Turn Your Car Into the Ultimate Adventure Wagon (Zeal Optics)
As the Stay At Home orders began to be put in place in Colorado, we decided to embark on a new project - a build out in our 4Runner so when the pandemic ends, we are ready to hit the road and get lost in the woods.
We have camped for the last 4 years with a RTT on our 4Runner. It is a Tepui Ayer which is the smallest/lightest RTT that tepui offers. It has been great, but it has been slightly small for us, along with all the other standard RTT complaints; you have to setup/breakdown anytime you want to take the rig anywhere, which isn’t a big deal, until you go to Moab and you are on the move everyday for a couple days in a row. Due to this, we figured this year we would try building a platform inside the vehicle so we don’t have to break down for every adventure.
I started searching online for drawer systems and stumbled upon Solid Wood Worx. Brian at Solid Wood Worx builds drawer systems for all sorts of different vehicles, but he also sells the build plans for every model 4Runner. The gen 5 drawer plan is $40 and although it honestly is a pretty basic set of plans, that $40 saved me a ton of measuring and a ton of headache down the road if something didn’t fit right. It also gave me a guided starting point. For people that have a little bit of builders block and have trouble picking a direction when building something from scratch, I highly recommend it. They also sell the 36” drawer sliders that you need to build the drawers. They sell them for $149 for all 4 of them, and honestly that was a pretty good price for them considering they are rated at a very high weight; 200lbs each, and I didn’t have to worry about trying to find something that would work to save a couple dollars. The cheapest I found for drawer sliders that would work were $36 a piece so that would have only saved me $5. I’d recommend just buying them from Solid Wood Worx.** **
Starting with the drawer plans, I used exactly 1 sheet of ½” birch plywood and 1 sheet of ¾” birch plywood. I layed out all the pieces I needed to cut on a piece of paper so I didn’t have much waste. Everything I needed to cut for the drawer system fit on those 2 pieces of plywood. I cut all the pieces to what the plans told me and figured I would weigh them since I have access to a large crate shipping scale at work. The wood for the drawer system weighed 88lbs. Much lighter than most of the RTT on the market if you are concerned about overall weight.
Next up was assembling the drawers. I deburred and sanded all the corners and edges on every piece before I started to make sure that I didn’t have any splinters or sharp points when I was done. I used screws along with wood glue on everything just to make sure will last a long time and can take the beating we will give it camping as much as we do. When assembling the box and drawers it is CRITICAL you make sure all your measurements are perfect along with everything assembled and lining up perfectly. If it isn’t dead on, your drawer sliders won’t line up and your drawers will bind up and won’t slide. In the plans SWW just had some hand holes in the front to pull on the drawers. I had some sprung recessed handles from another box build that I used that I thought were a lot nicer than just some holes in the front. I also used some butterfly pull latches on the side of the drawers to keep the drawers closed and not opening up when driving or opening the rear hatch on a hill. I built some batwing things that covered the open areas behind the wheel well and created 2 little cubbies to store more items. You can buy templates for these hinged side pieces from SWW that you print out a trace onto wood and use a jigsaw to cut out. They are $5 so again pretty cheap for what they are, but you can totally do it without. I cut some out with their templates and used their left side template but made my own for the right side.
To put this box in the back of the 4Runner, you needed to remove the small carpeted piece between the rear floor and the back seats. This is done by removing the 2 bolts used to mount the D-rings and then pulling up on that piece until it pops out. I then removed the 2 brackets for the D-rings that mount them to the truck frame and screwed them to the bottom of the box so that the box would be hard mounted to the truck, meaning it won’t move around or flip over if both drawers are open at the same time.
This is the butterfly latch on the side of the drawer placed to keep it shut while moving around
Now that the drawers were completed, I needed to build the sleeping platform. Unfortunately with the fact that Jamie and I are both tall people, the 5 ½ feet you get with the rear seats in wasn’t enough. Luckily the rear seat bottoms are attached with just 4 bolts. I took those 4 bolts out and replaced them with studs and put nuts on there to make it easier in the future. Then I built a t handle with a socket on the end so you can quickly loosen those nuts and pull the seats out. They store pretty well in the front seats. Another option is to just take them out before you go camping. Easily taking the rear seat bottoms out got us an extra 9” of room to stretch out with.
We also had a very tough time finding a mattress that was shorter than 72”. Being that the platform hinged off of the drawer box, you only had 27” from the box to the roof of the car. My solution was to build a double hinged platform that hinged the first 27” then hinged another 9” that gave us a total of 75” long by 41” wide to sleep on. That also solved another issue with this platform; Jamie uses this truck for work. She has to transport displays and other work related items, so the double hinge creates a flat surface with the rear seat bottoms in or out. She can easily fold the seats up and fold the platform down to the first hinge point and easily have a flat surface to load things into the truck. Once I had the platform itself working, I had to figure out support legs. I needed something that was quick and easy to set up, but also very supportive as there will be 2 people (and a bernese mountain dog) sleeping on this. My solution was a 1” stainless tube with a threaded end. I then used pronged nuts hammered into the top side of the platform. With the leg threaded into the pronged nut from the bottom side, it would sandwich the plywood and keep the leg extremely stable. To avoid pushing the winged nut out of the wood when screwing in the leg I JB welded the nut to the wood. After testing a handful of different glues and epoxies I found JB weld to work the best at gluing metal to wood. I used 4 legs; 2 long to go down to the rear footwell and 2 short to go down to the seat back.
Now that the drawers, platform, and sides were all built, the final portion of this project started. Sanding any of the painted wood, which if you use new plywood you won’t have to do. The amount of time I took was incredible and I would recommend using new plywood to avoid this and save time.. We then applied Olympic Water Guard wood sealer to every surface. Once that dried, we painted everything with Rustoleum Professional semi gloss spray paint to make everything black and match the interior of the 4Runner. The final touch to the finish of this platform was the carpet. I honestly think this is what changed this whole setup from looking like a homemade box to looking like a professional did it. We glued and stapled black carpet to everything besides the bottom of the box
Now that everything was finished, painted and carpeted it was time to put it back in the truck, assemble with all of the hinges, and test it out.
This is with the sleeping platform folded up
This is with the sleeping platform folded down.
As for a mattress and sleeping setup, we went with an Exped Deepsleep Mat Duo 7.5m. It measures 72”x41”x3” and fits literally perfect with this setup and is extremely comfortable. The sleeping bag is a Sierra Designs Backcountry Bed Duo and for a couple, there isn’t a better or warmer sleeping bag. It is a zipperless sleeping bag with sleeping pad inserts. We used it in our Tepui last year and even used it in the snow. The 700 fill down kept us warm, but for people that run hot, like I do, it has foot vents in the bottom that you can stick your feet out of, so highly recommend it.
Here is the final product
Can’t wait for this quarantine to be over and life to go back to normal so we can put this to use. For now we continue to stay inside and do our part so we can use this sooner rather than later.
Parts List
Exped Mattress with REI discount $145.45
Plywood $111.23
Drawer sliders $149
Wood sealer $13.06
Adhesive $25.96
Hinge $22.76
Pronged Nuts $32.88
Wood filler $10
Carpet $32
Rubber Feet for legs $8.75
Turnbuckles $12
Drawer handles $11
Misc hardware $15
Total $662.09