New SnugTop and a Camping Platform Build (Access Cab)

The swingbox is a commercial product that's designed to fit under toneau covers. I just needed something fairly waterproof and lockable to store tire chains and such a few years ago.

The topper is a bestop supertop, takes a couple minutes to fold down or could be removed by pulling a couple of cotter pins. it's a good compromise for having some cover over the bed without losing the ability to haul bigger stuff once in a while. I keep it up about 90% of the time since the windows need to be stowed somewhere when it's folded.

I think my plan was to leave enough gap between the drawer and the gate on the pass side to allow for keeping my cooler in that space, and to keep the inverter accesible. I changed the layout a bit and extended that side for more storage and to simplify the hatch from needing to be a bifold to reach the gate when it's up.

Sleeping diagonal will work, I'm also working on a "filler" for the driver side that will hook on with take-apart hinges (one side is visible in the pics) but that doesn't need to go before the unit goes in. With that in, I'll have a full 40 inch wide deck when it's in place.

I'm using flush head bolts with riv-nuts set in the bed (my truck is 9 years old and I've drilled more than my share of holes in it already). Gives a solid attachment that can be accessed from just the upper side and comes out fairly easy if I need it to. I'm figuring three points in the deck are sufficient, but could add one or two more in the verticals if it wiggles over bumps.

For tying the shovel to the jack, I'm just using a couple of bungee tarp toggles but it'll actually sit in the gap pretty well without being tied down. I also have some quick fists for it on my prinsu rack, but wanted to get it under the cover for the rainy season here.

 

Also after a quick check, the gap between the gate and the pass side closure is perfect to fit a waterbrick (maybe two) or the carry bag for my camp stove (in case I want to have an alternative to my banjo burner and discada)

 

Since the table and banjo/discada cooker is really "campsite" gear, I wasn't thinking of it being a frequent in/out piece for the most part, and it's not something that I'll need to access without planning. Especially if I travel with a folding camp stove for "on the fly" use and will run off of the propane tank with an adapter hose, otherwise I have a small backpacking stove and cook/mess kit in my camping gear pack for an even quicker stop to heat up a can of something or a couple MRE components.

That's why the drawer side is loaded with tools and recovery gear which I'll really appreciate being able to access without unloading the whole back of the truck when it's needed. The cavity around the swingbox is also useful (when the propane cradle is removed) for fitting in smaller items (a few bags of groceries) or things that I wouldn't want on the carpet of my sleeping deck (used oil catch tank).

 

I learned my first valuable lesson which is don't compromise on a comfortable sleep. Sleep is more important than storage, and if you don't have room for both and are thinking of compromising, don't. Sleep on the ground in a tent before you sleep uncomfortably in your truck bed.
I was reminded on this past trip why i built a sleeping platform. I wanted to explore the Greer area and stay overnight leaving in the morning. Because i can sleep in the bed, and it was only one night, i didn't deploy the awning and left most everything stored, allowing for a quick setup and breakdown which is nice under any circumstances. It's nice to know i can quickly get a nights sleep if i have too, say on the road traveling.
I also tested out those "as seen on TV" portable solar motion lights sold at Home Depot. I got four of them to place on each side of the truck using magnet hooks. They worked brilliantly! They give off just enough light to see the ground when not triggered, and brighten up significantly when tripped. They seem to hold a charge well and i believe they lasted all night. It's an interesting option for night security lighting in the woods, but will probably not work well during windy, even breezy, conditions if there are any branches around. I don't know how long they'd last being triggered all night long.

Here's pics of Greens Peak Lookout near Greer, surrounding area, and camp site near base of Peak.

 

Thanks bmgreene, it's always nice to have some insight on how and why certain things were done.

 

Awesome build!! its great to see what other people are doing based on their preferences.
As I continue to finish up my build ive come across sort of a silly question: Did you ever consider using something other than carpet on top?
At first I was going to leave mine just bare (polyurethane sealed) plywood, but decided that this may not be the way to go since it gets banged up easily, kind of sticks out (aesthetically), and things tend to slide around more on it. My hesitation to using carpet is that it will retain dirt and moisture and so I have been considering using some sort of very thin rubber material on top as an alternative. Again, the drawback to this is that depending on the type of material, I could see it being really annoying in that it may retain dirt. The other drawback to a rubber-ish material could be that it will retain heat in the warmer months (assuming that the material is black in color).
Any ideas?

 

Thanks crymes!

I cant remember really how or why i chose carpet, but i think i initially was sharing your same concerns. Like you're thinking i think i was just going to seal the crap out of the wood, like the coating on bar counters, layering it on real thick making it bulletproof, or use some rubber mat i could attach to the plywood.
But something got me looking at carpet, marine carpet specifically. And i noticed some rugged carpet at Home Depot that wasnt so rigid that i could fold it around edges to staple underneath. I could only fold on the sides, which is fine as the spray adhesive i used holds it pretty well, and any places it starts to rise up i just throw a staple in and it's barely noticeable. That carpet from HD was cheap, durable, available now, and water resistant. I did still seal the wood with Thompson's water seal, i believe it was, underneath and sprayed the carpet with Scotch Guard. The carpet is thin so vacuuming any dust is easy, or what i do often is blow it out with an airgun from the compressor. I did spill a little, and the water balled up before even penetrating the carpet to the second line of defense the sealed wood. So no problems with the carpet retaining water or attracting a lot of dirt, and it looks and feels nice. I'd say go for it, a marine or outdoor thin carpet works great and i have no complaints. Even the dog hair blows off easy or sucks right up.

 

I thought i'd show a few changes/improvements:

The first change is to the fishing rod holders. I did have them installed for their designed use but in the back of my mind i thought i could use the screw holes for other things. The screws are shallow and the holder does not hold much weight, so i came up with this crazy contraption using small eye bolts that happened to fit. Again they're not very secure with much weight but in addition to putting most weight on the other end and the swinging motion as opposed to up and down motion so far it's holding up, amazingly! The storage hammock is great, and i would use another maybe if i had tie down points where needed on the roof. We'll see if it holds up, but im liking it so far. It's in the way on occasion but the storage space for clothes is worth it as of now.

As i stated in a previous post i removed my clothes i had in the Mollee pouches for the storage hammock, but all of them were a little more weight than what i felt comfortable leaving up there so i replaced the Mollee bags with some closet organizer that makes access a lot easier and takes up a little less space. I thought maybe having that space occupied might interfere with my feet when sleeping but it hasnt.

I had hastily screwed a magnet gun holder to the lower part of my drivers side consul by the gas pedal, as seen in a previous pic, which works fine and all except when off-road. DUH. It slides around winding upside down on washboards or anything else like that. It's great in the city or highway. Anyway, a nice solution to having your gun easily accessible while driving is using one of those holsters that slides in between your pants and hip, and fitting it onto the door storage place. It stays in all terrain, can quickly be transferred to your hip, and doesn't require you to drill any holes!

Since it's 99% of the time going to be just me in the truck, i got a passenger seat organizer. Very useful, i love it!

Last new addition that's been working well is this digital thermometer with a separate companion piece that can be placed a good distance away. i believe it connects with its host via bluetooth, but it is a wireless signal of some kind. It's nice because i can, at a glance, see the difference in temperature from inside where im sleeping to outside, or in the tent with the dogs. It's nice because it'll save the low from past 24 hours to all time, so when i wake up i can see how cold it got so i can layer up the dogs if needed.

 

For me, the reason to cover the top over the plywood (finished with sealer and 3 coats of spar urethane) is to facilitate sliding of future loads of plywood/drywall sheet materials in and out when I get to fixing up my house; re-configuring a few closets and building in a new set of custom upper kitchen cabinets (and re-facing the lowers including drawer fronts and doors) is on the project list so there will be sheet goods in my future. Having a little bit of pad on the deck for protection when hauling camping/off road gear is probably a bonus as well, and it turns out the spar urethane I used gives a bit of a gummy surface, so not having stuff rubbing against that directly is probably for the best. I also needed something to reduce friction for taking my camp table/kitchen box in and out, so the bottom of that compartment is covered as well. Fabric/carpet with some amount of knap to it has a dual advantage of helping things slide in and out well along with high durability to abrasion; bare wood might be able to handle a good amount of wear (although plywood can get the outer veneers ripped up if there's no edge protection) but isn't waterproof at all, and a lot of sealant finishes can be prone to damage from harder surfaced cargo.

I thought about astroturf for weather resistance but couldn't find any "remnants" in the amount of time it took to find the $20 "indoor/outdoor" RV rug (6'x8') that I got at HD. Since the rug has no backing, it's easy to cut up with just a utility razor and the size is plenty to cover anything that'll fit in a 56x73 inch bed. Add a can of 3M 77 adhesive and a good stapler to the party and it makes pretty quick work of it. Retaining water is a tertiary consideration at best since it'll be under the topper 90+% of the time on my truck and the odds of getting caught in moderate to heavy rain with the topper down is remote in the areas I tend to travel (CA and the southwest, sometimes up into Colorado); I suppose the staples and some other screws could make a path for trapped water to seep in past the spar finish in an extreme case but that should be minimal as well. I'll likely have some regrets with the dust up in Moab since last time I went up there, even the stuff under my topper had a decent coat after a few trails, but a decent vacuum should be able to keep that under control between trips, and I'll be able to use a blowgun if I ever put in the OBA system I've been considering.

A cheaper (or at least less labor intensive) way to seal up the surfaces on one of these might be to get a can/jug of that "flex-seal" stuff that can be applied with a paint roller; you could likely even use that stuff as the adhesive for a cloth/carpet covering if you plan out the layup well enough and lay some distributed weight over the top while it cures (be careful of the rubber soaking through the fabric and bonding to your weight as well, though).

 

A very good solution to a weather proof decking material is use a residential /recreational flooring. They make real nice rubber tile that is installed with epoxy glue,making a waterproof and skid resistant surface.

 

thanks for the input! Ive already used miniwax outdoor polyurethane with multiple coats to seal it, so i guess ill start weighing my carpeting options...i like the idea of a very fine/dense marine carpet but im not in any crazy rush so ill gonna keep shopping around a bit and let ya know what i come up with.

 

bmgreene you brought up great points. The gummy surface especially, and it seems the thicker you put it on the more gummy and sticky it becomes. I believe that weighed heavily in why i didn't do that, but over maybe stained wood it might have looked nice. I even considered using some left over tongue and groove wood flooring used in the house, and i bet that'd look pretty clean, but probably wouldnt take well to cargo hauling.
Because i too did not want to lose the cargo/construction material/yard sale hauling capability of the truck with the platform still inside. Of course with the SnugTop i didnt have to worry about the elements as much as spills, dog accidents, or maybe a window left open.
I also considered this:


..that i bought at a thrift store for like a dollar. Sticky backed kitchen tiles, maybe for an RV im not sure but if the carpet wasn't working so well this might have been a strong consideration.

 

The carpet is nice, and even feels good and comforting in a way. If you're not worried about waterproof, look into good industrial type water resistant carpeting, something you'd find in a public building. And i have not tried carpet with a rigid backing only because i felt i needed to fold most of it over, but i didn't. With the spray adhesive and stout staples you could probably get away with carpet that hardly flexes at all. But it's also more likely to get caught up on the tailgate side. Also make sure the carpet is tough, you dont want it being penetrated easily causing a tear to develop. Manhandle the carpet ripping and pulling at it. ..Just a few things to consider

 

If you can get a deal on remnant linoleum, that might be a good solution as well, the sticky tiles would give surface protection but will have some gaps (and interior flooring adhesive often doesn't really hold up well to water and high temps). The surface might scratch up some, but you'd have to be hauling scrap metal regularly to puncture or tear the stuff. Don't forget to protect the underside as well, if you get hit by rain with an uncovered bed, you'll have pooling between the ribs that'll be trapped up against the underside for some time after the upper face has dried off. I used 4 coats of spar finish on the bottom of my box, and 2 coats over 2 coats of regular urethane on the sides, and 3 coats of spar urethane over a sanding sealer on the top deck before putting on the rug.

A really "outside the box" solution might be to put on some kind of rubber bed-liner with flat-head or truss-head screws. Toyota OEM isn't a great choice for that since it's got a bunch of nubs raised on the underside and won't sit very flat, but maybe some kind of cheap HF or pep-boys generic version could work.

Another factor for me with the RV rug material is that at $20 per 48 sq ft, the only heartache I'll have if I have to replace it is getting the old stuff off after the spray adhesive has cured and been through a couple dozen 100+ degree days in the desert. The can of 3M 77 added almost 50% to the material cost of using that thing.

Ultimately if you want the whole thing completely water/weatherproof though your best options would probably be spar finish or flex-seal. If you want to go overly fancy and have a ton of $$$, you could make it out of teak or ipe (which costs 3x as much as teak at the only place I've ever seen it sold). Thompson's is kind of like an oil finish; it'll protect the wood, but needs to be re-applied after a while (probably 2-3 years if you park indoors frequently or have a covered bed). Spar finish is a pain to apply (3+ coats, and tough brush cleanup), but once it's cured the end result can be completely submerged without much danger.

 

I've decided i like the storage hammock, but obviously couldn't leave it like it is (can't believe i even posted that). So I came up with a few other ways of attaching it.
The one side being attached to a spring loaded extendable pole, which i have others holding paper towels and my rolled up reflective shades for the cap windows. The other is i used an L bracket attached to the screws that come through the roof for the roof rack tracks.
That got me thinking i could maybe use those screws sticking through using the L bracket like i have to mount light weight shelving going most the length of the bed and to the side just above the windows. Just a platform really with maybe bungee holding everything in on the open sides. Perfect for clothes. That's probably a project for later but wanted to throw it out there as a possible idea for someone else, and to see if anyone has a recommendation on some other hardware that might work good, or if anyone has done something similar.
Anyway mainly wanted to share the usefulness i've found for the storage hammock. I did some rearranging putting most my clothes in separate organized clear bedding bags (i'm beginning to really like these) and moved them behind the passenger seat. I put in the hammock the collapsible backpacking table and chair i was storing in the bay behind the drawer, freeing up more room for dry and canned food, and making them quickly accessible. I also put my pillow in there. We'll see if this changes again, but i think the hammock will remain because it doesnt interfere with my sleeping or sitting, physically, but is an eye sore when sitting in there so i don't know it might bother me after spending some time in there during bad weather. But if you don't plan on hanging out inside your cap much, or at all, i think it's a great option for anything from dry food to sleeping bags and blankets.

In a way it's an advantage having a used or older shell because you can drill holes where you want and do anything really, how fun. I know i still can but just in case i want to take this to another level, i want the resale value to be as high as possible. It's funny to think all i wanted the cap for was to keep my dogs safe and out of the weather when traveling, and now all this!

 

I'm not sure how those caps are constructed, but if there are ribs of some sort inside the shell, they're likely to be "z" or "hat" section elements which you could set riv-nuts into. That'll give you firm-points where anything that can be attached with bolts could be installed but still removable without making leaks in the shell, just be careful not to drill too far through from the inside. You might have to pull the headliner to find them, but that could turn intonan excuse to run wires for lighting, power ports (or even speakers).

 

Lol exactly, i didn't want to get caught up in another 'project'. But i'm gonna look into your suggestion bmgreene, thanks man. I have a bit more time until Thursday when i take a trip to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I'm trying to tinker and think of anything else i can do and test as this will be a bit further than my last trip, but for 3 nights this time so i look forward to finding out if anything bothers me or breaks. I hate to say it but i even wouldnt mind some rain...

 

Got my filler deck panel finished and ready for my trip next weekend. Here's pics of it in place with the whole deck setup for sleeping/hauling big stuff. And one rigged for driving with the deck panel stowed next to the swingbox. Also a closeup of the take-apart hinges that attach the panel for use.

I also took your idea of hanging a gear hammock, which should be useful for the many wet towels in my future as well as random lightweight objects that I need to keep from getting buried.

 

Very nice bmgreene, looks good and functional. Unfortunately the spring loaded bar side of my hammock didn't handle 60mph on the dirt trails very well, but i did have it way overloaded with an ipod player and a backpacking chair and table. I think i'll stick to towels like you and maybe a jacket. So will next weekend be your first 'shakedown cruise' with your setup?

 

Pretty much, but it'll mostly be on pavement and probably only one night of camping. I might get up some fire roads but most of the little "jeep trails" are likely to be closed due to fire danger (I also don't like to get too agressive when I'm out alone, even with a winch and two different radios). The cooking gear and propane hauling will get a decent workout, though.