Rod's Rig - 2007 Dual Cab Hilux - Now regeared and twin locked

[rodw]

Well it has been a bit over 18 months since the demise of my old rig The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Old Rig - SUZUKI - Vitara - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups! which prompted me to purchase a brand new Hilux dual cab turbo diesel auto. While my buildup has been well documented over on Newhilux.net - New Hilux, 4x4, Hilux, SR5, 2005 Hilux, 2006 Hilux, 2007 Hilux, D4D, D4-D, Common Rail, Dual Cab , I thought it was about time I documented the transformation from this:



To this (shown here on Moreton Island) on this forum as I hang out a bit here these days:





So anyway, enjoy this buildup and if you really like the look of my rig, don’t forget to give me a vote on my shed:
The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Rig - TOYOTA - HiLux - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups!

I am finally about to become a subscriber to this mag after reading it for ages, but I have been waiting for the right offer to come along and settled on a Michelle’s Sacs Car Bra to take to the Cape with me next year, but I digress.

Well actually even in the first pic, you can see I did not even wait to get the camera out before modding it as the day after I took delivery, I was off to Ryano at Fourbys and he fixed me up with some SR5 alloy rims and a set of Dick Cepek 31x10.5 FC-II’s.

Anyway, this rig is set up as a touring rig and more often than not, it will look like this when it goes out to play:





But every now and again, it does the odd harder trip with the guys in my 4WD club:


or even worse Triton Owners J



Sometimes things have not gone to plan and I end up like this:




Anyway, back to the build up. Easter was coming up and I was feeling a bit sore with a fractured sternum, so I got the guys at ARB Southside to fix me up with a dual battery and some power in the tub to keep the beer cold over Easter down at Brooms Head.





They even put a link switch in the dash to link both batteries together when winching or to jump start the car.



It wasn’t long until I decided to do a bit more with the power. I really liked the heavy duty Marine cig lighter ARB used, so I got another one and stuck it in the spare hole in the SR5 dash.



While I was at it, I also put in a Hella point in the cab under the glove box as I have a few accessories that I have replaced cig plugs with a Hella.


I knew I was going to add a few electrical thingummies to this rig over time, so while I was at it I made up a distribution block with 6 fuses which I mounted nice and close to the battery with a 100 amp Maxifuse between it and the battery terminal.







I simply cut out a slot in some conduit and silasticed it to the fuse box and taped it on until it dried. This has worked a treat and is pretty full these days and even has another mate on the far side of the engine bay.

After the trip to Brooms head and a quick drive down a muddy dirt road, it was very obvious by the time I washed the car (which took ages) that some flares were the order of the day. I asked ARB about them and they said they refused to fit theirs any more because of the problems they had so I ended up with a set from Leon at Utemart Utemart Queensland Australia Ute Products and Ute Accessories, utemart.com.au, Utemart Ute Accessories These were really easy to fit myself and they look quite good.





I decided to sort out some diff breathers and bought both of them up onto thte firewall behind the engine:


There is a $7 Toyota part you can get that makes it real easy to get a hose on the rear diff. They call it a union (You can read the part number on the packet but the bits are the breathers I took off).



I also rounded up some recovery points from K&N over in Perth:


These worked well until I fitted a bulbar which required a bit of modifying to get them back on as they shared the same mounting points. The bullbar and the rear step bar were the bain of my life. I took 3 months to get them. I ordered the ARB commercial bull bar and their rear step towbar through Ontrack 4WD because Brad there was keen to take a set of Suzi rims off my hands which helped with expenses. In the end, I got the Sh!ts with waiting, cancelled the ARB bar and settled for an Ironman Deluxe bar which I sourced from Opposite Lock at Springwood. They have been good to me ever since and Verne there has lightened my wallet quite a bit since. This bar also included a set of fog lights which the SR misses out on from the factory and only cost me $30 more than the ARB one.





You can see I also got Verne to fit a winch while I was at it. It is an Ironman one, not too happy with it and it has been fixed once after warranty since it went on. I am happy with the bar though, but would not select it if I lived in ‘roo country.

Here is the modded bull bar and spacer I needed to get the recovery points back on.







Finally, the ARB step bar turned up and Brett said they had some dramas fitting it until ARB told them to squeeze the chassis rails in with a high lift jack!


More to follow.

Don't forget to check out my shed and show your appreciation
http://www.4wdaction.com.au/shed/index.php?id=3887&im=1

[rodw]

Early in the piece, I bought a set of TJM Underbody guards which cover the engine and the tranny:





So it was about time I turned my attention to Canopies and fond this was quite a minefield with windows falling out, shells cracking on corrugations and some with useless sliding windows. I finally settled on the Caddy Workmate Canopy as I happened to see their sign for ute canopies while driving home one day. It is absolutely awesome and high enough to stand up washing machines in the back. The access into the tub has to be seen to be believed:





And it has slam latches just like a boot:



The canopy has a 100 kg load weighted roof without supports and it has a couple of Rhino Roof rack bars fitted so I can carry my Oz tent. You sould get a good look at this in th epic where I am stuck in the first post. You can see I also added a Rhino spare tyre carrier to it as well.

I also added a set of Rhino Shovel holders to it. I like to stick these under the roof rack so they don’t get in the road:



I am trying deliberately not to put a big rack up there so I am not tempted to load her up with too much stuff so the weight does not get out of hand.

After the canopy went on, I decided to seal up some of the tailgate to reduce dust ingress:





I also liked the look of these tiedowns which ARB sell, so I stuck them in:





The Camping show rolled round so I bought a GME UHF at the right price and stuck it in. I decided to get one of the concealed ones with all the controls in the microphone. I mounted it under the glove box:



Originally, I mounted the microphone on a bracket attached to the radio, but I havs eince screwed it straight to the radio fascia that is part of the dash:







Well, this is a good spot to stop and gather my thoughts, but there is heaps more to come don't forget if you like what you see then visit my shed here:
http://www.4wdaction.com.au/shed/ind...3887&im=1&s=on

[rodw]

Well, here is a pic of where the UHF Microphone is mounted these days:



I suppose now, you’ll want me to tell you about my car PC. We’ll get to that in a moment, but before I could do that, I had to fit an amp. You see, if you pull out the radio and you want to play some music, you need one of these. I am not very musically inclined so I decided that as the Car PC only had a 2 channel sound system, I would stick with a 2 chanel amp and settled on a JL amp at the right price and stuck it behind the rear seat:



I ordered some speaker spacers to suit the Hilux off ebay out of the US and these make it easy to get speakers in the door. I settled on a pair of JL splits and took a deep breath as I sunk the holesaw into the door trims:





I stuck the speaker crossovers under the dash in the kick panels:



Initially, I ran this from the factory head unit and used a line level convertor under the console but it is now redundant.



However, I am pretty sure now that the JL amp is not fussy about line levels and I could have run the speaker wires straight to the amp. It would be a good idea to check this out if you are buying an amp to use with a head unit that does not have line out.


Now about this Car PC. I had a good Pentium M laptop (which are renowned for low power consumption ) that the screen had gon eon, so I decided to use this. The first job was to deal with how to turn it on and off. After a bit of research, I found the service manual on Google and stripped the laptop down and soldered on a couple of wires to the power switch. I ran these over to the modem phone line socket on the laptop and soldered them onto the phone line connectors. Once I stuck the thing back together, I could plug a phone line ito the laptop that had a switch on the other end and I could turn the PC on and off without opening the case!

OK, the next step was to round up some serious bits and pieces and I ordered about $800 worth of stuff out of the US. The main components were a Xenarc 706TSA monitor and an Opus 150 watt vehicle power supply. These are early pics, things are a bit tidier now.

I also made up an offroad enclosure which involved a soldering screw on USB connectors to a USB hub and tossing in a Silab USB radio which I had soldered on a coax antenna to and added a USB HDD.

So putting it all together:







Laptop mounted in a bent up piece of aluminium with some soft adhesive rubber strips from Clark Rubber:



Gear on the left is the Opus power supply at the top, Black box with yellow sticker is the monitor input box, the oval shaped box is a 12 volt laptop power supply that has since been removed. I realised that he monitor can handle 12-24 volts power, so I reconfigured the laptop to output 19 volts for the laptop and run the monitor off that.



OK, so I needed a GPS receiver and I got a USB one and stuck it out under the bonnet under the windscreen wipers:





To be continued, don’t forget to vote on my shed if I have not put you to sleep yet.
The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Rig - TOYOTA - HiLux - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups!

[rodw]

Car PC Continued.

I found out the hard way that the USB cable run was too long, so I had to daisy chain it to another hub under the steering wheel:



Not much point having a PC without the Internet, so added a wireless antenna hidden in the back corner of the canopy.





Thought Bluetooth was a good idea too:



Stuck it in behind the rear panels up near the top seatbelt mount.



The monitor has VGA plus two composite video inputs, so added a reversing camera:



Not much point having a PC without a dual layer DVD drive these days:



Or a keyboard, but mostly use the touch screen:



Power switch beside the clock that goes back to the phone line we talked about:




Ok, now to the hard part and this is take 2. How do you get a monitor like this into your dash?



Well, not easily as it turned out. Particularly when the monitor died on my first off road trip and I had voided the warranty by opening the case and the repair centre is in the USA. Anyway, Xenarc took pity on this poor old Aussie and fixed it for nothing but it cost me the freight over there. Once it came back, I bought an extended ribbon cable off eBay so I could move the buttons from the bottom of the case to the side. This was a bit of a drama as the ribbon never turned upuntil after I lodged a complaint with Paypal. I hacked the buttons off the case shown here with the longer ribbon cable:



Took the bits to a plastic welder with some other plastic I had lying round and he did this:





My turn, bumper filler and some pumper paint:



And into the dash with a bit of filing off the fascia to make a bit more room.

So you see that is about when I decided to screw the CB microphone mount to the radio fascia as I had screwed the fascia anyway grinding it out for the monitor

For software,, I use the RoadRunner front end and run Odyssey Navigator for street nav:


and of course good old OziExplorer with about 20 Gb of maps


I wrote some software that made it easy to keep a fuel log in a touch screen friendly way:



I recently installed some OBD diagnostic software and an OBD interface which is plugged into the car all the time and I have the PC based Toyota repair manual on board in case something does go wrong out in the middle of nowhere..

Anyway, that just about covers off the Car PC. more still to come. Don't forget to cast your vote for my shed:

The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Rig - TOYOTA - HiLux - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups!

[mylesy]

Excellent wirte up mate, lots of great ideas! will be looiking back on this thread later :P

[SteelArt]

wow that is pretty cool, great to see it all worked out for you.

[rodw]

Well by now if you are still ploughing your way through this thread, you are probably sick of the techo stuff so let’s talk about lift and tyres.

I really wanted to fit the Wizard kit HiluxAndrew has fitted but when I checked with Brent, he had no stock, so it was agreed we’d sort it out after I came back fromn a 3 week holiday in NZ. While I was out of the country, we had an economic meltdown and exchange rates had gone out the window so the kit went from $3,200 to $4,600 fitted in those three weeks. At $4k I would have done it, but I thought that it was over the top, so I went back and annoyed Verne at Opposite lock and fitted the Tough Dog Adjustable Shocky kit.



While I was at it, I decided to get him to fit a snorkel and I bought a blue tongue compressor off him as well

Very happy with the travel, and the on and off road performance:


TUFF_IFS_LUX sent me an email (he’s a real forum junkie you know) letting me know about a deal Ryano had going at the time. You see, he had some Dick Cepek Crusher Tyres in for evaluation and had a couple of sets to sell at a very good price. So I did a deal with him that was too good to refuse and went from the 31’s on 15’s to 32’s on 16’s. The first fitted in Australia and let me tell you they are awesome at 12 psi.



Anyway, they didn’t do much for TUFF_IFS_LUX’s beanie that made a flying visit to Queensland recently before flying back to Melbourne…

So anyway, not long after, I dinted my sill. Annoying! I had lined it up with Brooksy to recheck the measurements for sliders the next day! A few trips back and forth to Brooksy, a trip to the panel beater to fix the dinted sill and the sliders were on:

From a distance, they have a very understated look, but up close, they have a bit of bling that even Twisty would be proud of.







Also forgot, that I tried my hand at a bit of metal fabrication as well but made sure I kept to under the truck out of sight as what can I say, Brooksy is a master!

Anyway, I made up a transfer case protector shown here beside the factory one:



And before it was painted:




Geez, this is taking longer than I thought. But we are nearly up to speed now. Just got to talk about hot water, systems, pressure pumps, plumbing and drawer systems (which I am working on now).

Anyway, don't forget to check out my shed and stick your vote on my rig:
The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Rig - TOYOTA - HiLux - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups!

[mylesy]

Mate those sliders are unreal, Brooksy has outdone himself yet again...

How do you rate your new tyres??

[rodw]

Well still going. there was a little bit of space left under the hood so I decided to add a Helton Shower unit, Shurflo pressure pump and the Bluetongue compressor.


Helton heat exchangers - camp hot water systems and camping showers


Caravan and Marine Equipment Company


www.oppositelock.com.au





the hot water system is a bit hard to see, tucked under the battery but nice and close to the heater hoses. This is looking down beside the radiator:



It is easier to see from the wheel arch:


Scotty also made me up a stainless steel water tank which is made to fit in the tub:



The breather tucks down behind the tank but you can pull it out and stick it outside in case the breather glugs a bit when filling:



The water tank outlet goes straight through the tub and into a tee piece directly below:



I thought it would be a good idea if there was a gravity fed outlet in case the pump died so I ran one pipe back to a tap tucked up under the rear behind the back tyre out of the road:



I wanted to be able to select from an external water supply as well as the water tank so I made up a scaled down version of the two way valve that the council wants you to use if you have rainwater and town water and want to swap between water sources. This consits of an L-port valve and two check valves which prevcent cross contamination of water sources:



So the valve has two positions, one for tank water, one for external water. I mounted this under the front guard where it is out of the road and not too hard to get to:



The external inlet and hot water outlet are under the other front guard. Be careful with this. I found out the hard way that garden hose fittings are not suitable for suction lines and the pump refuses to prime as they suck air.



That's why I have used a camlock fitting on one line here, it is a suction line. You will see I have also put an isolation valve on the shower outlet and I have also got another one the other side of the hot water system so I can isolate it totally while driving in case it blows off. Before the suction line gets to the pump, there is a filter under the radiator in an easy to get to place for servicing:



Not shown is that you should also add a foot valve at the end of the suction hose you put in the external water source so the water does not drain out and let the pump loose its prime.

I kept the hoses to the outside of the chassis rail so it does not get too hot but when it goes over the wheel arch at the rear, you can't hide them.



One hose is the gravity line and the other is the pressure line going to a tap on the rear bar.





This is only a temporary setup and it is hard to get to while the tailgate is down when camping, eventually, this will migrate up into the tub when I finish the drawer unit. I also put an isolation cock behind the step bar so some idiot can't drain the tank while I am not looking.

There is a switch for the pressure pump mounted behind the bull bar in an easy to get to spot via one of the winch access holes on top of the bull bar. I might move this (or add an extra one) at the rear of the car once the drawers are finished. I mounted the tap on th eoposite side to keep the drinking water away from the exhaust.

So anyway, I hope you enjoyed the plumbing lesson, don't forget to give me a vote at my shed:
The Shed – Australian 4WD Action - Rod's Rig - TOYOTA - HiLux - The world’s biggest community for custom 4WD, 4x4 and off-road vehicles. Browse thousands of photos, videos, comments, tips and build-ups!

[rodw]

Well we are nearly there, Thanks for the early encouragement guys, I think this will be the last post for today then I'll answer your questions.

The plan was always to include some drawer units in the tub and I was quite deliberate with the sizing of the water tank as I wanted room for either a 1200 mm Caddy drawer system or a set of Ovesco's 1219mm drawer runners. I decided to take the easy way out and get some Caddy drawers but they did not want to order them up from Sydney until they knew they would fit. Anyway, I dropped around a few days later and gave the guy a hand to trial fit one drawer unit. It fitted perfectly with 2-3mm to spare. However, I was very dissappointed with the weight. Geez this brute was heavy! I reckon two drawers would have weighed 80 kg. This was just too much so it was back to Plan B.

I had seen all the neat stuff online at Ovesco - Hardware,Gas Stays,Drawer Slides,Rubber & Seal Strip,Water Tanks & Tool Boxes,Huck Fasteners & Tooling,Recoil,Threaded Inserts and was about to order some stuff from them down in Newcastle when I noticed thay had just opened a branch at Nerang which is only about 45 minutes from home. I knew that any drawer system had to be dead accurate and square and I did not have the gear to weld up stuff nice and square and I was a bit reluctant to go the timber path. I decided to use Capral Cubleok which is 25.4mm Aluminium SHS and a series of plastic connectors. I had used this before to good effect. There is a risk of the plastic connectors busting, so I have been careful to come up with a design that would make sure there is no load from the drawers on the Cubelok itself. The secret of working with this stuf fis to sketch out a design before you start so you know how many of each connector you need to buy:



After I collected 5 lengths of 6.5m Ally SHS and a heap of connectors, I headed off to Ovesco to see what goodies they had. Man, if they didn't have what I wanted, the bolt shop they sent me to round the corner did:



So I came home with a lightweight nutsert tool as I was really impressed to see how good these were whan Scotty fitted my water tank. The tool is about $70 and the insert dies are aboiut $15 each. I just bought the M6 die. The pair of black gadgets are the latches (open and closed) with a pop out handle. The blue gadget is an end cap for their Occo drawer track (which I won't end up using) and the white gadget is a bumpstop and latch. This will hold the drawers open and stop them from falling out. Down the bottom, is a couple of nutserts and some Teenuts which I use to hold stuff together.

The expensive bits at $20 each were the Occo rollers. Yes, I konw you could use ball bearings, but that meant douel the work to get everything straight. I bought 20 of them and set them up jjust like Ovesco had in their 200 KG demo drawer set. I mounted them to some 160mm x 6mm aluminium plate:



Here is the layout, the two rollers togerther area bout 200 mm from the last one and hold the weight of the drawer when it is open.



I also bought an Aluminium blade for my Drop saw to cut the Cubelok with:


This stuff is really easy to work with. I started from the centre out

Ok, lets put the frame together:



Notice how the middle uprights sit on a 6mm piece of ally. This is bacause the rib on the tub was too narrow to take all the weight. So there is no weight on the plastic connectors.



And now sort out the flat plates in position and bolt it all up:




Now to mount the frame using the nutserts. Gentle with these, You are not inserting a pop riivet and trying to snap something off.. Good way to break the die.

Drill a 6mm hole through the bits you want to mount. Drill the hole in the tub out to 10mm, screw a nutsert onto the tool, Insert the nutsert in the hole, squeeze and you are done! One threaded hole:



Underneath:



Now bolt it up:



easy...

Anyway, 2 sheets of 12mm Ply from Bunnings and a borrowed Festool saw (complete with Operator) and we were right to tackle the drawers.



Geez, running out of time, but we got this far before I went off to Moreton Island.



His and hers drawers with scrap drawer track for handles for now:





Countersunk holes with an old brace and bit to remove one layer of ply so the Teenut is nice and flush:



Reinforcement in the drawers, Used contersunk screws



Note the Teenut in this picture holds the drawer track on and I have deliberately not countersunk it because I had to use a longer bolt and this way nothing sticks out inside the drawer.

Ok, nearly there now, pop riveted some steel to the inside of the last crossmember so the catch would not rub a hole in the soft ally:



Made up some angle iron mounts for the white catches:



The one with the holes will get bolted to the drawer Here is what it looks like with it out of the way:



You can see that I drilled and tapped the holes just for fun. I might add a lock nut to these yet.

One catch mounted either side of the middle drawer upright.



The catch that will go on the drawer in roughly the right position so you get the hang of this:



The drawers sit hard against a crossmember at the front when closed, so thought I better add some marine capet to cushion it and stop any rubbing ocurring.



Just routed a scrap piece of timber to test fit the drawer front and see if the theory will work. Perfect!



So there you go guys, I am ready to make the drawer fronts on the weekend, we are finally up to speed.

If you reckon you like this build up, please don't forget to visit my shed and give me a vote!

http://www.4wdaction.com.au/shed/ind...3887&im=1&s=on

[rodw]

While I am at it, the next project after these drawers are complete is to modify or rebuild the camping storage rack I used for my Old Rig may she rest in peace.

You can see I shoehorned a lot into my little Vitara.


And it was just held on by 8 bolts through the deck into Teenuts so it was really easy to take out.



There are a few extra bends in this unit to account for the non-symetrical shape of the Vitrara but believe it or not, it is a perfect in the Hilux on top of the drawers. Now we have doen a couple of trips with it strapped in the back with some tiedowns, we know what to do with it.

The plan is to add two more drawers as shown below, one of which is deep enough to take a dinner plate on its edge:



This will mean that everything will have it's palce and we will have our camp setup in under 20 minutes depending on how much of the tent we erect...

[rodw]

Originally Posted by mylesy

Excellent wirte up mate, lots of great ideas! will be looiking back on this thread later :P

Originally Posted by SteelArt

wow that is pretty cool, great to see it all worked out for you.

Thanks for the vote guys. I finally have it up to date but of course it is an onging project.

Originally Posted by mylesy

Mate those sliders are unreal, Brooksy has outdone himself yet again...

Yes, Brooksy is a magician!

Originally Posted by mylesy

How do you rate your new tyres??

Mylesy, I think those Crushers are great. It is a shame Ryano has not convinced the distributors to bring them in yet. I run them at about 16 psi offroad and on the sand on Moreton Island.

In one outing where it took 4 hours to get 10 cars back up a hill, I aired them down to 12 psi and got much further than any other unlocked vehicle including a new V8 landcruiser. I got stopped by a little ledge that needed a touch with a front locker and needed a bit of a snatch. I think that is where I dinted my sill

I thought 12 psi was a bit low to handle well for the rest of that day though, 16 was good. They rock mate.

[rodw]

God wouldn't you know it. I quickly stuck up a shed for my old rig yesterday and then spent some time writing this buildup and last night the magazine included a link to the shed for my old rig in their weekly newsletter ... Anyway, got two rigs running at 10/10 now even if one is long since buried.

I'm off to build some drawers... better get my finger out, at this rate, my old rig might overtake me!

[boof]

Great write up Rod really is a well set up rig

[mylesy]

Well thought out ideas for the drawers Rod, did you only join the frame by those black T piece joiners? So no welds at all??

[rodw]

Originally Posted by boof

Great write up Rod really is a well set up rig

Thanks for the compliment Boof, bit different to yours, but yes, I think it will be pretty good for the task at hand. Just getting out of the City!

Originally Posted by mylesy

Well thought out ideas for the drawers Rod, did you only join the frame by those black T piece joiners? So no welds at all??

Mylesy, thats right, no welds, but there are a lot of bolts so a lot of the connectors are almost redundant now. Each stick of ally on the bottom has 3 bolts into the tub and then the plates that I mounted the rollers onto are also bolted on to the bottom plates and the uprights. The plates sit flat on the tub so there is no weight on the frame.

This'll show you what I did:


Most of the top ones are not bolted on, but all of the ones near the tailgate are. You can see the brace in one of the pics of the centre upright that shows the drawer stops. Today I cut small plates to fill in the outside of the drawers above the main plates:



The main reason I did this was to fill in the bit above the plates so I had a straight edge to but the drawer front up to. These plates are held on with countersunk screws and nutserts in the uprights which worked really well. The bolts are on the inside:



Anyway, got the drawer fronts completed and the drawer stops all mounted up and the drawers are finished. I made the drawers 6mm short, so I got some 15mm ply for the fronts and spaced it out with a bit of scrap 3mm ply so the drawer front was flush with the front.


Once I got the drawer fronts in position, I tacked them in place with a few nails. That made it real easy! I mounted the drawer fronts to the drawer with 5 teenuts. The 4 in the corners go through the angle iron on the inside of the drawers, so there is no way these will pull off.



Covered it up with some marine carpet and managed to knock over a near full 1 litre tin of glue but it is all good.



The catches look nice and pop out to open when you press the bottom button to form a handle:



I also cut out some side decks so it is looking pretty good:



The Power outlets ARB fitted have to go, they get in the road of the deck.

The bump stops are in. I'd recommend putting them on the outside as it would be a lot easier to bolt them on. The first one was easy, but with a drawer in, it was hard to get the second one! I was concerned I might need two stops, but one is fine. The Ovesco sample drawer had it mounted under the drawer base in the centre of the drawer, but this would have been too costly for drawer height.

The catches are fantastic! There is absolutely no movement of the drawers when they are closed.

Anyway, still a fair bit to tidy up, but the back of it is broken now!

[rodw]

Well, got a bit more done today. Made up the tailgate end panels to finish it off, but first, I thought I'd show you the Festool Saw I borrowed off Justin.



This is amazing gear. It has an aluminium track about 1400mm long that it slides up and down on and you place the edge of the track right where you want to cut and that's where it will cut when you slide the saw along. Everything is 100% square and it is as accurate as a professional bench saw. You press a button on the handle and the saw drops down. It has depth control and does angles cuts as well. I have not been game to ask him what it cost him.

Anway, back on topic, here is one of the panels all mounted up:



And here is the finished job with the carpet in place:



The fire extinguisher is a neat fit but the lever sits up over the drawers a few mm. I pushed it over to the side to leave room for a couple more gadgets I will mount there. Anyway, that's all I've got time for this weekend. Should be able to finish it off totally when I get another free weekend. I have decided not to use the carpet on the deck and will put some rubber matting down which I will glue into place. I think that will be easier to keep clean. Bit dearer though. It is about $77 per metre v's $45 for the carpet.

[mylesy]

Thanks for that info rod, its a very nice rig and the drawers are great...

I'm still thinking about making drawers for mine but i don't want a canopy so im going to have to put the thinking cap on with what materials to use for it staying out in the elements... yours has come up great, and the drawer fronts also. The festool range is unbelievable, i'm a cabinet maker by trade and pretty much all of my tools bar drills are festool, have never had any problems with them...

Are you going to be putting another lot of shelving on top of the drawers like in your vitara??

[rodw]

Originally Posted by mylesy

Thanks for that info rod, its a very nice rig and the drawers are great...

I'm still thinking about making drawers for mine but i don't want a canopy so im going to have to put the thinking cap on with what materials to use for it staying out in the elements... yours has come up great, and the drawer fronts also. The festool range is unbelievable, i'm a cabinet maker by trade and pretty much all of my tools bar drills are festool, have never had any problems with them...

Are you going to be putting another lot of shelving on top of the drawers like in your vitara??

Geez Mylesy, if I had of known your trade, I would not have taken so many closeup photos , some of my work is a bit rough, but the carpet covers a lot. If I did it again, Id sparay the edges with black paint before covering it wth the carpet. I'd never heard of Festool before..

The drawer frame I made is all weatherproof and the wheels should be OK, so it is just the plywood you got to worry about. Couple of ideas.. 1. Use marine play and varnish it before you cover it with marine carpet. 2. Get somebody to fold up some aluminium or Stainless drawers (I got a mate who works as production manager for a big stainless fabricator and he got the boys to fold up some drawers). The other idea I picked up on an overseas forum was that there was a plastic flooring that was used in piggeries and the like to use as the deck. Strong and light. I tried to track down a source but without much luck.

Yes, earlier in this thread I posted a pic of the Vitara rack with some coloured blocks which outlines what I will be doing. The current rack is a good fit for the Hilux so if I can modify it and get more use out of it, I will be happy. We've had 7 nights camping now with the drawers and the rack. This pic posted earlier shows how well it fits but when fully packed, I still use the tubs as per the Vitara pics.

[mylesy]

Ok thats some nice ideas there, my main and well only idea was to get one of my mates to fab up a stainless frame and drawers, but i'm not sure if i want to go this way, might be easier for 2 fabbed up stainless then carpeted toolboxes... i also want one of those toolboxes to be insulated for duel use as an esky... these are all things in the pipeline at the moment and i have alot of plans for the ute i just need the funding haha...

i have the bare essentials to get to most places but i do not yet have any sort of camping set-up (usually just roll the swag in the back of the tub underneath the soft teneau with a few eyelets open for freshness) but now i have the missus and the dog so im all out of whack... just have to decide if i want to go away camping more or just day trips with a nice rig...