Rad Rally (Dodge) Raider (akaMonteroakaPajero) Build

Continuing on with my "master plan" for making this little truck more convenient for camping and fitting stuff correctly. For the last year I've been using two footlockers for various gear, and a mix-match of different storage bins, toolboxes, etc. that never quite fit. FItting stuff in a truck this small is basically Tetris, so things need to fit better to maximize space. 

So usually I have a box with some small spare suspension parts, my big bottle jack (I hate hi-lifts), spare belts, and some other stuff. This box is about 3-4" wider than it needs to be to fit well, and just too tall to stack my nuts+bolts+small parts bin on it and get it under the sleepign platform. So after measuring and scouring Amazon, I got this pretty cheap DeWalt box that was the right dimensions for both factors. It came in today, and I'm a bit annoyed that it has a different stacking/lockdown tabs than my other DeWalt bins and stuff - WTF Dewalt, why do you need two different systems when the old one worked great?? Well, improv'ing a bit, I just stacked it and used a ratchet strap to hold the other one on top, fk it.  More importantly, together they're a perfect fit in the space i want them to go, at the forward end of the sleeping platform, since I don't need to regularly access this stuff (hopefully)

So that leaves all this space under the other platform (uncarpeted). 

I've been stuffing various things in here over the last year, but as I've refined my roof/side storage it's not as useful any more. So I think it's finally time to invest in something that fits that space better:

:)

Most of the guys I camp/wheel with have gotten fridges this year, and while I generally don't have the budget for them I've gotten more and more annoyed to have to get ice, lose a lot of space filling the cooler with ice, and ending up with cold food and drinks sloshing around by day 2 or 3. This is also the case on long road/towing trips in the Sequoia and family trips. So figured I'd pick up a small fridge (this one is 20L) that can do triple-duty. I'm going to run it off car power and also use  a Jackery 500 for overnights, etc. The Jackery is expected as a Christmas present, so fingers crossed my wife gets the right one , though if she gets the 600 or 1000 that would be ok too lol. 

Obviously with my limited space, I had to do a lot of measuring. So this thing + the Jackery should perfectly fit just behind the tool bin earlier in this post, with about 3" overhead to spare. But dragging this pretty thing in and out seems barbaric, so I ordered a Setpower slider off Amazon. It's slightly larger than this cooler, so I can mount the Jackery on it and slide them in/out together, hopefully. That won't be here until next week, and I'm going to have to figure out the mounting sine the floor of this truck is "ribbed" like a pickup bed, but shouldn't be too hard.  So, hopefully this all works out as imagined, and in the space required. I *may* have to chop off the left-side rear leg of my platform for clearance for the slider tray (I can move it outward about 2" by my measurements), but I'll have to wait until I get it to know for sure if my measurements are precise. Unfortuantely the wheel-well side of the rear floor isn't totally straight, so it's hard to tell exactly what the best orientation will be. To be continued......
 

How does the build on the fridge seem? I am eyeing one now.

Sean

Nice! I have an older small Dometic 12v fridge in my van. It's a toss up between that and the vent fan being my favorite accessory. 

smokeysevin said:

How does the build on the fridge seem? I am eyeing one now.

 

Sean

Seems fine. Iceco lists it as "light duty" so probably would get dented up a bit if it's handled too roughly, but it doesn't feel "cheap" or anything... I'm not all that concerned if it happens to pick up a dent here or there (not that I'm saying it will). I expect the ones with plastic/urethane/ABS exteriors are probably more "heavy duty" in terms of fending off damage. In any case, this one should be pretty well-protected where it's going, and the way it's built certainly keeps it lightweight (22lb empty, I think). 

Otherwise, I ran it through a full cycle on home power and it went from 77 degrees to 0 degrees (freezer setting) in about 25 minutes, and it has a phone app to control it which doesn't seem all that necessary, but it's nice to have anyhow. For trips I may pre-cool it on a home plug before putting it in the truck with food/drinks just to save battery power. TBD if that's actually necessary though (somehow I doubt it). 

Motojunky said:

Nice! I have an older small Dometic 12v fridge in my van. It's a toss up between that and the vent fan being my favorite accessory. 

Yeah, I think it'll come in useful for various things (rallycross too).

{OT} So today I got the opportunity to get aboard the NS Savannah, which was the first (and only) nuclear-powered commercial ship ever built in the US. It's been sitting at the old coal piers in the Baltimore port alongside an old Liberty Ship from WW2 for many years, and it's almost never open to get aboard, but today it was so I shot up to B-More to take a look. I had a model of this ship when I was a kid in the 80s :)

Anyhow, the ship's nuclear reactor isn't there any more, but otherwise it's literally a time capsule from 1960, with basically nothing remodeled or upgraded since it was decommissioned by 1971 or so. It's a cool picture of what people in 1960 thought "the future" would look like, and in truth it looks a lot like original Star Trek. So, before I get on with truck-building, figured I'd share a few pics

Here's the bar in the lounge, which served "Atomic Cocktails" back in the day

Old-school radio room. There were some HAM guys aboard using the ship's giant antennas for some long-range stuff, so that was interesting as well. 

I don't think it was on the "self-guided tour" route, but I snuck into the forward cargo hold, which was pretty cool

The dining room was straight retro, with every overhead light set up with an "Atomic" symbol. Little touches.

The reactor is gone, but still some low-level radiation around, so can't go in

Yeah, so that was cool

--- break ---

Now back to the regularly-scheduled stuff: When I got home, my fridge slider had arrived. And as usual when FedEx delivers things, it looked like it went through WW2 to get here....SMH.

It turns out my measurements were good, and the tray fit under the sleeping platform....well, almost. I had to cut out a notch in the leg to make it fit. Also because the gas tank is right under the floor back here in the truck, I had to get a bit creative to mount a couple of the bolts for the slider. This one I just put a weld-nut in since I couldn't access the bottom to put a nut on. The rest I drilled through and got big washers/nuts under the floor, working around the exahust/suspension, etc. So in this pic you can see the notch in the platform leg on the left, and the shoddy weldnut in the floor.

To clear a couple bolts that mount other stuff in the floor, and to better level it on the "ribbed" pickup-truck-like floor, I used some leftover pieces of hardwood from a table I disassembled a while ago (I always keep good wood!), so the whole thing is about 1" off the actual floor:

The other reason for this is that the slider overlaps the fuel tank/pump access cover and I want to be able to get that off without taking the whole slider out. So this gives enough clearance to get to the two middle bolts and slide the cover out to the other side. There's one of the rusty-looking bolts...

So with that done, everything got bolted down (3 per side plus a sideways bolt through the wheel arch) and it's in, with the perfect clearance to the gearbox just forward of it.

And mounted up the fridge

So, that worked out great and fit just as envisioned. It would be cool to have a bigger fridge, but this is a small truck, so gotta work with the space I have. I have to do two things as follow-up to this:
I don't love using the power outlet on the other side of the cargo area (right below the new "door" from the previous project) since the wire would have to go across things. So I'll definitely put in a separate, dedicated power outlet on the right side behind the fridge (also to plug the Jackery into). And speaking of that, 2. I want to figure out a good place to mount the Jackery. I don't think there will be space on the slider (but maybe....), so I may fab something up so it fits in between the fridge and that black footlocker in the photo above. Will have to see how much space it takes up, once I actually get it. 

Forgot, another small project.  I put some light tint on the truck during the original build, but for the sake of security and of sleeping inside the rig, figured I'd do some real dark stuff.  I really, really suck at tint. So I did a pretty half-assed job, but it looks fine I guess. I also put some vinyl trim tape on the edges of the sliding windows (since I can't slide the tint under there so its discolored) and I actually like the look - almost makes it look like it's framed now. Anyhow, nice and dark now (5%). I also did a 4-5" strip at the top of the windshield since these sun visors suck bad and don't pivot down easily, and this huge windshield always seems to face into the sun, exacerbated by 280,000 miles of rock chips and a bit of welding spatter :/