Sam's 2007 DCSB Tacoma Build - Drawer, Mattress Upgrade

GFC BUILDS
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Hey all,

I’ve had my V1 camper (#680) since May 2020 and finally got around to doing some mods this winter for it. The biggest one being building a drawer system for the bed to house all our camping gear. The main goals for my drawer being:

  • A drawer box that ran the entire length of the bed on one side
  • Flatten out and carpet the other half of the bed for a comfortable standing area when tent is popped.
  • Keep it simple, keep it relatively cheap $$$

You can check out the YouTube video I put together on this for a Behind the Scenes/How To:
DIY Budget Drawer Build

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Mattress Upgrade

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We also wanted to upgrade the camper mattress. While I don’t think the stock mattress pads are awful, I am a side sleeper and could use just a bit more cushion so as to not wake up with soreness on my side. For this, I bought a 1.5 in foam topper from amazon and used an electric knife to cut it down to match shapes for the 2 small square pads and the rectangular pad (I skipped adding foam to the big square pad as that is where our feet lay and figured I needed the support more for our upper bodies and hips).

I picked up some flannel fabric from a fabric store and sewed fitted sheets for all of the pads, which helps keep the pads in place. I have the blueprints for these somewhere, when I find them I’ll update this post a photo. I have managed to close the tent with all of this added (including a double wide Rumpl), but it took some effort. So I usually will flip over the two small squares or just leave one down in the bed to make it even easier when packing up camp.

Let me know if you have any questions on any part of these mods and I’ll do my best to supply any info I have on how we accomplished them.

Cheers!

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Nice work! I have been thinking about building the same thing for pretty much the same reason as you. I’m not sure if I want to use heavy duty sliders or not and I was also thinking about making the top of the bench open in places to be able to access gear without having to slide out the drawer.

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Thanks! Yeah I wanted to avoid those slides mainly because of their cost, but they also would have made the drawer a bit narrower. The only thing I did to help them slide was to sand the two surfaces really well, but I think I’m going to look into either some thin plastic slides to attach or applying a wax coating, just something to reduce the friction a bit more. The weight and effort required to slide the drawer is not bad at all right now, I’ve just noticed some splinters beginning to form after sliding for a few months.