Some questions on solar systems have been coming up on the GTRV owner's forum lately, and while I've been popping in with options and opinions, I haven't had a firm write-up I could point people to. Time to remedy that by detailing some of the important bits of the Astrolander's solar installation.
It took a bit of a push, especially given the near record-setting heat and humidity we suffered through for the Labor Day weekend, but we're at a point where we can sleep on the new bed system. Between that and a few other odd jobs, we're good to go for camping next weekend!
Another Retro Post. This time, we're catching up on some (not-so) recent changes to the rack system mounted to the rear doors of the Astrolander.
After using Version 1 of my our rear-door fuel storage rack for a while, I learned a few things. Namely, I learned that I needed more outdoor storage for dirty stuff and things that need to be accessed or put-away while the van is more or less "loaded".
In my quest to get the blog caught up with my various forum Build Threads, it's time for another Retro Post. This time, making a big leap forward with a new approach to the interior systems.
So I'd been talking about doing this for quite a while: Fixing the interior layout to better fit my needs. We love the van, but there's a bit of a "10lbs of crap in a 5lb bag" problem, and some of the decisions I made early on have caused problems down the line.
Most specifically, I really hated that I was never able to find a perfect arrangement for the fridge. I knew I wanted it somewhere behind the driver's seat or under the bed, but lack of overhead height meant the latter was a no-go, and getting any chest fridge to fit behind the seat either wasted a lot of space or forced me to relocate a BUNCH of stuff every time we stopped to camp. Not good. The whole point of this is for things to be easy.
I spent a lot of time (like literally 2 years) moving things around, building different fridge mounting boxes, and trying to make things 5% more efficient. During this time I was also hanging out at the Samba and daydreaming about how much interior space the Westy VW guys have. There, I got exposed to "the new hot thing" for their kitchens - a Danfoss swing-compressor replacement for the finicky old Dometic Absorption fridges that Westfalia originally installed. Mechanically, they're the same hardware as all the good "chest" fridges the Overland folks are using, but in upright "front loader" footprints. The VW guys are loving them because they can slot right into place in the original westy cabinets, but actually hold more food, since the swing compressor takes up less space than the old heat-engine system. Better yet, they run efficiently on 12v batteries and don't carry all the problems of a propane-driven 3-way.
As I'm in the midst of rebuilding a few parts of the Astrolander interior, including the fresh-water system, I realized I never properly documented "Version 1". Time for a Retro Post.
Another Retro Post. This time I'm documenting converting the Astro from All Wheel Drive (AWD) to proper Four Wheel Drive (4WD) with a 2-speed NP233 Transfer Case from a 2000 S-10 Blazer LS 2-door. (Thanks again, General, for making parts-interchange work so well!)
This was almost installed as a "kit", as I purchased 95% of the bits from another Astro/Safari owner. His original thread is here, and includes a lot of other good detail. Check it out, if you're headed down this path. The completeness of the work Dean did means there's very little new "art" here (which is why I initially didn't do much write-up), but once again, this could be useful for someone outside the Astro/Safari community.
I've been guilty, multiple times during the life of the Astrolander project, of letting my detailed blog posts get out of sync with the current state of affairs. My build threads on ExpeditionPortal and the AstroSafariVans.org forums have been maintained somewhat more diligently, but I realize not everyone follows there. To help remedy that, I'm undertaking some "Retro" posts to re-document some of the work that I've done but not covered here.
When I first started building this van for overland travel, I figured I'd eventually end up with one of the ubiquitous massive steel bumpers with swing-away mounts for a spare tire and a collection of Jerry cans and other accessories. After a while, it became clear that any such device would have to be custom-made and exceedingly heavy and/or exceedingly expensive. There are a lot of reasons to relocate the tire out from undernearth the van in the stock location, but it is a difficult thing to manage on a van with the 3-part "Dutch" door system with the upper hatch and short lower doors - unless you can swing the tire away, you simply can't put a spare tire back there if you want to be able to open the rear doors. After spending a TON of time scheming and taking measurements, as well as gauging how I actually USE my van and what I really need to carry, I've come to the following conclusions:
Some dedicated readers may remember that when I originally transplanted the GTRV top from the donor van, I noticed that one of the pop-top hinges was slightly bent and thus was binding. I've lived with this for 3+ (holy crap, just checked dates: actually FIVE) years, but the net effect was that the top never quite seated correctly on the van roof. I had trouble getting enough tension on one of the forward latches and sometimes after dropping the top I'd have to climb onto the back bumper and manually pull down on the top to get it fully closed.
Early calls to GTRV for replacement hinges went unanswered. I eventually figured out (through a lot of catalog searching) that the hinges were Reimo-made, duplicates of early VW Westfalia hinges. Sourcing these directly from Germany was going to be VERY expensive, so I kept looking for alternatives. Eventually I found another hinges with a similar (but not exactly matching) geometry for another product. After some wheedling the manufacturer of those bartered with me for a set: As you can see, the gold Reimo hinges are longer, so I had to make some modifications to get things to bolt up. I don't have pictures of the process because it was a bit sketchy with the top raised and supported by 2x4s, etc. As a bonus, the replacements are vastly superior construction. The Reimo design is thin material and single-shear, whereas the new ones are thicker material AND double-shear:
For some reason, I never took a photo of the top raised with the new hinges. It looks basically the same. Knowing that the hinge-replacement was always on the horizon, and fearing I'd need access to the roof to change the hinges, I never got around to putting the headliner back in the van. I'm sometimes amazed that my wife didn't complain more about riding around in a van with the metal roof and all the ribbing exposed. With the hinges finally changed, I was able to start that job only five years later. Step one was to put the headliner "mostly" up, and make a small access hole: Reminds me of the early stages of this project, 5 years and 50+ lbs ago: Anyhow, using the access hole, I marked the perimeter of the headliner against the hole in the roof: Then started in on it with a razor knife: And finally ended up with a big hole: (Note, this is actually about 2/3 of the headliner - the Astro design has it in two pieces, the rearmost 1/3 is a separate piece and re-installed mostly without modification) Given how thin the "side strips" are, and due to issues with needing to fit around the reinforcing ring at the forward edge, I decided to divide the headliner into two pieces. I'll need to make a new forward section from scratch. The "middle" and rear headliners are now currently installed, but the cut edges still show. I've already sourced new headliner fabric, and will need to strip the OEM fabric and re-cover at some point in the future to really finish it off. I didn't like how the old GTRV headliner was installed as one giant piece with the fabric from the headliner wrapped directly onto the upper roof and was glued down. This made it so you couldn't drop the headliner without peeling the glue, so I'm making sure I "fix" that method before I recover everything here.Read More...
After a long gap in posts, it's time to catch up on the Astrolander camper project. After the winter Science Olympiad season (whereupon the author loses all momentum on this and all other projects while he coaches high-school kids through some overly-complicated machine or robot construction), I finally got back in the saddle and started prepping the van for the next adventure.
A random visit to the Reserve America site had revealed an open three day slot at the San Elijo State Beach campground for the 4th weekend in March, so I grabbed it on instinct. Of course, just a few days later the planned date for the Expedition Portal forum SoCal Desert Rendevous was announced and guess what? Same weekend. After some discussion and in deference to familial harmony, we decided to aim for the beach camp. However as the date neared and the weather fouled, we finally decided that cold weather + impending rain + beach didn't mix and made a last-minute switch to attend the Rendezvous after all. It all worked out and we had a great adventure!
The setup for the Rendezvous was that just prior to the weekend, participants would be given only the GPS coordinates to a starting Checkpoint - further instructions would then follow. We arrived late enough on Friday afternoon that the Checkpoint was no longer manned, but fortunately I'd been able to score the final coordinates a bit earlier and knew where to go. It worked out for everyone because upon arrival at checkpoint we made some new friends who followed us in after everyone aired-down their tires.
Annika was glad to have a few minutes out of her carseat and took the time to explore the desert, the tracks for the railroad that serves the nearby Gypsum mine, and to make a new friend. More on that later.
The dirt track into the main camp area was eight or ten miles of mixed surface. Some dirt road, some washboard road, and some very deep silt beds. Probably not much of an adventure for most of the attendees, but this was some of the first real off-roading in our van, and Kimberley was not digging the journey, especially the parts where I had to get somewhat off-camber to stay out of the deepest silt ruts or change to another track. I was glad I'd read-up and watched some videos on driving in these conditions so I'd known what to expect, but more importantly I was glad to have finally fitted good front and rear recovery points and that I'd brought along some Maxtrax traction mats. Ended up not needing either, but "Be Prepared" is stamped on my bones decades after the scouts. After all the silt, the van ended up looking like a powdered doughnut:
After the adventure of getting to the Rendezvous camp, the rest of the weekend was relaxed and fun. There were somewhere around 60-70 rigs throughout the weekend, representing everything from Jeeps with trailers, Sportsmobiles, 4x4 trucks and Subarus. There was even a 2wd Sprinter and someone managed to drag a pop-up tent trailer that didn't look like it had much ground clearance, so clearly the off-roading part wasn't THAT hard. The guys from Overland Gourmet make their usual huge impression with a catered meal on Saturday, and the Desert Challenge and trash-cleanup events went pretty well (although our area was unexpectedly clean). I was able to get my kite photography rig up for a little while, although the wind was very inconsistent.
We met Joe and his Dad at Checkpoint 1. I was a bit more confident in my GPS and where I was going (since I'd been able to scout the route somewhat via Google Earth), so I lead them into camp. They were only around for Friday evening and Saturday morning, but long enough to make a huge impression on Annika - she's been talking about Joe non-stop since then!
Please click on any of the album-links in the above photos to see full-size images and a few more pictures from the week-end.
UPDATE: Two more can't-miss images from other forum members Tim and Bryon:
Once again I'm having to play catch-up to get the blog updated with the state of construction on the Astrolander project. These projects still span multiple days/evenings, so updates are mostly "project" based. Here then, is the coverage for the project to build a platform to extend the fold-back bench/bed to a full 72" and also a box to hold the house battery. As always, more images with annotation available on the web album.
The project starts with the battery box. Pretty basic stuff, 3/4" CDX plywood screwed and glued. I chose CDX for the outdoor-rated glue since I knew the box would be carpeted anyway, plus it was $18/sheet instead of $45/sheet for the nice birch stuff!
The design of the box looks a little odd at first, but the rear edge of the box actually supports the forward edge of the bed platform, hence the extra height. Everything is designed to maximize space, so the forward part of the box nestles right up to the back of the bench/bed and part of it will be UNDER the seat-back as it folds back. The cutouts on the front (left) side of the box are to clear the movement of part of the bed mechanism. The upper notches are to clear the "arms" of the bed as it folds down. The inner "walls" of the box provide strength for the tie-down system (more on this below) and form the inner battery tray that helps keep things from moving around. In this photo I'm trial-fitting the Group 31 AGM battery, only to find that it's just a hair tall with the top posts, so I ended up switching to a Group 34 battery.
As I said, the inner walls of the box actually provide the strength for the tie-down system. In this shot the box is on its back. The fasteners for the hooks and eyes go all they way into the vertical dividers, making everything plenty strong.
Here's the back of the van where the box snugs up against the bench seat. My conversion van bench/bed is mounted to the floor in between where the 2nd and 3rd rows would have been. I utilized the existing attachment pins in the floor for the original 3rd row bench to mount the box. The hooks you can see in the above photo grab onto the aft pins in the floor, and then shackles and turn buckles tie into the forward pins to pull the box forward and down, making everything rock solid.
The inside of the box was then coated in brush-on bedliner, then everything was carpeted with a pretty decent match for the OEM floor/lower trim carpeting.
Next was to weld up the support legs for the back portion of the bed platform. These legs ended up spaced about 16-1/2" on center, but the platform is 29" or so deep, so I made the tops of the legs into "Tees" so that there wouldn't be a long unsupported span in the fore/aft direction.
The bottom of the legs were tapped for threaded riser bolts so I could adjust the final height to level everything out. The legs attach to the platform with knob-headed screws into teenuts in the platform. I wanted a completely tool-less way to remove the platform and break it down completely flat for easy storage in my garage when not in use.
The platform attaches to the battery box with a couple of removable-pin hinges. Again, a tool-less way to attach the platform to the box, but it serves a more important purpose also:
The whole platform hinges up to allow easy access to the stuff underneath. In particular, I wanted to make sure I didn't block access to the jack compartment on the passenger side (right corner of photo). As it stands, the rightmost leg sits directly in front of that access panel. Eventually, I'll probably add a cam-lock strap or chain at the rear edge of the platform to engage with the stock D-rings at the rear of the cargo area, which will hold the platform down and keep the cargo underneath from moving in case of accident.
When the platform is down, there's just enough space between the legs for three tall Rubbermaid containers, or two tall containers and one short one with my Coleman stove on top, or two containers and a 7-gallon water jug. Not as fancy as some of the great drawer systems I've seen on the epic storage system thread on Expedition Portal.com, but this system is flexible, and more importantly, it lets me easily move the packed bins back and forth from the garage, which makes packing for trips and unpacking afterwards super easy.
With the addition of some firm 2" foam, the bed platform mates up perfectly with the bench seat as it lowers into a bed, making the sleeping area roughly 56" by 72". I bought the slip cover material at Ikea, and it was sewn by my Mother. I would have done it myself (hey, a sewing machine is a power tool too!), but I was running out of time prior to Overland Expo 2011, and Mom was eager to help. Admittedly, she did a much better job than I would have. Thanks Mom!
The only bad news here is how snug the platform is to the rear doors. I plan to build some drop tables onto these, so I'll have to modify the platform at a later date to provide a little clearance. Oops!
Getting the battery box built meant I could also install the house battery and split-charging system. For the split-charge controller, I gambled on the T-Max system from Summit Racing. Definitely not as full-featured as the offerings from IBS or National Luna, but way way cheaper, and budget was a consideration here. If or when it fails, I'll consider upgrading, but for now it's working great. I mounted the display/control interface on the lower dash next to the doghouse on a custom bracket. I do actually like the display - during normal running it only lights the charging LEDs at the top left, you can hit "display" to see the state-of-charge on the main (starting) and aux batteries at any time. I like that it's completely dark when the engine is off, since the LEDs could be annoying at night.
The other half of the T-Max system is the massive solenoid. I used some scrap aluminum to make a mounting plate that I riveted to the bottom of the mounting bracket that holds the starting battery and ECU mounting frame in the engine bay. The block on the left is one of two 150A breakers (one at each end of the run of cable back to the box in the rear). I used extended side posts to tie the extra power and ground cables onto the main battery.
The main run of cables from the engine bay to the battery box was made by cutting up a new set of 2-gauge jumper cables. I like using jumper cables because they're fairly flexible and inexpensive compared to buying other big cables by the foot. In this case I opted to separate the positive and negative and cover each with a tough outer braid. For the entire run these are fixed to the van BODY, and always above the sub-frame because I know the body-to-subframe distances will be changing soon when I install the lift kit (which includes body-lift pucks.)
The cables enter the interior just aft of the fuel filler and stay behind the plastic interior trim (removed in this photo) until they enter the battery box where they connect to the second breaker, fuse panel, and house battery.
For now I'm just running my Edgestar fridge and house lights (rewired the vans dome and map lights to take power from the house battery), but eventually the HAM radio and a few other goodies will also take power here.
OK, it's March and I haven't posted since November 2010, so it must look like I'm making no progress on the Astrolander, right? Couldn't be more wrong. In just over seven days, I'll be departing for Overland Expo 2011. To paraphrase their slogan, I'll be spending three days getting trained and getting inspired, hopefully I will be more or less outfitted by then. ;-)
The trick is that in addition to all the training and experiences I'll be having AT the Expo, this also represents the first dry run for the Astrolander with a full 3+ days of boondock camping, whether I'm ready, or not. I've had this on the calendar since last year, but the pressure to get things ready really kicked in around November/December. Unfortunately, that's also Science Olympiad "season" around these parts, and I got talked into coaching an event again this year, so there went a good chunk of December, January, and early February. I've been making up for the lost time with some late nights and full weekends, but the crazy build schedule hasn't left much time for blogging the progress. Look forward to more of my "retroactive" build entries with more detail, but for now, here's a short list of the things I've been working on:
Designing, building and installing the whole rear storage/bed-platform cabinetry system
Installing the cabling, charge controller, and AGM for the House battery system
Running long-scale power consumption tests on the DC fridge in order to spec the above system
Machining and installing curtain tracks, curtains
Laminating additional supports to the roof for the rear of the upper bunk
Re-gluing the bulb seals around the pop-top
More importantly, here are a few of the things I still hope to get done before I leave for OvEx:
Finish carpeting bed platform and battery box
Cutting Reflectix insulating panels for the windows
Sewing slip cover for the rear mattress (Handed off to Mom!)
Installing new CB antenna mount, CB
Welding drop-tables for the dutch-door kitchen
One or more of those tasks may not "make it", but I'll do my best! Pictures to come as soon as I have some time to breathe.
When I was ordering some other parts from JC Whitney, I needed a few more items to get to the free shipping threshold, so I went ahead and ordered a pair of these Ultraflex LED Dome Lamps, in the 2.5"x1.5" size, in order to retrofit them into the dome lamps on the Astrolander conversion.
These are a 24-LED array, but they needed a flat place to mount, so I had to do a little work.
The kit includes a variable-size shunt that fits in place of the original incandescent bulb and provides a 12v/gnd connection. Then I notched the enclosure with a couple of slots.
Then I cut this shelf from a piece of scrap ABS plastic. Excuse the crude work, I was going fast trying to finish before returning to my Daddy duties on a Saturday. The ABS was from an unused portion of a drawer organizer in the recycling bin.
The tabs on the ABS mate to the slots in the housing. Two on one side, one on the other. The ABS is about an 1/8" thick, but is fairly flexible, so easy enough to bend to insert and remove from the slots, which is important since the mounting holes for the dome lamp assembly are behind it, on either side of the original bulb.
The LED matrix then is affixed to the ABS with the supplied double-stick tape (already applied to the back of the PCB). The mating connection is plugged in to the shunt adapter.
In this location it has 1/4" or so of relief from the diffuser lens. Unless you're really looking, you can't tell there's anything different under there.
Until you turn it on. Compare the brightness against the incandescent map lights. These will get converted to LEDs too, as soon as I find an LED kit with an appropriate bulb adapter or have time to make a few from hacked bulbs.
This is a daylight shot, and you can already see the brightness of the LEDs (foreground) versus the incandescent bulb (background). These have made a huge difference in the ease of buckling baby into the car seat after dark. They are NOT a perfect white, they do cast a bit of a blue hue, but for this purpose and the price, I am quite happy. When I do the map lights, I may be a bit more careful about the color temperature as map reading, etc. is hard under bad lighting. I'm also considering red LEDs for the front map lights at least, as an option to help preserve night vision.
OK, with this update, I should be more or less "caught up" with documentation vs. the state of reality on the project, at least with respect to things with a significant time investment.
I finally got around to finalizing a GOOD fix for my issues with the swiveling seat. A rearward-facing seat (at least in the front passenger position) has been a core part of my interior design from almost the beginning. As soon as basic measurements and layout attempts proved to me that I would need to use some variant on a VW Weekender/Westy layout, I wanted to have the expanded living space of the front row facing aft.
As usual, more complete and larger images available on my web album. I will also make reference to some other photos from the first draft installation.
My first attempt at this was to buy an off-the-shelf "bolt-in" swivel mechanism from Discount Van-Truck (hereafter "DVT"). The idea is that this swivel plate bolts in between the stock seat and slider rails. Unfortunately for the Astro/Safari version, although the bolt-spacing is correct, it doesn't really take into account that the seat rails and seat bottom are curved. In order to accommodate this arch, I had to add some spacers to the bolts:
Combined with the swivel plate itself, this adds up to over three extra inches of seating height. This made it tight, even for shorter passengers. With the headliner removed to do all of my other work, I was pretty uncomfortable letting anyone too tall ride in that seat, lest they risk a head injury on exposed metal.
The other problem with this design is that the stock seat has some rearward rake built into the rails. This lifts the front of the seat and makes seating more comfortable, especially with the limited legroom. As you can see in the above picture, though, this incline is static and below the plane of rotation of the seat, so as you swivel the seat you go from a sideways slant to the front edge of the seat being much LOWER than the rear when fully swiveled. This was VERY uncomfortable.
Both of these "features" alone warranted a new plan of attack.
When I scored my donor van, I was pretty excited because it included TWO swivel seat bases. I also liked that these had a very beefy locking prawl so they felt securely locked when facing forward. Unfortunately they shared the same design flaw with the rear-rake built-in below the plane of rotation.
That wasn't the worst of it, though. It seems that GM had made some small but significant changes in the interior portions of the Astro/Safari van somewhere along the way. Despite having an identical outer unibody, the 1995 donor van had a few key differences to my 2003 van. Under the rear of my front seats there's a small duct outlet that blows HVAC air onto the feet of the passengers in the middle row. At first I thought I could utilize the GTRV donor swivel base by just notching the back of the plate to clear this outlet. I quickly went after it with a plasma cutter before I really understood what was going on. It turns out, that the vent outlet has ducting behind it (duh!), in the form of a very wide and flat plenum that sits under a good portion of the seat. This is why the passenger seat is up on those riser rails you can see in the first picture. Where the feet touch it is flat, but most everywhere else sits 1-2" higher with ducting, carpet, underlayment, etc. These flat-bottom seat bases just weren't going to work.
I looked at a variety of ways of just trying to put little "feet" on these bases to use them, but it always stacked up to making the passenger seat too high again. With all of the clearance needed for the various levers, there just wasn't an easy way to chop two or three inches out of the design without basically rebuilding it from scratch. Rather than head off down that road, I decided to leave the swivels intact for resale, and went after making the original DVT swivel base work "right".
After a lot of back and forth, I built these. They're pretty simple, just a couple of short sections of 1.5" x 2.5" tubing, with some angle stock welded on. The second project from my new-old welder. The more I work with it, the more I realize it will need a minor overhaul to fix the design issues with it. Fortunately others have gone ahead and documented how to do that.
Here you can see everything stacked up. Unfortunately I still have the "curved" slider track under the swivel plate, but this was sort of necessary because if the slider was on top of the swivel, you'd have too much of the locking lever sticking out between your legs when the seat was fully rearward. This keeps the lever handles in a better position. More importantly, you can see that the plane of rotation is now mostly flat (depending a little on the slider position), and that the rake is built-in above the swivel plate. In this photo the swivel is "facing" rearward, and the 1" tubing spacers on the left raise up the front of the seat in all positions.
Here's the swivel plate "mid swivel", and the detail of the locking lever. One problem with both original swivel designs is that they only locked in the forward position. When facing rearward, reaching to grab something off the dash or trying to adjust your position with your legs would make the seat turn instead of moving your body, like pushing one of those shopping carts where all four wheels swivel, or a boat with no keel. Sort of annoying.
Fixing this was the easiest part of the whole project, I just nibbled out another notch with a cutting wheel on my grinder, so now the seat locks in the rearward position as well.
It is hard to see here unless you know what you're looking at, but the other minor improvement was to heat and bend the locking lever slightly, so that the handle comes "up" a bit and fits the contour of the lower seat a bit better. It gets it out of the way so you're not banging your heel on it if you cross your legs under while seated.
All told, the passenger seat now sits almost 3/4" lower than stock, instead of the 3+ inches higher than stock. The extra headroom just makes me feel that much safer for passengers since the GTRV reinforcing ring does seem to sit a tad lower than the original roofline, but I didn't want to drop things too much lest the armrest in the door be wildly out of whack against the arm rest on the seat. Building my brackets this way also moved the seat rearward about and 1.5 inches. This makes up for the awful passenger foot room more than you'd think, since the foot well is tapered. Any further and I was worried the upper seatbelt pickup would be too far forward.
As currently mounted, the edge of the seat just clears the B-pillar if I swivel the seat clockwise. If I want to go counter-clockwise, I have to move the seat back to the fully upright position first. I still could move the seat inboard another inch-and-a-bit if I use the other mounting holes, but so far this seems fine.
And now I can finally enjoy a proper "living area" facing the bench seat opposite with enough space for a table for eating or cards.
Two answer two popular questions:
1) No, I wouldn't use the seat in this position while traveling. The seatbelt anchors aren't really in the right place, and it would make my wife carsick faster than an alpine road anyway.
2) Not sure if I plan to do the same to the driver's seat or not. Because of my planned layout, my Edgestar fridge will most likely be behind the driver's seat when camping, so I wouldn't be able to swivel without a lot of shuffling around. I could test to be sure, but I also think the driver's seat would have to be inclined to an uncomfortable angle to clear the steering wheel anyhow. That said, having "facing" seating for four adults would be cool if we got stuck in a rain or something...Read More...
The inside of the box was then coated in brush-on bedliner, then everything was carpeted with a pretty decent match for the OEM floor/lower trim carpeting.
The whole platform hinges up to allow easy access to the stuff underneath. In particular, I wanted to make sure I didn't block access to the jack compartment on the passenger side (right corner of photo). As it stands, the rightmost leg sits directly in front of that access panel. Eventually, I'll probably add a cam-lock strap or chain at the rear edge of the platform to engage with the stock D-rings at the rear of the cargo area, which will hold the platform down and keep the cargo underneath from moving in case of accident.
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