Traveler III
Hello OB fam!
I recently acquired a new to me 2008 FJ Cruiser thanks to the extreme generosity of a close friend who sold it to me very cheap. This is definitely my most capable rig I've ever owned. The rig has 4wd high/low, Active Traction control and a rear locker from the factory.
Has about 180k kms on the clock, in excellent condition with zero body rust and only the typical superficial frame/underbody rust that's all but unavoidable in this part of the world.
It came to me lifted with K02 33's, a smittybilt winch and winch bumper, full width light bar, billstein shocks, aftermarket fender flares, and the body is wrapped in that awesome matte grey. It also has aftermarket LED headlights, but there are some electrical gremlins with those. Having said that, my friend also gave me a newer set of plug and play LED headlights to replace them, so I'll be doing those one day when I have time.
So far I've added the RTT and the awning from Rumble.
As well as rigging up a shovel mount on the opposite side
I used an old kneepad my wife got for a couple bucks at a garage sale to protect the wrap. So far it's survived 4h or so of highway and a day of off roading, so seems good.
I also began work on a ghettoverlanding kitchen setup for the back. It's been a challenge to figure out how to make everything work, as the storage space in the FJ is dramatically less than the Dakota. I've played around a bit and come up with what I think is a pretty good start.
The owner my friend bought it from had it set up with a sleeping platform in the back, but I don't want to use that setup, so instead the main platform became the foundation of my kitchen/storage setup. I sanded it and gave it another coat of black, because it had some goey sticky residue from the rubber mat that was on top of it.
I then scrounged some Sterilite drawers from my shop that were filled with junk, but nothing too important. Painted them up and arranged the drawers to contain all my kitchen stuff. I ended up with a flex drawer when everything was fitted, so that's a bonus.
I bolted the drawer stacks to each other and then screwed them down to the platform once I decided exactly where to put them. I wanted the whole system to be easily removeable for when my wife wants to use the vehicle for running to down and doing errands and such. As always, my vehicles must be multi-purpose with such a big family.
I ended up with this, which is a pretty good start, I felt, and worked well for the FJ's first outing, a day trip to North Buck Lake in Athabasca county.
Building from this, I wanted to have a slide out countertop/stove shelf that would come from the left side of the platform, above where the stove is in this pic. I normally don't use this particular stove, but rather have a longer but flatter coleman propane unit. I also wanted somewhere to put my axe. I played with numerous ideas of putting it on the back door with fist clamps, but in the end it dawned on me that I needed to just use the KISS principle:
Just slipped the axe and the machete into the little slots formed on each side of the cargo area by the legs of the platform. Perfect!
Next I went to work on the slide out counter. Using some extruded aluminum rails I had lying around, I did some cutting and fitting, using them as makeshift "drawer slides," cut a tabletop section out of parts of the old sleeping platform, grabbed a piece of a disassembled shoe shelf I had lying around, and came up with this:
The first attempt mounting it in the rig, it sagged because the aluminum extrusion, a section of which you can see on the ground at the bottom of the pic, kind of bent. However, all I needed to do was flip them around so the open slots faced inward and screw them in with bigger screws, and it was solid enough.
Although it was okay with just the "slides" holding it up, it did sag a bit and was definitely putting a lot of leverage on the materials. My daughter had the great idea of adding a support to the door to help hold up the far end, so I grabbed an old cargo anchor I saved from the CR-V, and mounted it to the door where the factory screw resides, just using a longer screw to attach the anchor. I'm quite happy with the end result, and it's solid. I also added tie down rings and some straps to hold the whole thing to the cargo anchors. Eventually I will replace these with turnbuckles to make it more solid, but it's quite satisfactory for now:
Next thing I'll likely tackle is attaching the fire extinguisher to the door close to the hinge, above the table, as this is a good spot space wise and makes it immediately accessible for cooking fires, should such a thing occur, and is a generally pretty easy spot to access in any event.
I still haven't decided on a name for this bad boy, so suggestions are welcome. Will post more mods as they happen.
Cheers!
I recently acquired a new to me 2008 FJ Cruiser thanks to the extreme generosity of a close friend who sold it to me very cheap. This is definitely my most capable rig I've ever owned. The rig has 4wd high/low, Active Traction control and a rear locker from the factory.
Has about 180k kms on the clock, in excellent condition with zero body rust and only the typical superficial frame/underbody rust that's all but unavoidable in this part of the world.
It came to me lifted with K02 33's, a smittybilt winch and winch bumper, full width light bar, billstein shocks, aftermarket fender flares, and the body is wrapped in that awesome matte grey. It also has aftermarket LED headlights, but there are some electrical gremlins with those. Having said that, my friend also gave me a newer set of plug and play LED headlights to replace them, so I'll be doing those one day when I have time.
So far I've added the RTT and the awning from Rumble.
As well as rigging up a shovel mount on the opposite side
I used an old kneepad my wife got for a couple bucks at a garage sale to protect the wrap. So far it's survived 4h or so of highway and a day of off roading, so seems good.
I also began work on a ghettoverlanding kitchen setup for the back. It's been a challenge to figure out how to make everything work, as the storage space in the FJ is dramatically less than the Dakota. I've played around a bit and come up with what I think is a pretty good start.
The owner my friend bought it from had it set up with a sleeping platform in the back, but I don't want to use that setup, so instead the main platform became the foundation of my kitchen/storage setup. I sanded it and gave it another coat of black, because it had some goey sticky residue from the rubber mat that was on top of it.
I then scrounged some Sterilite drawers from my shop that were filled with junk, but nothing too important. Painted them up and arranged the drawers to contain all my kitchen stuff. I ended up with a flex drawer when everything was fitted, so that's a bonus.
I bolted the drawer stacks to each other and then screwed them down to the platform once I decided exactly where to put them. I wanted the whole system to be easily removeable for when my wife wants to use the vehicle for running to down and doing errands and such. As always, my vehicles must be multi-purpose with such a big family.
I ended up with this, which is a pretty good start, I felt, and worked well for the FJ's first outing, a day trip to North Buck Lake in Athabasca county.
Building from this, I wanted to have a slide out countertop/stove shelf that would come from the left side of the platform, above where the stove is in this pic. I normally don't use this particular stove, but rather have a longer but flatter coleman propane unit. I also wanted somewhere to put my axe. I played with numerous ideas of putting it on the back door with fist clamps, but in the end it dawned on me that I needed to just use the KISS principle:
Just slipped the axe and the machete into the little slots formed on each side of the cargo area by the legs of the platform. Perfect!
Next I went to work on the slide out counter. Using some extruded aluminum rails I had lying around, I did some cutting and fitting, using them as makeshift "drawer slides," cut a tabletop section out of parts of the old sleeping platform, grabbed a piece of a disassembled shoe shelf I had lying around, and came up with this:
The first attempt mounting it in the rig, it sagged because the aluminum extrusion, a section of which you can see on the ground at the bottom of the pic, kind of bent. However, all I needed to do was flip them around so the open slots faced inward and screw them in with bigger screws, and it was solid enough.
Although it was okay with just the "slides" holding it up, it did sag a bit and was definitely putting a lot of leverage on the materials. My daughter had the great idea of adding a support to the door to help hold up the far end, so I grabbed an old cargo anchor I saved from the CR-V, and mounted it to the door where the factory screw resides, just using a longer screw to attach the anchor. I'm quite happy with the end result, and it's solid. I also added tie down rings and some straps to hold the whole thing to the cargo anchors. Eventually I will replace these with turnbuckles to make it more solid, but it's quite satisfactory for now:
Next thing I'll likely tackle is attaching the fire extinguisher to the door close to the hinge, above the table, as this is a good spot space wise and makes it immediately accessible for cooking fires, should such a thing occur, and is a generally pretty easy spot to access in any event.
I still haven't decided on a name for this bad boy, so suggestions are welcome. Will post more mods as they happen.
Cheers!
