Builds My Canyonero: '93 FZJ80 (1 Viewer)

[SkwirlSkwasher]

Nice to be here.

Finally finding the time and the nerve to post my 80 build progress here. Bought my 1993 with 127,000 miles a bit over a year ago. Paid $11,500 which seemed like a lot then, but seems like more and more of a bargain as time goes on. Signed up for IH8MUD the same day I brought her home. Prior owner was a Mud member and recommended I follow all the chatter here. Spent the last year reading the forum and familiarizing myself with all the know-how already here, it's been super helpful having all this precedent and guidance so thank you all. Now that I've completed a few projects I figured it's time to share in case I could be useful to others.

Context:
The girlfriend and I decided we wanted to travel the country for a year or two-- I was laid off and she's a nurse who can take short-term travel contracts. We needed a vehicle, so a logical choice would have been a van (Transit / Sprinter / VW). Problem is, I fell in love with the look and feel of the 80. She did too. I don't have any off-roading background, and not a ton of auto mechanics experience, but handy with a wrench from years working on bicycles, a bit of motorcycles, and general building of things when inspiration strikes. Having a vehicle that can take us off-road is particularly appealing as we like to get out camping and exploring, that being a key part of this entire life episode we're preparing for. So the plan was to make it as livable as possible: build a bed platform and drawers, install a fridge, add a roof rack, and eventually learn about wheeling and upgrade tires and suspension and so on.

The rig:
We dubbed her our Canyonero, a Simpson's reference many of you probably know already. She was in pretty decent shape inside and out.

 

[FMC80]

Looks a very nice! Where have you traveled so far and did you perform any repairs on the road?

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

@FMC80 Thanks!

We started easy at first to test out the waters. Trips along the California coast down to Big Sur and up to Mendocino. Here we were testing the experience of sleeping in the vehicle in a simple manner using inflatable camping pads between the wheel wells with all the rear seats removed. From this we learned a few things:

1) We love sleeping inside the vehicle because it's warm during the night, and very quiet compared to a ground tent or rooftop tent. This was key as it confirmed my hunch that I wanted to build the bed inside the vehicle rather than up top. I want to be covert in urban environments which is why I wasn't a fan of the rooftop tent approach-- too much attention. I am also less interested in rooftop tents because climbing up and down a ladder is annoying, and the experience of arriving somewhere at night and climbing into the bed between the front seats without even leaving the vehicle is a super comfortable transition (especially in the case of rain or covert sleeping). Also, uneven ground surface impacts the level of the sleeping experience more when you're up high, and tents are less insulated than cars,

2) The 80 gets hot in the morning. So the first thing I did after our early camping trips was to tint all the windows. Rears got the "Limo" tint, with the upgraded 3M ceramic coating which supposedly reduced radiant heat by something like 15%. Not cheap! The whole job was $700 for all the rears plus tinting the windshield and the front seats down to the legal California limit. This helped a lot, but wasn't enough (more on that later, I designed magnetic triple layered radiant heat blocking "curtains").

3) We need more storage. Started building a roof rack because there clearly wasn't going to be enough storage. Went to a metal shop in the industrial part of town, bought some scraps of 6" wide 1/4" thick steel flat bar which was hilariously overbuilt but cheap. Chopped them into the 9" long pieces. Bought some C-channel steel at Home Depot and chopped those into 3" pieces or so. Tightened the big flat bar pieces into my table vise and slammed on them with a sledgehammer to shape the correct angles into them. Drilled some holes and bolted everything together into the gutter mounts with some aluminum extrusions, using some custom hardware for theft prevention. Total cost was around $300 for a super beefy setup.

 

[leonard_nemoy]

Twelve yards long and two lanes wide!!!

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

4) Bought a big cargo box for $320 on craigslist-- a Packasport made of fiberglass.
5) Got a free hammy-down awning from Mac Demarco through a mutual friend (famous musician these days).
In general I'm trying to keep costs low and get creative as much as possible...

6) Bed Platform: Removed the carpeting in the rear. Removed the bolts and the anchor points for seats in the floor. Bought threaded inserts (without bolt heads) to close the holes in the floor, loctited them in. This created a flatter surface. Laid an existing piece of 1/2" plywood down between the wheel wells as the footprint for a drawer box I would build. Bought a sheet of 3/4" plywood for the top of the sleeping platform and for the vertical supports. Built out the top of this platform with flanges to hang over the wheel wells and bolt into the anchor points there. Also created attachments to connect to anchor points in the floor:

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

Added aluminum rails on the right side drawer for a retractable table. Bought HDPE plastic strips instead of drawer slides and screwed these into the floor and under the drawers so they would slide against one another. In retrospect I partially regret not going with big industrial drawer slides-- not for myself, but because my girlfriend at sub-100 lbs has a hard time opening and closing the drawers sometimes. While they still slide with the HDPE is takes some effort to overcome the initial friction coefficient or whatever we learned in high-school physics. But being in the cost-saving mode this did save us a few hundred bucks which is meaningful for me, but I would recommend for others to lean towards locking drawer slides.

Anchored the front of the sleeping platform with metal shelving uprights to the front seat anchor bolts. Built cross members and vertical supports for the middle which bolted into the floor, and bolted the rear end to the front part of the drawer box:

The outcome is a very sturdy sleeping surface.

 

[FMC80]

Your 93 is in really great shape. The interior looks phenomenal, especially when compared to my 94. Mine looks like a honey badgers had a gang bang inside of it.

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

@FMC80 Yeah got lucky there for sure. It's also my favorite iteration of the 80 interior personally, that fuzzy houndstooth pattern in brown which makes you feel like you're in grandpa's living room or something.

 

[Francis K]

Twelve yards long and two lanes wide!!!

65 tons of Japanese pride!

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

Added some quarter panels to complete the sleeping surface, and scored some free carpet from my cousin's house (this refrain will keep returning as my cousin is building a house and offloads used or extra material on me for free towards my build hah). I double layered the carpet for extra padding.

7) We need a sink: the girlfriend is very serious about face-washing so a sink became a critical demand. Can't argue with that from a dishwashing perspective so I set about figuring out a solution. I was inspired by this fella's ingenuity. He found a nifty collapsable silicone accordion sink for under $20 that fits into a simple cut-out which I added to my retractable table. Found a battery powered faucet with built-in pump for $25. The fiddly part was customizing a base for the faucet, adding a magnet to the bottom, making it waterproof, adding a metal puck to the table for the magnet to attach to, extending the silicone hose routed through an elbow, adding a braided sleeve shield to the hose, heat shrinking it and running it to a 6-gallon water tank I found for $90 (with shipping). Altogether a functioning sink for like $150.

NOTE: the 6-gallon tank I bought did not have a tight seal so water would splash around when driving. This was super annoying. I argued with the company and received a full refund because wtf how can you sell a water tank that doesn't seal. For my purposes it was well worth it, I came up with a way to use compression foam as a gasket and now my tank seals but if you don't want to deal with this find a different tank that seals (and make sure the plastic is safe for drinking etc).

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

8) Drawers: using 1/2" plywood I made long 48" drawers, at the height of the wheel wells so about 8" tall. I like to engineer security into everything so added heavy duty locking latches. I shellacked all the surfaces of the drawers, and polyurethane on all the surfaces of the bed platform to protect the wood from moisture. I added plexiglass dividers into the drawers for easier visibility and to keep things organized and separated. Then for an aesthetic to match the inside of the cruiser I shellacked the fronts of the drawers (these were 3/4" plywood pieces for strength), trying to achieve a "french polish", which was fun but basically a waste of time haha.

9) Mattress: had a queen-sized 2.5" thick tempurpedic mattress topper from many years ago, slapped it on top of the platform and it was a perfect fit. Later I found a 1" thick high density foam and put that under the tempurpedic because the girlfriend's hips were bottoming out when sleeping on her side. I wanted to lose as little vertical space as possible to retain headroom in the sleeping area, so didn't want to just get a 4" or 6" IKEA foam mattress. Every inch counts back there. Now it's sufficiently comfortable at only 3.5".

 

[thatcabledude]

8) Drawers: using 1/2" plywood I made long 48" drawers, at the height of the wheel wells so about 8" tall. I like to engineer security into everything so added heavy duty locking latches. I shellacked all the surfaces of the drawers, and polyurethane on all the surfaces of the bed platform to protect the wood from moisture. I added plexiglass dividers into the drawers for easier visibility and to keep things organized and separated. Then for an aesthetic to match the inside of the cruiser I shellacked the fronts of the drawers (these were 3/4" plywood pieces for strength), trying to achieve a "french polish", which was fun but basically a waste of time haha.

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9) Mattress: had a queen-sized 2.5" thick tempurpedic mattress topper from many years ago, slapped it on top of the platform and it was a perfect fit. Later I found a 1" thick high density foam and put that under the tempurpedic because the girlfriend's hips were bottoming out when sleeping on her side. I wanted to lose as little vertical space as possible to retain headroom in the sleeping area, so didn't want to just get a 4" or 6" IKEA foam mattress. Every inch counts back there. Now it's sufficiently comfortable at only 3.5".

Get a Exped MegaMat Duo

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

@thatcabledude Thanks, that Exped MegaMat Duo pad looks like a good product. However, it won't really work for my application as I had to cut away the corner of my mattress foams to make room for my fridge slide. I'll post more on that project later.

9) Cupholders! As with all of you it was so annoying to not have cupholders. Using leftover butcher block pieces I carved my own caveman looking cupholder, basically copying plastic designs I found online. It was a pain in the ass but also fun to carve.

 

[thatcabledude]

@thatcabledude Thanks, that Exped MegaMat Duo pad looks like a good product. However, it won't really work for my application as I had to cut away the corner of my mattress foams to make room for my fridge slide. I'll post more on that project later.

9) Cupholders! As with all of you it was so annoying to not have cupholders. Using leftover butcher block pieces I carved my own caveman looking cupholder, basically copying plastic designs I found online. It was a pain in the ass but also fun to carve.

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OG 3D printing!

Yeah, post pics of your slide or whatever. I’ve been using one in the back of mine for years now and can’t imagine anything else. No fridge slide though.

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

10) Fridge Slide: I initially had a vision for a fridge slide that would: 1) slide out, 2) be angled towards the driver's side to increase sleeping space, 3) tilt down, 4) lock in place but also unlock with just one hand, 5) have minimal footprint beyond the fridge itself, 6) and lift up above the sleeping platform to get out of the way when sleeping. In my mind I was imagining a drawer on locking slides with fridge on top, attached at the rear lip of the platform with a piano hinge such that the whole affair could tilt down once it cleared the halfway point past the ledge (the weight would cause it to tilt), AND then I wanted to somehow mount this entire structure on an office chair gas piston/lift-- it was altogether too ambitious for sure. But in the end I'm proud to say I accomplished everything except the lifting function. It turned out that even with the fridge sitting on the platform it was sufficient space for my girlfriend and I to sleep comfortably, so lifting wasn't a big value add anyway. The tilting is a huge value though because otherwise you get no visibility into the fridge from the tailgate.

I used these Ryadon heavy drawer slides. I attached some heavy duty springloaded door hinges to the slides. Laid the slides flat down (you can't do that with any old slides, make sure you ask the manufacturer and consider the weight reduction compared to when mounted in standard orientation). Getting all the angles correct considering my entire construction was turned sideways was tough!

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

Wow last update was 1.5 years ago! Time flies.

We spent 9 months living quasi-nomad life in the Pacific Northwest, and I stopped posting when I got busy doing finishing touches on the truck before departure. We took her up to Canada, fun driving her onto ferries up there in Vancouver, visited Victoria Island, camped in the Olympic Peninsula at the Hoh Rainforest. Anyway, wanted to share some of the final items I built:

11) Solar powered battery system: after countless hours of research and spreadsheets comparing all the battery system specs on the market, I purchased the Inergy Flex 1500 and mounted 160W of solar atop the rooftop cargo box. This system is amazing, super versatile, multiple ways of charging through solar or fast AC (so when I'm driving I plug into the inverter I installed, when stationary I can tilt the cargo box lid in the orientation of the sun and get optimized solar charging). Regulated 13.8 DC outputs, 1500W inverter with 3000W peak, pure sine wave, etc. I never had issues running out of power, and with the 1,000 Watts of storage I could run the fridge and all our other electricals (lights, phones, laptops, even movie projector and blender for the girlfriend's smoothies while still consistently maintaining charge without fretting. Finally, I fab'd a metal bracket out of shelving uprights and bolted the unit down into the bed platform for anti-theft. Anyway, I recommend these guys.

I've actually befriended some of the folks on their team since I called so much when evaluating specs and building out the system, they gave me a 10% off code I can share with people so I recommend taking a look for anyone on the market: Link here -- or I believe you can use code REF10NRSK8UDP​

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12) Movie projector: bought a battery powered mini projector, bolted it to the ceiling with a bracket. Then I got a roller shade with pure white non-textured material and fabricated some metal brackets to hold that. Now I have a pull-down screen and can watch movies on about a 36" screen! Movie nights while camping are pretty amazing, though I also love to stare into a fire for hours haha.

 

[cruzinfj1]

First time Ive seen that projector set up and must say thats a GREAT idea!!! Wouldnt work for my set up, but gave me an idea for the tent. Link for it by chance??

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

Hey @cruzinfj1 I got the Viewsonic M1+ on Amazon. I got the entry level 480P version cause I'm cheap. The quality is quite good, but I am a movie stickler and I have to admit that I sometimes wish I got the 1080P version or perhaps even a different model with 4k resolution. But again, it's still a great experience at 480P. You can also pay more for increased lumens. On this subject I don't have any issues because we're watching at night inside the vehicle, but if you envision using it in places with more ambient lighting or even in the daytime, then you will likely need to shell out for increased lumens.

 

[cruzinfj1]

Hey @cruzinfj1 I got the Viewsonic M1+ on Amazon. I got the entry level 480P version cause I'm cheap. The quality is quite good, but I am a movie stickler and I have to admit that I sometimes wish I got the 1080P version or perhaps even a different model with 4k resolution. But again, it's still a great experience at 480P. You can also pay more for increased lumens. On this subject I don't have any issues because we're watching at night inside the vehicle, but if you envision using it in places with more ambient lighting or even in the daytime, then you will likely need to shell out for increased lumens.

Right on!! Im definitely gonna check it out. Thanks!!

 

[SkwirlSkwasher]

13) Insulated Curtains: I recovered some woven fabric from my cousin's house when he was replacing curtains. I bought some Temptrol fabric, which is basically a radiant heat insulator. I added a layer of blackout material for a combined triple layer curtain. I sewed them to leave a gap from the glass as it performs better if it has an air buffer. Lastly, I sewed magnets into the sides so I can quickly snap them on/off the steel window frame.

14) Window Mosquito Netting: I bought some No-See-Um mesh fabric, cut it to the shape of the passenger windows, and sewed some magnetic tape along the sides for attaching/removing. Now we can open windows at night when sleeping and not worry about bugs. Someday I'll need to make one for the sunroof too.

15) Window Deflectors: added a set of Wellvisors, the main function of which is to enable cracking open the windows at night when raining without getting the interior wet. Works beautifully. Prevents condensation buildup on the glass overnight.