
The beauty of the 60 is that with the 2nd and 3rd row seats removed, I can lie down with just the right length for myself. The strip out gives roughly 1800mm in length to play with and around 1500mm width.
I’d scoured the web and marketplace for inspiration, but there was pretty much nothing in regards to the 60 specifically. I wanted a setup similar to a troopy, which would allow for a sofa/bed combo with a channel down the centre.
In the end, I came across a simple but pretty setup being used in a troopy for sale on FB marketplace.
Decided to use my work breaks to make some progress. The girlfriend was going away on a family holiday across whole of August, so my plan was to have it done so I could live in it for a month while she was away.
Work breaks alone allowed me to lay the forward framing and begin panelling up the bed, this time with stronger 9mm ply.
The following week, I finalised the horizontal and vertical panelling and opened up areas for cupboards.
At the front would be a large storage area to house my 12v battery and other things. The bed side would feature two compartments holding various recovery gear etc, but also allow me some access to the vinyl panel to drop fluids into out of the way. On the left, a cupboard for spares and my inverter etc. the forward section would house cooking stuffs.
Initially, I was planning to sell my 2nd and 3rd row seats. No one wanted them, so the idea came to repurpose the stripe fabric and leather to use in the build, keeping it cosy, somewhat insulated and in uniform with the front.
In went the pullout drawer and then a whole heap of striped fabric.
A free set of marketplace sofa cushions allowed my girlfriend to produce 3 cushions that would form the bed, with one section being solid into the floor for when we wanted a sofa.
A charity shop storage chest surrounded by panelling for towels etc filled in the large question mark area beside the fridge.
We wanted to have curtains in keep with the vintage aesthetic of the build.
$8 of charity shop fabric later, and a day or so of work, she fashioned up these excellent panels for the sides, rear and divider between seats and rear area. They are lined, so block nearly all exterior light.
They were abit heavy and thick to use with rails, so I hard mounted them into the window rubbers, with ties to be able to roll up the rear and middle ones.
Just a week to do before it was time to live in it, the build came together:
I finished up with the paint and panelling, added dividers to my battery compartment to create a sort of his and hers storage area that were accessed when the passenger doors were open.
Final touches included wiring up 12v sockets and adding in a mount for our projector
