crossed-up
Observer
Hello All and happy New Year!
I’ve been lurking here for months having stumbled across jeepgc’s wonderful Iceland thread whilst searching for expo parts for my own ’05 WH(WK) Hemi. There can’t be many of us UK Hemi owners about!
This was all in preparation for a trip to the Pyrenees I have planned with my brother and his family sometime in the summer. He’ll be taking his new Renegade Trailhawk and I’ll be in the WK. Neither of these has the most copious luggage space and we will need space to be three-up in each vehicle with all our associated camping gear, inflatable kayaks, fridge, food, tools, some basic recovery gear, and in my case at least a jerry can of spare fuel.
These are the beasties:
So I’ve been getting inspiration from the the many builds in the Storage Solutions section and I always liked the idea of a drawer based system, but never beed too convinced by all the weight or whether they would just take up space rather ‘creating’ it through more efficient packaging.
I had dabbled with various ideas back in October when I needed to use the Jeep as a rally service/chase car (Mull Rally). This generally involves charging about the island laden with crew, various tool kits, spares, wheels and tyres, and fuel. In previous years (with the ZJ and Commander) I’ve managed to just pack everything in to Action Packers, tool boxes and plastic crates, and pack it all in nice and tightly so it can’t move. But this time I needed to take a much bigger and very heavy trolley jack, and didn’t fancy it flying around, especially in the event of an accident! I also like to keep my interiors clean and undamaged.
So a few days before the event, I came up with a quick plan to make a simple 9mm plywood plate to mount the trolley jack on the left hand side of the luggage space. The plate was secured to the cubby side walls with some simple brackets using ‘Plastite’ screws, and the jack was secured to the plate with a small ratchet strap. All this partially covered the cubby space, making it impossible to use the original floor panel so I also cut a couple of 9mm ply floor panels to cover the cubby space. These actually made the cubby much more useable and managed to stow all my recovery gear and a spade under there. It was a quick build a couple of days before I needed to travel, so didn’t take any pictures!
Sadly the Mull event ended prematurely due to fatal accident, so I didn't take many pictures. But here's the WK on service duties. The square panel leaning against the bumper is the replacement ply cubby hole cover.
Roll on to last week and with a few days off over the holiday period we had planned a laning trip to Wales as a bit of a shakedown for the Pyrenees to check out some of the gear, tyres, CB’s etc, and a general excuse to get the Renegade muddy. Having postponed this a couple of days to New Years Day, due to all the flooding and storms, I decided there was time to build a basic single draw to serve mainly as a chuck box/kitchen, and also check out an idea for a shelf/guard arrangement using Tracmats.
So here’s the build….
Firstly I needed to decide on some dimensions. Since the drawer's primary function was a camp kitchen/chuck box I based it on the width of my Coleman twin burner stove and the height of tallest cooking pots and kettle. Luckily, these dimensions also allowed a folded Coleman oven to fit. In terms of depth I decided not to go back as far as the rear seats as this would prevent access to the two cubby spaces for the factory jack etc. So the drawer only goes back to the hinges of the cubby hatches which conveniently left space for two rectangular tote bags that can still be accessed from passenger compartment by folding the seat back down.
Tote bags fill space between seats and drawer box.
The Tracmats also fitted nicely across the width of the luggage space, but would need a frame to mount them as they were too short to drop on to the parcel shelf runners. I don't carry the jack around on a daily basis, but wanted the option to do so, so I decided to leave space for the mount when required and the option of using it with the drawer. As it turned out the jack proved to be a vital bit of equipment on the Wales trip! (I'll post up some details of that trip later)
The 20 litre jerry can also fits nicely on the right hand side.
Secondly there was the construction method and materials. Given the two day timeframe I needed to get it all the materials from the local DIY store (B&Q/HomeDepot) so I went for 12mm ply. I had considered 9mm for the draw and 12mm for the case, but the store only had a single warped sheet of 9mm in stock, so 12mm it was! Although I did go for 5.5mm for the drawer base to save weight. I'm no cabinetmaker (more used to metal fabrication and car bodywork) but decided that I could use the router to produce simple rabbet and grooved joints to add strength to the relatively lightweight construction. I actually only ended up using a hand saw, small plane (to straighten the cuts), the router, small chisel (to square of the ends of routed slots) and power drill.
That really is only a 12mm wide rabbet!
Determining runner location - these were 550mm runners from Screwfix.
I decided to recess the runners to avoid loosing too much drawer width.
Determining the overall draw length. I made the drawer slightly over size so I could cut it back to for the best fit later. At this stage I hadn't decided on whether I wanted/needed a drawer front, but left enough space for a 12mm ply front.
Checking the position of the stove and deciding on the side profile of the drawer, allowing for access to the second burner control and vents.
Setting position of divider between stove and storage area. For maximum drawer space I sat the stove as far forward as possibly, but allowing for a 12mm drawer front to be fitted if required.
Routing slot for the divider.
Various pieces heading towards their final shapes and sizes.
Dry fit of parts to check fit.
Adding 'lightness' to the drawer case sides.
No, I didn't buy a kit from Ikea!
Final gluing and screwing together of the draw assembly.
As is often the case with these 'make it up as you go' projects I had to rethink a few things. When determining the runner positions I hadn't allowed for the vent holes in the draw sides, so had to route a wider grove for the runners to move them up 12mm. I also had to route pockets into the rear panel as the runners needed to go back 20mm to clear the burner control hole on the LH side panel.
Drawer case screwed and glued.
Repositioning the runners in their wider slots to clear the vents.
Whilst the glue and varnish was drying I turned my attention to the Tracmats. I had some lengths of 30mm ali angle so decided to use that to make a frame to create a shelf for the mats. I intentionally positioned the mat off centre to the right so that at least one end was supported on the parcel shelf runner, and this also created a nice little space for a tote tray on the left hand side.
Trial fit in the car. Conveniently the drawer case could be mounted to the side of the jack mount panel with small ali brackets. Access to the cubby hole requires the drawer to be removed, but I only kit seldom used kit in there. I will probably but out the centre of the jack mount plate for better access. The section of cubby to the right of the drawer is covered with a removable 12mm ply panel.
By this time it was was getting late on the eve of the Wales trip, so had to finish of the installation ready to leave at 6.30am after the New Year's festivities. So I had to forget about taking pictures and just get everything securely fixed as bets I could. This involved ratchet straps to hold the Tracmats and a simple ali strut to hold them at right angles.
Ooops, reached the thread picture limit.... continued in next post....
I’ve been lurking here for months having stumbled across jeepgc’s wonderful Iceland thread whilst searching for expo parts for my own ’05 WH(WK) Hemi. There can’t be many of us UK Hemi owners about!
This was all in preparation for a trip to the Pyrenees I have planned with my brother and his family sometime in the summer. He’ll be taking his new Renegade Trailhawk and I’ll be in the WK. Neither of these has the most copious luggage space and we will need space to be three-up in each vehicle with all our associated camping gear, inflatable kayaks, fridge, food, tools, some basic recovery gear, and in my case at least a jerry can of spare fuel.
These are the beasties:
So I’ve been getting inspiration from the the many builds in the Storage Solutions section and I always liked the idea of a drawer based system, but never beed too convinced by all the weight or whether they would just take up space rather ‘creating’ it through more efficient packaging.
I had dabbled with various ideas back in October when I needed to use the Jeep as a rally service/chase car (Mull Rally). This generally involves charging about the island laden with crew, various tool kits, spares, wheels and tyres, and fuel. In previous years (with the ZJ and Commander) I’ve managed to just pack everything in to Action Packers, tool boxes and plastic crates, and pack it all in nice and tightly so it can’t move. But this time I needed to take a much bigger and very heavy trolley jack, and didn’t fancy it flying around, especially in the event of an accident! I also like to keep my interiors clean and undamaged.
So a few days before the event, I came up with a quick plan to make a simple 9mm plywood plate to mount the trolley jack on the left hand side of the luggage space. The plate was secured to the cubby side walls with some simple brackets using ‘Plastite’ screws, and the jack was secured to the plate with a small ratchet strap. All this partially covered the cubby space, making it impossible to use the original floor panel so I also cut a couple of 9mm ply floor panels to cover the cubby space. These actually made the cubby much more useable and managed to stow all my recovery gear and a spade under there. It was a quick build a couple of days before I needed to travel, so didn’t take any pictures!
Sadly the Mull event ended prematurely due to fatal accident, so I didn't take many pictures. But here's the WK on service duties. The square panel leaning against the bumper is the replacement ply cubby hole cover.
Roll on to last week and with a few days off over the holiday period we had planned a laning trip to Wales as a bit of a shakedown for the Pyrenees to check out some of the gear, tyres, CB’s etc, and a general excuse to get the Renegade muddy. Having postponed this a couple of days to New Years Day, due to all the flooding and storms, I decided there was time to build a basic single draw to serve mainly as a chuck box/kitchen, and also check out an idea for a shelf/guard arrangement using Tracmats.
So here’s the build….
Firstly I needed to decide on some dimensions. Since the drawer's primary function was a camp kitchen/chuck box I based it on the width of my Coleman twin burner stove and the height of tallest cooking pots and kettle. Luckily, these dimensions also allowed a folded Coleman oven to fit. In terms of depth I decided not to go back as far as the rear seats as this would prevent access to the two cubby spaces for the factory jack etc. So the drawer only goes back to the hinges of the cubby hatches which conveniently left space for two rectangular tote bags that can still be accessed from passenger compartment by folding the seat back down.
Tote bags fill space between seats and drawer box.
The Tracmats also fitted nicely across the width of the luggage space, but would need a frame to mount them as they were too short to drop on to the parcel shelf runners. I don't carry the jack around on a daily basis, but wanted the option to do so, so I decided to leave space for the mount when required and the option of using it with the drawer. As it turned out the jack proved to be a vital bit of equipment on the Wales trip! (I'll post up some details of that trip later)
The 20 litre jerry can also fits nicely on the right hand side.
Secondly there was the construction method and materials. Given the two day timeframe I needed to get it all the materials from the local DIY store (B&Q/HomeDepot) so I went for 12mm ply. I had considered 9mm for the draw and 12mm for the case, but the store only had a single warped sheet of 9mm in stock, so 12mm it was! Although I did go for 5.5mm for the drawer base to save weight. I'm no cabinetmaker (more used to metal fabrication and car bodywork) but decided that I could use the router to produce simple rabbet and grooved joints to add strength to the relatively lightweight construction. I actually only ended up using a hand saw, small plane (to straighten the cuts), the router, small chisel (to square of the ends of routed slots) and power drill.
That really is only a 12mm wide rabbet!
Determining runner location - these were 550mm runners from Screwfix.
I decided to recess the runners to avoid loosing too much drawer width.
Determining the overall draw length. I made the drawer slightly over size so I could cut it back to for the best fit later. At this stage I hadn't decided on whether I wanted/needed a drawer front, but left enough space for a 12mm ply front.
Checking the position of the stove and deciding on the side profile of the drawer, allowing for access to the second burner control and vents.
Setting position of divider between stove and storage area. For maximum drawer space I sat the stove as far forward as possibly, but allowing for a 12mm drawer front to be fitted if required.
Routing slot for the divider.
Various pieces heading towards their final shapes and sizes.
Dry fit of parts to check fit.
Adding 'lightness' to the drawer case sides.
No, I didn't buy a kit from Ikea!
Final gluing and screwing together of the draw assembly.
As is often the case with these 'make it up as you go' projects I had to rethink a few things. When determining the runner positions I hadn't allowed for the vent holes in the draw sides, so had to route a wider grove for the runners to move them up 12mm. I also had to route pockets into the rear panel as the runners needed to go back 20mm to clear the burner control hole on the LH side panel.
Drawer case screwed and glued.
Repositioning the runners in their wider slots to clear the vents.
Whilst the glue and varnish was drying I turned my attention to the Tracmats. I had some lengths of 30mm ali angle so decided to use that to make a frame to create a shelf for the mats. I intentionally positioned the mat off centre to the right so that at least one end was supported on the parcel shelf runner, and this also created a nice little space for a tote tray on the left hand side.
Trial fit in the car. Conveniently the drawer case could be mounted to the side of the jack mount panel with small ali brackets. Access to the cubby hole requires the drawer to be removed, but I only kit seldom used kit in there. I will probably but out the centre of the jack mount plate for better access. The section of cubby to the right of the drawer is covered with a removable 12mm ply panel.
By this time it was was getting late on the eve of the Wales trip, so had to finish of the installation ready to leave at 6.30am after the New Year's festivities. So I had to forget about taking pictures and just get everything securely fixed as bets I could. This involved ratchet straps to hold the Tracmats and a simple ali strut to hold them at right angles.
Ooops, reached the thread picture limit.... continued in next post....
