Doozy4212's Better Truck Drawer Build/Guide

Drew! This looks awesome, can't wait to see the rest!

 

Thank you! I will be doing a few odds and ends throughout the week! Updates to come!

 

UPDATE: 4/17/2018

Good news! This morning my adviser called me to inform me all of my parts are in for the TSB to take care of the whining noise coming from the rear of my truck! I'll drop it off tomorrow morning at 7 am and it should be done tomorrow afternoon!

Anyways, on to the good stuff. I did a little work last night, not a ton but still enough to report. First I got the 1 3/4" x 58" strip attached to the right hand side of the system. This was laid on top of the 8 1/4" strip used for the vertical portion on the right hand side of the base. This piece hangs over by 1" and will provide me a great place to put some threaded inserts in order to hold the top deck in place and allow for easier removal if I ever need the full bed.



Next, I used the two remaining 9" x 58" x 3/4" strips and glued them together to create one 9" x 58" x 1 1/2". I then cut this down to 48 1/2".



Next I mounted it 21 1/4 " from the inside edge of the right side upright. To be clear, from inside edge to inside edge the two upright is 21 1/4". This right hand side will be where the bedslide and drawer portion sit on the heavy duty slides I already have. The reason I chose to double up the 3/4" birch in the center was two fold. 1. I wanted the center of the system to be a strong "backbone" for the entire system. 2. I will be putting L-track on the top deck directly above this backbone and wanted a rock solid anchor for the screws to sink in to.



We are starting to make progress. Tonight I am going to do a test fit in the truck, measure a few things and then cut some large holes in the base under the drawers for some weight reduction.

One thing I have noticed is the base does have a slight upward bow in the center which is not ideal but I am not concerned as I think it will flatten out as I get the base bolted into the bed and the drawers, deck and everything else mounted!

 

Looks good. How are you going to secure it to the bed?

 

drill holes and through bolt it!

 

Look forward to the finished outcome of this V.2 drawer build!

I just dropped my truck off yesterday as well (4/17/18) at the dealer for the rear whine noise, and they gave me a RAV4 as a rental until it gets done. Apparently they thought they had all the parts but didn't and have to ship them from Portland, OR. So who knows how long that will be

 

Looks great. Color me Interested.

 

Yeah.....good luck with that, took my dealer 3 weeks to receive parts. The body mount bushings are on national back order. They did the work yesterday and I can confirm the noise is 100% absent. I’m happy!

 

I’ll have an update from yesterdays progress posted a little later today!

 

UPDATE: 4/19/2018

Took my truck to the shop early yesterday morning for the TSB work and they had it back to be by about 4 pm. I inspected everything before I drove off and it all looks really good. They were even nice enough to put my sumo springs back in after they told me they 'had to' put the Toyota bump stops in. It's the little things. I can also confirm that the whine is non-existent as of this time

On to the drawers! I did not get a ton accomplished yesterday as what I was doing involved lots of double and triple checking of measurements to make sure I wasn't going to goof anything up. I started off by putting the frame of the system in the back of the truck to check fitment at this point in time. Sorry I don't have a pic to share, that's my bad

Because I have the Total Chaos Bed Channel Stiffeners, there is some interference with the drawers due to the stiffeners themselves sitting higher than the ridges that are within the bed floor. Due to this I had to make a cut out for both the bed stiffeners themselves and also the bed bolts closest to the tailgate. I got the frame in the back and centered everything up and marked where I needed to cut. The bed bolts were taken care of first by marking the center of the bolt on the base of the drawers then taking a 2" hole saw I created a hole to give a nice radius. I then marked a line with a square and cut it with a coping saw to get a rounded 'slot' for the final look.



Once this was done the next obstacle was the gussets on the bed stiffeners. The base could not sit flush as these gussets sit higher than the bed itself.



After looking and measuring I cut a section out that was 1 1/2" deep and 2 1/2" in (from the outside edge). I used a 1/2" bit in the corner to again provide a nice radius in the cut then finished the straight lines with a coping saw.



Once I got all of this worked out I took the base back out of the truck to work on the next steps....drilling 16 holes in the base I've spent 10 hours constructing thus far. DON'T F@*% UP! For this I measured 2" off of each wall and struck a line. Then measuring from the back I marked the line at 2", 22", 24" and 44". This will give me two 20" holes in the base. I drilled the holes with a 2" hole saw on the inside edges of each intersection.



I will finish cutting these holes this afternoon by cutting along the lines I originally drew to cut out the larger 20" holes. Basically I am going to play connect the dots with power tools.

To finish the day I filled the last of the countersunk screw holes with the Elmer's wood filler on both the back plate and the base from where I screwed in the center support.



Thanks for watching. More to come!

 

What are the holes in the base for?

 

I am going to be cutting out large squares to save some, not a ton, but some weight. Plus that material really doesn’t need to be there as this thing is sturdy as all hell

 

UPDATE: 4/20/2018

Didn't do much last night, but I did enough. Cut the holes out of the base and super happy with the results. I lightened up everything much more than I anticipated, I would guess I am probably saving 10 - 12 lbs total with the base cut out. Additionally, I have not lost much structural rigidity, if any!

Before:



After:



Next steps from here are to sand the hell out of this thing, figure out the bolting solution to secure it to the bed, adding the top deck on the left hand side of the drawer system, sanding some more and coating the whole system in a heavy duty polyurethane.

 

UPDATE: 4/23/2018

No major updates from the weekend, I did lots of work on the drawers but it was all sanding and prep for polyurethane. Still need to hit everything with 220 grit before I start laying down the poly. I'll try to get some pics up tonight or tomorrow!

 

Looking forward to it! Starting my bed drawers next weekend hopefully! Thanks for making a write up.

 

no problem man! happy to do it! weather has been sub par recently leading to delays for me but such is life, supposed to be really nice this weekend so I hope to make a lot of progress

 

also honored you've been around since 2016 and your first post was in this thread

 

Yeah, been creeping for a long time... Thinking of starting build page. This site has helped me out so much want to give back a little. Excited to see your finished project, keep up the good work!

 

Wow after reading this I am absolutely going to tackle this project this summer. Thank you for the inspiration!

 

Glad I can inspire! I will be gearing up my efforts through the weekend as the weather looks nice and once I get though a few more tricky spots this will all really start to come together!