With today beautiful, sunny, and dry, I decided to start on another project I've been meaning to do once it warmed up: improve the cargo arrangement of the tow pig!
For those of you who followed my Raider built, you know what I'm doing here. Nothing fancy, but will give me a lot more gear-hauling capability. The old 1st gen Sequoia I had you could simply take out all the seats and have a perfectly flat cargo floor. This one, not so much. The 2nd-row seats fold flat onto themselves (but not into the floor) and the 3rd row seats fold partially into the floor, and there's a gear compartment in the floor behind them. Unfortunately, none of this is very flat, and it slopes downward toward the back hatch, so it kind of sucks for sleeping on and for loading gear that will slide backwards throughout a trip. IDK why Toyota did this, it's a lousy setup.
In any case, I don't ever, ever use the 3rd row seats anyhow, so let's take those out and make better use of the space. These are motorized seats as well so they're pretty heavy. I'd guesstimate the two of them weigh well over 100lbs combined. Taking them out was pretty easy:
What's left is less than ideal. There's a metal crossbar that separates the cargo tray from the 3rd row seat, and it's not really flat either, it has a "profile" to it. The floor itself is not flat at the back, flat in the center, and then slopes down about 2 feet behind the 2nd row seats. It's also not level with the ground.
I also wanted the new cargo/sleeping floor to be both level overall, and level with the middle-row seats when folded down (though they also have a small slope to them, but that's at the "pillow" end loll. In any case, did a bunch of measuring and decided to build off of the OEM metal crossbar and figure everything else out from there. To get the right height, I went with 2 x 3" runners, and used three of them longitudinally, resting on the metal crossbar and a transverse 2x4 up forward
Plenty of blocking up things to get everything level
The rear crossbeam was attached with through-bolts and some old metal bar to the OEM metal crossmember to hold it in place.
At the front end I built a pair of legs with 2x4s that rest on the flat area of the floor just forward of the front bolts for the 3rd row seat. Then used some L-brackets drilled out to attach those to the floor using the seat bolts. There's a third post in the middle just for extra support, though it's not bolted down. You can just barely see the L-brackets in this pic
Once all leveled up, I got a piece of 48" x 48" plywood (5/16" I think) and made some profile cuts to allow me access to tiedowns and some other things. I'm leaving about a 1" gap on the sides because I don't want it rubbing on the interior panels and squeaking or scuffing that stuff up in case I ever want to sell this thing. The plan here is to have two compartments: a large one in the middle that will be able to be hold camping gear, air mattress, and other bulkier stuff. The rear compartment I'm re-using the OEM gear tray (but not the cover) so I'll have easy access to recovery equipment, first aid, stuff, etc. There will also be a smaller forward panel that won't open, but I'll be able to put smaller stuff under the front "ledge" by sliding the 2nd row seats forward.
After cutting and test-fitting the top plywood. I went to Home Depot and bought some cheap high-traffic outdoor carpeting. I learned by lesson on the Raider, when I used black for this and found it ALWAYS looks dirty, and got gray this time to match the interior. So cut out some pieces.
And got to fitting it...you can also see here the long piano hinges I am using to allow the panels to flip up for access. I've found that these work well on the Raider (and holding the rally car's trunk spoiler, incidentally)
So that's where I am after one afternoon/evening. The plan will be to finish this up tomorrow.
