On our quick trip to Yosemite our “camp set up” sucked to say the least. While I had slept in the back of the truck next to the fridge before it was just me and the fridge cuddling. This time there was two of us. The fridge had to be moved to the passengers seat, and plugged in up front. Most of the gear was literally just jammed in the drivers seat and on the dirty floor. It wasn’t quick, elegant, or fun to set up and tear down. We talked about a roof top tent, but most of our travel is done in the colder months and I’m just not convinced that a tent is where I want to be in high winds and snow. It was time to see what I could come up with.
The blank canvas. Its big enough to sleep two, but then what about the gear? And the fridge?
I started by putting the fridge back in and figuring out just how much room was between that and the seat back. I also knew that to be wide enough for two being higher than the wheel well was a must. Now how do we get the length
Glued, nailed and re-installed to test fit. Obviously to get the length we needed the bed would protrude into the front seat area. You can see that the front seats had to be flipped forward and the new bed cut out around the center console. The other change that had to happen was the rear seat bottoms have to be removed. They are simply too tall when folded.
Obviously you can’t expect the rear section to hold the weight of all three panels. I used a series of dowels that screw into place. I had never tried to use a tap and die on wood, but it worked out well. As a stop for the dowels, and added square piece to each of them.
Time for some “color”. We started off by staining everything with a black stain. I wasn’t happy with the final look, so I ended up eventually finishing it off with some Duplicolor Truck Bed Liner.
To mount the main part of the unit into place I need to add some threads to it. With 3/4″ MDF I didn’t think a normal wood insert would hold in place very long. I settled on some cross dowels. These allow for a rather large contact area internally to make sure nothing pulls out of the wood.
The 4Runner comes factory with tie down points on all 4 corners of the rear cargo area. The front two points work perfect to keep the bed in place. The rear factory points however end up behind the fridge and are just too far away to work well. The solution is to just add a couple more spots at the rear corner of the box. I used my Marson Thread Setter to add the needed tie down points just behind the box and finished it off with a factory hinge from a junkyard 4Runner.
To finish off the double hinge, I used a 4′ piece of aluminum as a backer. It just required a whole lot of drilling and tapping.
The finished product. Right now it is sporting some cheap yoga mats as a cushion. It seems comfortable enough for a quick nap, but we’ll see what we settle on for the long run.
All folded back up and ready to roll. I can’t wait to try it out in the rear world. I think we will still inevitably end up needing to do some re-arranging of gear to set up “camp”. At the least it won’t involve the fridge needing to move to the front seat ever again, and that alone makes it all worth while.
