@wiz329
Thank you.

1) What is supporting the wings? Are there vertical supports somewhere?
It looks like you have a front panel in your plans, but I didn't see one in the picture you posted (I'm guessing it was just temporarily moved at the time?)

The wings (parts that fill in the sides between the top of the box sides of the 4Runner) are fully supported by a 1"x1"x35" hardwood cleat attached to the side of the box. There is another standoff cut to fit the top curve of the Wheel well on the bottom of each wing keep it flat and level. The support cleats also serve as very nice handles when removing the unit.

You can see a couple of circles on the wings in the Sketchup renderings where I had intended to use Euro hinges like in the Original plans. But I decided that I did not want the wings attached. so Now I can just lift them up and get at what ever is stored inside.


Regarding the front panel, It's there, but I cut 2 big rectangular holes in it to lose about 2 lbs and give me more access when tightening screwing the screws for the drawer slides. The box is ~36" deep and there would have been no way to mount the slides after gluing up the box w/o the holes in the front panel. You can see the holes in this rendering and if you look closely in some of the pics of the sleeping platform.


(2) Was the increase 2" height of the drawer box to make the entire platform level when you insert the front panels resting on the front seats? How precise did this have to be?

Not considered in my planning. The 2" height increase was, along with many of the other changes to the plans, to ensure that my gear would fit in the drawers. I have a backpack that I've used for nearly 20 years. That I love and take with me all of the time. One drawer needed to be able to hold it fully loaded. The other drawer holds other camping and recovery gear.

The seat bottoms when folded up are about 1/2-3/4" higher than the top of the box. You don't need to be terribly precise. Just make sure that the seat bottoms are tilted further than 90*, so the down weight tries to push them towards the front of the car. You have a lot of adjustment regarding where you position the front seats, which bear against the folded rear seat bottoms. My sleeping platforms are actually about 2" too short! compared to my original plans. If you are taller than 6" I think you could make them up to 5-6" longer to give you more headroom. I think I get about 73-74" which is just enough for my 6' to fully lay down. Since I had enough room, I did not want to go and buy another sheet of plywood for that 2" so I just move the front seat back to position the rear seat bottom where it needs to be to support the weight.


(3) How did you translate the sketchup designs onto the cardboard template? A projector scaled 1:1 using a ruler on the projection PDF?

Nope, just printed full scale and taped the pages together. It can be a pain in the a$$ to get right due to how Sketchup prints. Here is a good video on the process that I used:
Full Scale 1:1 Printing from SketchUp | Multi-page output - YouTube

One thing that I did, that was not in the video was to draw a few squares that were across the places where sketchup was going to split the page. That way I could measure each square and ensure the tape up job was correct and I did not add any skew or taper between the pages. This is overkill for the wings but old habits die hard. I also cheated a bit since I still had the cardboard templates with those line measurements discussed earlier, that were used to create the Sketchup model. So I was able to pull them out and verify the curves in the plan were good. This is only really an issue if you were going to CNC the parts. Since my local makerspace closed up shop I no longer have access to a 4x8 cnc router :'( . If you are cutting by hand it's really a matter of cut outside the line then sand to fit. Since I carpeted the wings and box there is a ~1/8"- 1/4" of room for error before anything gets noticed.

I likely still have the sketchup model as it exists in the renders above. I've not updated it to how I actually built it. I'd be happy to share the SKP file but before I do, I'd like the Ok from Adam ( @bagelsjustbagels ) since my design was based so heavily on his work and parts list.

Boort