Archives for posts with tag: DIY

If you’re looking for a winter project in order to get ready for camping season, these two excellent drawer projects might be the ticket. The Blake Weber video details “the ultimate overland truck bed kitchen drawers for camping” and to me that seems like a pretty good description. The project incorporates a grill, propane stove, sink, and pressurized water tank, among many other clever features.

The GVM Corner video, below, offers a clever take on a fold-out bed and basic kitchen set up. Hat tip to Nathan Donnelly from Northwest Resilience for passing this video along.

My only suggestion, if you build one these is to make sure the silverware and kitchen tools are stored in a way that will keep them from banging into each other. Otherwise the rattling on rough trails may drive you nuts.

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If you’re looking for an interesting winter project, you could do worse than taking inspiration from this excellent DIY solar shower video. The shower is designed to fit on a roof rack, be heated by the sun, and provide a 30 psi stream of water with pressure generated by an air compressor. It’s reported to get to about 95˚F after a day of driving around in mixed sun and clouds. Not bad.

I don’t think I’ve seen a more well thought out project. And the project’s creator calls it H2OT. Watch him explain and demonstrate the whole thing in a sub-six-minute video. Excellent!

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A couple of years ago IH8MUD member tim.korn.99 built a beautiful stainless steel rear bumper for his 80-series Land Cruiser. Judging by the CAD drawings it looks very well put together. Check the forum thread to see how it turned out. The fabrication work looks top notch.

Link:
Rear bumper design/build on IH8Mud

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While we were in Seattle, Natalie found an amazing fabric store called, appropriately enough, Seattle Fabrics. They specialize in fabrics for outdoor, recreational, and marine use. Want to make your own sleeping bag? They have the patterns, nylon, fill, zippers, and notions. If the bag ever gets ripped, they sell sealer with which you could repair it. Want to make your own parka? They have patterns for that too.

They had braided line, elastic line, elastic line with reflective thread. Their notions section (buckles, snaps, D-rings, etc.) filled a whole wall. They had ripstop nylon, marine canvas, duck canvas, camo, gortex. Pretty much whatever you’d want. I’ve never seen a fabric store more geared to the how-to, outdoor enthusiast.

If you happen to pass though Seattle, check out there store at 8702 Aurora Avenue North or find them online at the link below.

Link trail: Seattle Fabrics

More photos of this great store below.

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All photos: Gregory McDonald

If you have a Coleman military-spec lantern and are looking for a case to house it, my friend Greg has a solution. He takes it from here.

Sometime ago, I lucked upon an old army lantern, which I childishly coined as “The Lieutenant”; aka, “Lieutenant Lantern”; aka, the “LT”.

Tiring of the fleece blanket wrap to keep the “LT” from banging around in back of the truck during trips, I bought a black Coleman Lantern Carry Case.  Designed to fit Coleman’s current line of lanterns, specifically the 220, 290, 295 and 3000000946, the hard case comes as two pieces – a cover shell and a base.  The lantern slots tightly into the base, which has two tabs that the cover shell snaps onto.

Unfortunately, with the taller army lantern inside, the shell comes about an inch short of snapping onto the base tabs.  The MacGyver voice within, promising a solution, kept the case from being returned.  A few weeks of back burner mental engineering and a “I-wonder-what-to-do…” afternoon later, I took a ragtag team of tools and set to work.
The inner wall of the Case’s base held the lantern an inch above its lowest portion.  If I could get the lantern an inch deeper into the base, then the cover shell would reach the base tabs.  I sliced off the inner walls of the base, sparing the four protrusions that friction-held the lantern down.  In order to get the lantern deeper in, the protrusions had to be sliced once more, at the horizontal.  By chance, what was left on the bottom were four upright protrusions that would hold the inside lip of the lantern’s bottom while the upper protrusions, despite most of the inner structure sliced off, still had enough rigidity to friction-hold the lantern.  With the lantern now sitting deeper in the base, the cover shell slides completely over and low enough to snap onto the base tabs.  Challenge conquered!

Now I can use that fleece blanket to wrap the old Coleman stove.

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If you’ve ever wondered about saving some money and painting your truck yourself, it can be done. The folks from Rugged Guide did it with a roller and spray cans and show you how.

See part 2 after the jump.  Read the rest of this entry »


If you like to work on your truck at home, check out these fantastic DIY ramps I found on a Canadian Corvette site. They’re made out of 2x6s (two next to each other for the top surface) with 2×12 supports. The version above even has built in storage and under-car lighting. Very well done, I thought.

Link trail: corvettec3.ca