Building a Storage Platform

Since we need a space to store some of our personal gear, food, recovery gear, tools and the like, we took the rear seats out of our Jeep Gladiator. The rear area is surprisingly roomy and opens up significant space. The main problem is, that the original trim is rather bulky and in the way of what we plan to do, so we took pretty much all of it out, including the subwoofer, that takes some of the space behind the rear seats. 

Once everything was out, we put some sound deadening mat in. We also added 3M Thinsulate as well as some foam blocks to prevent rattling of the new, straight, rear panel. The new panel is made from 6mm Baltic Birch plywood, cut to fit around the various welded in holders for the rear seats as well as child seats.

The raw new panel

To mount the new panel, we cut some aluminum brackets, which we attached to the bolts that hold the rear part of the hardtop roof in place.

Rear panel brackets

The finished panel looks pretty nice and makes the truck significantly less noisy.

Now, with this out of the way, we started building mounting brackets for the rear seat platform. They attach to the original mount points for the rear seats, so will definitely provide the strength to support our gear as well as a 12V fridge.

It took some time to sort out the correct height, so that our fridge would still open fully without hitting the rollbar of the Jeep. We still got it just slightly wrong and left more space than needed at the top. We could have built the platform a bit higher, but in the end, it works.

The final platform, in basic form.

Since we wanted this to be a nice fit, there was a lot of small detail work to be done to get around all the nooks in the truck:

Working around all the details in the truck

And the final platform, with the mounting for our fridge in place. We'll likely finish the platform in a few weeks when we have tested it properly and are relatively sure that we don't want to add anything. 

The l-track will take some tiedown rings and the fridge will sit with its feet in the small cutouts in the alignment panel. It'll be tied down with straps and should be safe and stable there without problems. Testing to come.

Building an "Off-road Camper"

With the lessons we've learned over the last few years with car camping, truck camping, trailer camping, etc., we are currently on a path to build another "offroad camper". I don't want to call it an overlanding vehicle, since this horse has been beaten to death and there is a vast spectrum what people understand overlanding to be.

For us, "off-road camping" means, we can camp in places, where typical cars and vans generally don't venture. Mostly due to ground clearance, lack of proper four wheel drive, tires, etc. We love being away from the RV crowd. We absolutely detest RV parks in the US, they are mostly expensive, disgusting, and filled with huge monstrosities that either have their air conditioning or their heating systems blasting at ear splitting levels. Plus they generally get packed wall to wall – and that's no joke, there sometimes isn't even a meter or two between them in "more interesting areas".

Since we have traveled a bit now with various setups, we have come up with a few requirements and wishes for our travel rig.

 Requirements:

1. Comfortable seating. Given that we often travel long distances, a comfortable cabin and seating is important.
   
2. A quick sleeping setup. When arriving late at a camp site, it is important to us that we don't have to deal with lots of work to have a sleeping arrangement ready. A minute or two, not more.
   
3. A quick and convenient awning. Setting up an awning should be quick and easy, otherwise we won't use it.
4. Inside space. In incliment weather and with nasty insects (mostly wasps) around sometimes, we'd like to have a space to sit inside. It doesn't have to be big, just something where we can sit and chat, have a tea or coffee or a quick breakfast in the morning, etc.
5. No towing. Towing has turned out to be not a good idea for us personally. Turning around on a trail, if it turns out harder than we want to deal with, is a total nightmare. The 4Runner was an abysmal tow vehicle. The engine has zero torque in lower rpm and the automatic gear box was garbage. The Patriot X1 was incredible once it was set up, but it was a chore to get it set up and packed away every day.
   
6. Some off-road capabilities. We don't need all that much here, we use this for traveling, not rock-crawling, desert racing, or trail tackling. It's a way of getting just a little farther in on a trail, away from the most annoying crowds. The 4Runner was more than good enough for that.
   

This didn't leave us with much choice, since the vehicles that could be used for this, are very limited in the US. There are no old Land Rover Defenders or Toyota Land Cruiser Troopies, which could be converted. These vehicles basically don't exist here and while some of them can be imported (as classic cars), we didn't want to deal with that. A converted Jeep Wrangler was an option, but it is very, very small. 

We ended up with a Jeep Gladiator and an Alu-Cab Canopy Camper on the rear. It's not an easy build-out and it's right on the edge of the laughable load limit of the Jeep, but it was one of the very few options for us. We did not want another Toyota, we didn't want a massive truck, so options were limited and we picked the one that fit our ideas best. 

Jeep Gladiator Rubicon – 3.0L EcoDiesel