Rod's Rig - Round 2

[Hilux Max]

should I be worried when we go to Tallarook?

no spit there quinny ok?

[Quinny34]

Nothing to worry about Mmaaxx...., I've already had my quota for the year... 1 down 1 to go...

[dute]

Sorry to say Rod . . . .I was talking to someone the other day and they said you are the man that know his stuff on the new hilux forum. . . . . . .


I beg to differ that comment. . . . .


What kind of man is it that drive's a ruff and tuff new hilux, but has his slippers on to take photos of his new sliders . . . . . .






check the reflection in the photo . . . .

Taken me a while, but I finally got mine on.



More info on my buildup

Again sorry buddy . . . . .??? made me do it. . . . .

[Hilux Max]

dont blame me dute....thats just looking for a scapegoat

Rod, I said nothing of the sort.....I'll fix him up at Tallarook, we'll blind fold him with doileys put an apple in his mouth and quinny can "spit-roast" him for punishment......

[Quinny34]

I plan on eating Vegan for the weekend if thats on the menu....

[rodw]

Sorry to say Rod . . . .I was talking to someone the other day and they said you are the man that know his stuff on the new hilux forum. . . . . . .

I beg to differ that comment. . . . .

What kind of man is it that drive's a ruff and tuff new hilux, but has his slippers on to take photos of his new sliders . . . . . .



check the reflection in the photo . . . .

Dute, regular readers of the forum would know that all my footwear is featured from time to time :



So now see if you can find the thread my trusty boots featured in....

You will need to find the answer quickly before I apply my trusty steel impregnated T boot to you!

dont blame me dute....thats just looking for a scapegoat

Rod, I said nothing of the sort.....I'll fix him up at Tallarook, we'll blind fold him with doileys put an apple in his mouth and quinny can "spit-roast" him for punishment......

Max, I'm depending on ya buddy!

[dute]

Sorry to say Rod . . . .I was talking to someone the other day and they said you are the man that know his stuff on the new hilux forum. . . . . . .

I beg to differ that comment. . . . .

What kind of man is it that drive's a ruff and tuff new hilux, but has his slippers on to take photos of his new sliders . . . . . .



check the reflection in the photo . . . .

Dute, regular readers of the forum would know that all my footwear is featured from time to time :



So now see if you can find the thread my trusty boots featured in....

You will need to find the answer quickly before I apply my trusty steel impregnated T boot to you!

dont blame me dute....thats just looking for a scapegoat

Rod, I said nothing of the sort.....I'll fix him up at Tallarook, we'll blind fold him with doileys put an apple in his mouth and quinny can "spit-roast" him for punishment......

Max, I'm depending on ya buddy!

LoL

[rodw]

I have swapped a couple of emails with Mmaax recently about drawer units after he found a special deal he thought I should have and I decided I might push them higher up the list.

Anyway, had the day off with the missus today as we had the electrician around to wire in some lights in the bathroom and decided to stuff around and get them to sort out the TV wiring in the bedroom by adding an extra power point and pull a HDMI cable through the wall so we can watch dirty movies from the DVD (just joking….) Anyway, after I was forced to accompany the missus to Lifeline to drop off a Corolla full of junk that came out of the linen cupboard. The bathroom reno is officially done!

After lunch I got to do a couple of things I wanted to do. First was to head off to Opposite Lock to sort out a new Solenoid for my Ironman winch which was just clicking (they have since changed the solenoid to a solid state one). I really don’t understand what is holding people like Mmaaxx back with tyre selection, when I got there to OL there was a Subaru Brumby parked outside wearing 35’s.. Sorry I did not have a camera… Not a rig I would choose to go for a drive in though, looked pretty unstable. Anyway sorted out the new part to come over from Ironman for the winch and had a good browse around. Asked Verne if he could do a custom length drawer and he said they could do them from the Department of the Interior http://www.consoles.com.au/ and said they could get drawers up for $100 freight.

I checked out a 3 gal Firestone air tank for fit and it was perfect but missing a couple of drain plugs for my liking so went and checked out the boys at On Track 4WD and before I got into the store I had an audience of three staff checking out my Crusher tyres and Brett the owner taking pics with his mobile phone. Eventually I got their attention away from the tyres and asked them if they had any air tanks, but they didn’t.

So left there and stopped at a window shop to stock up on brownie points with the missus and bought 20 window rollers at $1.00 each, exactly the same as the one I bought from Bunnings the other day for $10.50 each. Amazing what a difference the couple of windows I fitted them to are to open and close now… not to mention the response to the brownie points that accompany the fitting of the parts..

Anyway feeling a bit cocky now with 20 odd brownie points in the tin, I headed back over towards TJM, ARB and Caddy. Checked with TJM about Air tanks and had a couple but not all stock in hand so did not see the right one, so decided I’d head up to Caddy Storage to see if they had a drawer unit for a trial fit we talked about a week ago and come back to ARB on the other side of the road.

The problem I have got with drawers, is that since fitting the water tank, I need a custom built drawer unit.

So I caught up with Harry at Caddy Storage and he scratched around and found a 420mm high x 1230mm long drawer and I gave him a hand to stick it into the back of the ute for a trial fit. This is a bit higher than the 325mm one I was thinking of buying. Geez it was heavy! Rated to carry 150 kgs! Anyway the drawer fitted and when I closed the tailgate I had 1mm to spare! The interesting thing was that with the drawer into position, it was exactly the same height as my water tank so If I used the higher drawer, I would have been able to have a false floor the full length of the tub again. Problem would be that the floor would be about the same height as my side windows which would virtually mean everything needs to be tied down. So by now I was confused and decided not to rush into an order today, and t was too late to stop at ARB, so went home.

My present thinking is that you would not want to buy twin drawers from Caddy, just stick to a single drawer unit to keep the weight down a bit. They are nothing like a Black Widow drawer system (which cost $3k) but I think the fancy carpet covering etc is overkill in the back of a ute where there is a bit of dust around. The options look like being:

1. Offroad Sytstems Custom Drawer (4 week turnaround and take about 3 day s to respond to an email)
2. Department of the Interior ( 2 week turnaround who I have spoken to about consoles recently)
3. Caddy Storage 10 day turnaround and prices include fitting)
4. Build my own using Cubelock and a m1219mm x 180Kg drawer slide from Ovesco (http://www.ovesco.com.au)

Anyway, after some intensive research, I think I will choose between options 3 and 4. The advantage of building my own, I that I would have 100% drawer extension v’s Caddy’s 66% extension. There is about a $500 difference between my DIY version and Caddy. (I know there are cheaper ways to build drawer units than my idea).

There is a certain amount of appeal about having somebody do this for me but the roll your own solution is also appealing. I think I will probably go with the Caddy single drawer system in a 325mm height as I have been doing too many DIY projects round the house recentlyand it would be good to see somebody else do the hard work…. So stay tuned.

[Quinny34]

lol... Whatever you end up with... continue with the write up.. Pics would help though..

Would it have been better 2nd time round to design the tank and draws at the same time...?

[Hilux Max]

go the deeper draws and the full size false floor...even if you need to tie stuff down on top, you could always use the cube lock stuff you mentioned earlier on the top section to hold stuff in and sorted, its easily removed, and I reckon you'll love the full size false floor.....the deeper draws you can fit some sort of dividers to keep things seprate and in place....either way, I know you analyse your ideas thoroughly before going ahead so whatever you decide to do Im sure it will make you happy and it will work great.....

sorry for making you spend your money again, just wish I could get you to spend some on my rig...LOL

[Possum]

Just a point to consider when you are looking at draws
I have the outback with a fridge roller I opted for the standard draw not the tradesman ones which are deeper
Glad i did as the hight of the tradsmans one wouldn't fit my fridge under the canopy engel 39l
Even the standard ones you can pack heaps of crap in them

[tasibrett]

Rod I got a pic of mark07sr5 bearing mounts at the quad state get together. The draws were professorially made but look very easy to copy.

]

[rodw]

Thanks for the ideas. If I built my own, I was thinking of Ovesco's 1219mm full extension slides


Rated for 181 kg, but at $493.55 they are not cheap. Anyway, I have since found their Occo drawer slides which drops the price per drawer slide to about $200 each.



I think I am going to go the build your own and reckon I can do them for about $1,100; half the weight of the Caddy ones, half the price of the Offroad systems and Dept of Interior ones and 1/3 the price of Black Widow. that does not include the fridge slide, but I got that sorted for now anyway on a 100 kg set of drawer runners.

I don't think height of the drawers is too much of an issue, I have 950mm clearance under the canopy.

Quinny, the drawers were always in the equation and went with the water tank I did because I thought it was the best use of the space available. There would be a lot of wasted space using a commercially available tank and I had the 1219 mm drawer slides from Ovesco in the back of my mind when I specced out the water tank... Putting it under the drawers would have only given me about 50 litres max, I got 107 litres in my tank and the drawers are longer than what I could get away with under the drawers...

Anyway stay tuned...

[Quinny34]

Righto... Sounds like your continuing with your original plan... that adds weight to the fact you had it right the first time round... All good...

[rodw]

Righto... Sounds like your continuing with your original plan... that adds weight to the fact you had it right the first time round... All good...

Yeh, thought I might have found a short cut but the DIY option will be better.

[rodw]

Well, it has been decided. I am building my own drawers. I have bought the Cubelock and some 6mm x 160mm Ally flat bar to mount the runners onto. Tomorrow morning I am going to duck down to Nerang and pick up some of those Occo runners and wheels. I asked them to cut the flat bar to size for me which was $10 well spent. I have spent about $350 so far and that includes a$60 for an aluminium blade for my drop saw. Tried it last night. 60 teeth blade is a lot better than the 24 tooth one I have used to cut ally in the past!

I spent a couple of nights doodling the design on paper, still no measurements but I had to work out the number of plastic Cublock joiners to buy and this is the only way to do it.

The drawers will be made out of plywood and I will rout in a 20mm wide x 3 mm deep channel into the side of each drawer and insert a matching strip of 3mm x 20mm flat ally along the full length to act as a mounting for the slides. The weight will actually be held by the top edge of this strip rather than just the bolts through into the drawer so it should never come apart. I just go to make sure the bottom won't come out! That should not be too hard. Spoke to Ovesco about the carrying capacity of the Occo system and they reckon they tested each wheel to 150kg before it failed so each drawer should be good for 200-300 kgs.

They should be very light. The Cubelock weighs about 0.3 Kg per metre but the flat bar will come in at about 12kg for the full set. It was abit wider than what I wanted but it was all they had in stock and they gave it to me for the same price of the 125mm stuff I wanted to use. I am hoping the frame will weigh in about 20 kg all up before adding the drawers and deck.

Anyway, might have some pics by the end of tomorrow all going well but got something on on Sunday

Sort of funny really, I am doing this in the oposite order to Crossport (eg. Water tank then Drawers), he is the other way round. Stay tuned.

[Alby]

Good on you Rod, look forward to your pics. (make sure you get a few slipper shots in for me too )

I have plastic bins in my canopy but want to change part of it to drawers for ease of access.

[rodw]

Well picked I up an extra bit of ally at 4:00 and got into the drawers. Got a lot further tan you expected (probably on account of stilll hard at it while most of you had your slippers on). Everything has gone well and according to plan, but have a couple of minor adjustments to do. I love this Cubelock tguff, so easy to do stuff with it...
So anyway here are a couple of teaser photos:

When you work with this Cubelock, you got to do up a 3d sketch something like this. This is not the actual plan I worked to but I had scanned it along the way so here it is..



Once I draw this up, I then put a symbol (eg, circle, square, triangle etc) on each join that represents the connector type, (2, way, 3 way, 4 way etc, there is about 6 types) That way you can add them up so you know what to order.

The advantage of using Aluminium is that you can cut it with a wood saw (even 6mm thick stuff is no worries) but you have to make sure that you can do square cuts to use the Cubelock. I started my last project with a hack saw and bought a Ozito drop saw fairly quickly which I broke in about an hour so I took it back and bought a Ryobi 215mm one from Bunnings for about $100. When working with Cubleock, remember that it is 25.4 mm (1") square.



You can cut Ally with any type of wood saw blade even very coarse ones (provided you let the blade spin up to speed before cutting, I used a 24 tooth rip saw blade last time) but I sprung for a 60 tooth aluminium blade this time which is much better.. (cost about $60) But if you had a 60-80 tooth blade, I'd give it a go.

All you need to do with Cubelock is to cut out the lengths and knock it together with a rubber hammer. Because you are always building a cube, once you muck about and get the right dimension, you often need to cut quite a few pieces exactly the same length. I have found you just use one piece as a measuring stick on top of what you are cutting press it up against the stationeray saw blade, remove the measuring stick and go for it!

Anyway, here is what I got done this afternoon:



Don't worry about the lopsided top rails, they are just sitting there and not knocked down into place as they'll have to come out again a few times and a couple of the side rails are not in place yet.



If you look carefuly, you will see that I have the bottom rails resting on three of the raised strips in the tub. The plan is to mount the drawer runners onto the 160mm x 6 mm ally side picees and these are resting on the tub so hter is no weight being taken by the Cubelock and it's plastic connectors. I was a bit concerned about the middle runner as with the 2 x 6mm flat bars, it is wider than the raised strip and I could not work out what to do but I had a brain wave this morning on the way to work and picked up another strip of 6mm x 40mm bar (4 metres long) and cut the centre legs 6mm shorter than the side legs. The centre rail is 25.4mm + 6mm + 6mm wide (37.4mm) so it will fit nicely on the 40mm wide bar.

At the moment, the bolts are finger tight and I will cut off the bolts eventually and replace the nuts with Nyloc ones, but all this will need to be pulled apart again. The drawer slides I will use will either be 19mm or 25mm wide so there will be no problem with clearnce for the bolt heads.

Note that when I drilled the holes in the flat plate, I stacked the 4 pieces on top of each other, centrepunched ach hole positon, G clamped them onto the work banch and drilled them all at once with an electric hand drill rather than my bench press. This worked quite well.

Anyway, If you follow this design, I can tell you now that the critical measurement is the one between the side rails and the centre rail and the magic length is 475mm. The Cubleock piece from the side rail to the edge of the tub is 220mm and that will give you a nice snug fit accross the tray.

Anyway, off to Ovesco at Nerang first thing in the morning and hopefully, I will come home with some drawer slides (provided I like the Occo ones when I see them)

[Quinny34]

Great job.... Hope it all continues to go smoothly.... (And thanks for the pics...)

[Hilux Max]

good stuff mate, make it look easy.....your reports are always well worth reading.....quality explanations and with pics.

whats the saving estimate on DIY compared to the caddy setup?