Type A personality storage build

dbrinkmann

Observer
I've been working on this for a few months now and I'm almost complete. I built it such that it would fit in a Toyota 4Runner and I'm pretty sure it would also fit in 4 door JK. Still to come is fastening to the plate I have in the back of my Land Rover, building drawer faces, finding mesh netting for the top to store additional soft items on top, and an interior drawer organizer (trekpak, separators, or similar).

Potential items I am also looking at: LED drawer lighting, mounting USB ports to the drawer unit, hard mounting a gun safe inside a drawer, removable water system in a drawer.

I've been keeping close tabs on all of the parts, pieces, dimensions, etc so that I can build more of these in the future.

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dbrinkmann

Observer
More info on build and I attached the drawer system to the base plate tonight

For those of you who asked about what parts I used. I used 30mm aluminum extrusion, lots of stainless steel button head bolts, 1/2" baltic birch drawers, one of them is 10" tall the other is 8" tall...after accounting for the drawer bottom (1/2" baltic again) and the gap below the groove the drawer bottom fits in to it leaves a 9" and 7" deep drawer. Both drawers are 18" wide and 24" deep. The slides are 500lb lock in - lock out, they're so sturdy no additional compression latch is needed. The sides and top are all baltic birch with the top being extra thick to carry whatever i need on top. I still need to build something there to attach things to. All that's really left is to finish some drawer faces to cover the gap on the sides and between the drawers.

Tonight I attached the drawer unit to my base plate. I had taken it out camping a few weeks ago and just used a bunch of towels stuffed around it to make sure it wouldn't shift in the back.

cut more angle aluminum, drilled holes, and attached it to the bottom of the drawer system
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Next i fit it in the rear of the Land Rover and drilled 6 of the 8 holes through the base plate. The holes nearest the rear of the vehicle I couldn't do as the drawer slide is 22" and the drawer is 24" deep, which means a couple of inches sit back into the drawer enclosure...of course exactly where i needed to drill the holes. So i marked those, pulled out the drawers and drilled them. Then hammered partially in some t-nuts for the bolts to thread into.
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It took a few tries but finally everything was attached and the bolts that hold the base plate on were reattached through the floor. In the morning I'll take a picture of this all again. The other big consideration I had in building this is I wanted to preserve access to the under floor spare tire area. It no longer holds a tire but has a lot of space for spare parts and in the future potentially a water tank and pump.

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dbrinkmann

Observer
Doah! I was going to weigh it before I bolted it in. That's going to have to wait a while. If I had to guess less than 50 lbs.
 

dbrinkmann

Observer
Thats just an ARB fridge slide, had it before i built the drawer system, not sure yet what I will do with that side.
 

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