It’s been a little over a year since I completed my build, but I figured I would post here since I drew/synthesized a lot of info from these forums and other sites. Happy to share any of the resources I drew from in synthesizing this plan. I wanted to prioritize versatility, weight/cost savings, to keep it low-tech and not too finicky. Primary use cases are climbing, hunting, and coffee-making. Features include:
Two full length drawers. No fancy drawer slides, just wood on wood with ski wax.
Left drawer is kitchen/cooking, right drawer is gear. It’s nice to be able to secure items in the drawers by locking the tailgate.
Cabinet containing power and diesel heater. Cabinet back is comfortably angled for sipping coffee in the morning if there’s weather. Locks and struts mimic GFC side panels.
Ecoflow power station and secondary battery primarily for fridge.
Additional flaps along wheel wells.
Diesel heat can be routed “upstairs” or down.
Made using plywood and beetle kill pine, ripped and glued up from shiplap pine available at local big box store.
For the drawer build, I followed this guy’s plans pretty closely, departing in only a few minor ways (I believe that his is on a Tundra).
The height should be described in the plan, but what you are shooting for is for the deck height to match the height of the wheel well when the side wing/flap rests on the wheel well. Makes more sense in the plan.
The “security” mechanism here is that the drawers run the full length of the bed, such that the drawer faces are pretty much snug against the inside of the tailgate when closed. It’s a fair amount of length, but this can be addressed with partitions inside the drawer depending on what you intend to store.
I didn’t get a good weight of the wood itself, just of the overall build (including batteries, panels, etc). I do think it’s one of the lighter weight options out there; no concerns.
Turnbuckles secure the frame to the bed.
I don’t, but let me know if you have any questions after checking out the plan linked above.
In some areas I used 3/8" plywood rather than 1/2", to try to minimize weight. While I haven’t had any issues, I think if I were to do it again I would just 1/2" pretty much all around, except for maybe the drawers themselves. Seems to be the sweet spot. Other than that, it’s been over a year and the whole system is still going strong with no issues.
