I thought is was time to show what I have been up to on my cruiser over the last few months:
First job was to build a storage system in the back.
The footprint of the boot area in the 100 is wider than that of the 90. What you are seeing there is the base of the storage system I had in the 90 sitting in the rear of the 100. In the foreground you can see that the fabric top on the tailgate has been replaced with a ply top.
Starting to take shape. I decided to use the same principle I used in the 90: create an 18mm ply carcass and use plastic boxes as drawers, allowing me to load different kit without having to pack and unpack every time. The middle tunnel is the heavy tool storage area - shovel, land anchor and pins, sledge hammer etc. Unfortunately since the middle row of seats is still in place the tunnel is not long enough to store the hi-lift, even with the base removed.
Deck fitted and painted, with ali tie down rails on either side.
Wings on either side give access to two storage areas. I used (shortened) shelf brackets to support the lids and the lids are held shut with small slide bolts.
The plan was to stack additional crates on the raised deck and tied them down to the ali rails. This would allow six crates to be carried with additional storage space for things like soft bags, folding chairs etc on either side.
Below is what the 90 looked like when fully loads. The boot area of the 90 is narrower than the 100, but surprisingly, as you can see by looking at the crates stacked on top of each other, the 90's boot area is actually higher.
I decided that lifting the top crates out to get to the middle layer crates was not what I really wanted to be doing. So for when I am away on trips I built a shelf that sits on the raised deck and is tied down to the ali rails. This allows the middle layer crates to become drawers. In normal every day use this shelf is removed. The middle tunnel now has a door - but still needs a bolt - to preven things from sliding out when opening the tail gate in an incline. The upper drawers can be ratchet strapped across the front. The lower ones will probably have individual doors.
Lower drawers to be used for heavy stuff like recovery gear, camping stuff etc.
Middle layer is to be used to store food and kitchen gear. Having this stuff in the middle layer means that they can be accessed even when the tailgate top is cluttered during food preparation.
When looking back from the back seat you can see the 50L water tank, with two additional storage spaces behind the drawer space.
The water tank out let is a garden hose pistol grip. The tank can be pressurised with air to increase the flow of the water, but in order to economise I will rely on a gravity feed.
Above the boot space is a shelf for keeping stuff out of the way but accessible
