So unbeknownst to us when we bought it, but our new 4Runner actually has a THIRD row of seats that fold out of the back part of the cargo area. I’m not sure who these are designed for other than small children, which isn’t relevant to us in any way. Since we definitely need the cargo space more than the seating, we ripped these out! Some companies sell ready-made plates that bolt into the void left by the seats but they’re almost $600! Even more if you want a slider or drawer… so, as usual, we built our own.
To make things simple, we didn’t do a fancy cargo drawer system with sliders or anything… we just wanted a plywood plate to cover the exposed area of the floor. Then, since we bought an electric fridge like we had in our camper, we bought a readymade slider off Amazon for it. Easy!
One problem that we ran into was that the floor isn’t flat. We would need some wood spacers to keep the floor level and properly supported. While Jason figured that out, I decided to install some sound dampening into the trunk to keep the noise down back there. (might as well.. it’s just bare metal!)
That was easier than I thought it would be and it’ll definitely keep it quiet back there!
The next thing we had to tackle was the bolting of the plywood. The rear bolt holes just go straight through to the floor. The forward bolts are angled back into the floor structure… so less easy. We decided to make some angle brackets with captured nuts so we could bolt the plywood straight through.
I can’t leave it just bare plywood because that looks terrible,but it’s also rainy and cold so I can’t paint it with bedliner like I wanted. I ended up ordering some black carpet online and covering it in that. Not sure how long it will last because it’s not super high quality, but I can redo it later if I need to. We also had some cargo track laying around that we bolted in to tie down the tubs in the back.
Overall I’m super pleased with how it turned out. It looks pretty professional, lets us use our fridge easily, and we can secure cargo! I’m ready for some camping!