The Custom Ute Tray of My DREAMS

[Applause] g'day everybody i'd like to introduce you to my 2000 toyota hilux 3 litre turbo diesel 4-wheel drive i've been wanting to make a new tray for ages now this car doesn't really need a new one this one works just fine it's just that there's a few things i don't like about it let me show you you'll notice that this one is held together by nuts and bolts these are great if you want to be able to pull things apart but the car vibrations keep causing them to come loose i've replaced quite a few of them since i bought the car there's a lot of general wear and tear parts of the tray are flimsy and parts of it look like swiss cheese with all the holes that have been drilled through it [Applause] the tie-down points are all over the place and look quite messy and it's difficult to fill up the car where the fuel cap is located i want to add undertray toolboxes but can't because the tie-down rail is in the way the tray has drop down sides which i really like but the locating pins come loose and don't line up with the holes if you look at the way that the trays attach to the chassis it's all out of level and as a result they've used packing to to fill those voids as well as that those standoffs look like they're just hanging on they've been bent and they're attached by bolts so i'd like to get rid of all that gut it out and make everything welded connections except for the six bolts that attach to the chassis i want to redesign the headboard and make it stronger and less busy i'm not really a fan of the wire mesh because you can't tie any heavy loads to it the taillights are all smashed up and instead of working on my reversing abilities i'm going to redesign their housing so that they're protected from damage i'll be removing this raised edge so the tray can have a lift off canopy down the track and it's going to be a little bit shorter just because i think it'll look better [Applause] what what is actually going on under here just look at all these holes and bits of metal going everywhere i don't like it when the car's running you can hear a lot of vibrations this top sheet is not attached very well i'm going to be replacing the steel checker plate with aluminium these are the old drop down sides i'll be making some higher ones that can carry bigger loads so in summary i'm going to be making this thing a little bit lighter a little bit stronger and much sexier so let's get into it [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is where i have my first complication with the build i had this design planned where i would have holes along the side of the tray and i would be inserting these lifting pins these quick release lifting pins that would be attached to ratchet straps so you'll see the pins here they've got a little red button that you push and when you push it the ball detents retract so it would lock into position in the holes and you could you could move these things up and down the tray and take them in and out quite easily so it's going to be it was going to be quite nice and i think the system still has potential the reason it wouldn't work for me is the cost so i got a quote here and it was basically 220 per pin and i would need at least a pin on each side of a ratchet strap so i knew that this just wasn't going to work so i had to pivot and change the design a little bit and so that's what you're seeing now all those um those holes that i drilled and the pins the uh little cylinders that i welded in there are now being cut out so i thought that i'd be able to use these existing pieces of steel that i'd already cut to length if i could just cut out these little trapezium shapes then i could slide some round bar through the center of the the rectangle section and use that as a hold down point and it would be nice and tidy and you wouldn't have these these hold down bars hanging down the side of the you tray [Music] yeah a lot of my shirts have a hole patch right there from all the anchor grinding here you can see what's happening so i'm going to slide a big pipe down the middle of that that section and then i can tie the ratchet straps around that when i'm attaching things to the tray so there is a fair bit of work doing it this way but um i really like how it ends up being old old clean and tidy like it looks like it's one piece it looks it looks quite custom and i really like it this is probably the biggest metal fabrication project i've ever done by myself it's tough doing these things when you're working full time because you know you finish work at three and you get home at 3 30 or so and you've really only got this two hour window where you're allowed to make noise and so you just gotta you get home and still in your work clothes most of the time you just get straight into it so based on the amount of footage that i recorded for this video there's i think about 40 or 45 hours of work that i recorded so probably more off camera as well probably about 50 hours in this build and if i was to do this you know full time for a few weeks i could probably smash it out but doing it a couple of hours a day or even less frequently it does drag on for a few months when i when i cut out all these trapeziums from the um from the steel it actually caused a bit of a bow in the steel you can see i had a bit of a problem there you can see it wobbling on the concrete um and that was throwing out a bit of my squareness this is the look of a man who doesn't see squareness there's a lot of guesswork when you're you're making a tray for your car but you still need to drive your car so i had to leave the old tray on the car for for the duration of the build so i was kind of just estimating i took some rough measurements and i was estimating the dimensions of it and where the mounting points would be i was trying to do as much as i can while it was off the car and then i could just put on the car and finish it off if you're ever making something like this i think this is the most important stage just doing the um structure at the start and making sure that everything's square everything's right and then you can work off it quite easily if you get your foundations right then the rest of projects quite seamless but yeah take the time to get everything square one of the the best skills when you're welding and fabricating by yourself is being able to clamp things and hold things into position so that you can weld them and so what i'm doing here is i'm using some rhs on top and then i've put some three mil spacers in between the rhs and the cross piece that i'm welding so that that spacer is acting as the checker plate so i'm lowering the support for the checker plate so that the checker plate will be flush with the top of the tray this whole project has been done with a gasless mig welder and uh i'm really loving it because i'm used to dragging an argon bottle around the convenience of this thing is so so good just you just chuck a roll in and off you go and there's a little bit a little bit more gas a little bit more splatter and it's a bit stinky but generally great worlds [Laughter] i'm so excited about this so there are a few things that i didn't like my old tray and that's the fact that these lights just hang down below the tray and they kind of rattle and they're flimsy a few of these are actually broken um the license plate is off center and it sticks right under here and it's very hard to see it um it's probably not actually legal in australia i don't like how this is all wobbling around you can see it's actually broken here being held on by cable ties and these lights don't work the night lights so i've got a much better setup plan for this what i want to do is have it actually installed in the tube mounted inside and i'll show you my lights you're gonna really like this the indicator lights i've got these these act as the indicators park a break and night lights and uh when you indicate i believe that they have a little swishy effect sort of goes swoosh swoosh these are my reverse lights they are so cool they're just so rugged and solid and they they've got mounting positions on the outside easily accessible if these break i can just unscrew connect them again and then this little guy it's just a little uh led led and that will be for the license plate yeah it's just a nice tidy little setup you'll see see what i did with the license plate [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so i thought it would be a good idea to use nutserts on the number plate holder that way you can just attach it and de-attach it from the front with bolts you don't need nuts and washers here i'm marking some holes for the mod flaps so again i'm going to use some nutserts and just some rubber matting i find that mud guards tend to get damaged and knocked around quite easily especially when you're off-road so if i'm using rubber matting it's free to free to move around and it's easy to replace if it gets damaged you'll notice i'm taking my time here stepping up the drill bits each pass i'm not just starting with a 12 mil drill bit it's just too hard i'm actually quite addicted to these knots things now they're just so handy you can put them anywhere so i'm doing this all now before i put the next cross member in because i wouldn't be able to fit the drill in between the two cross pieces if i had already welded it in now i'm just standing up the tray so i can finish off all the worlds on the underside one thing that i try and do more and more with these projects is getting your workpiece in a good position so if you find that you're contorting your body to you know getting a tight space or work upside down or something it's just bad it's uncomfortable and you won't enjoy it so get your work piece in a good position and go for it most importantly you just got to sit down and admire what you're working on now and again not not for too long though you don't want to feel like you're staring yourself in the mirror but you know take some time appreciate it right this was a pretty exciting step so i'm now underneath the car taking off the license plate clipping all the cable tires taking all the electrical wires disconnecting it from the old tray and undoing all the mounting bolts [Music] now i'm looking for a place to dump the old tray i wasn't sure how long this was going to be sitting in the backyard but um fortunately someone actually came and bought it on uh gumtree so someone came and picked it up for a couple hundred bucks so it was nice to see it go is it my neighbor rob the sparky giving me a hand lifting off the old tray were both very surprised at how heavy this thing was definitely underestimated the car looked so funny without the tray it was like a snail without a shell and uh had a tough time doing a u-turn in the backyard it was quite boggy and there's just no weight on those back tires anymore so i was getting all over the place [Music] yeah i struggled i was just like i couldn't even get out of there yeah because it's like you literally don't have anything all the weight's in the front of there yeah [Music] [Music] so the plan for attaching the tray to the car was to use these two rails on all the chassis mounting points so it's going to pre-drill all these holes and then bolt it to the chassis and then basically place the tray on top of it and weld it to those rails [Music] so now all the hole positions are marked i'm just drilling out the holes and then it's going to go back on the chassis [Music] i think this is a much better mounting method if you i don't know if you remember on the old tray it had legs coming down to each of those points and of course they're all out of level and that's why they had packing under each one but this is you know two straight rails so it's going to be perfect you'll see what i do with the fuel filler line a bit later in the video now i'm sliding on the tray i need to i needed to get it in position so that i could do the headboard it was just too hard to get the angles right to match the the cabin so now i'm cutting these posts and i'm going to bend them into shape so i just want to get my angles right that's why the tray is on the car this is probably the fiddliest part of the whole build just getting the angles right getting it symmetrical on both sides and i'm getting that that triangular wedge the right dimensions using a ratchet strap here just to hold it in position and now i'm going to repeat on the left side of the tray wish i could tell you i had drawings and plans for all this but in all honesty it was a lot of eyeballing and stepping back looking at it is this is this going to be the right position and at least i knew that whatever angle i bent it to i could always fill gaps with the world or i could um just over bend it and then i could compensate on the opposite side now that it's where i want it i'm putting a few tacks on and i'll be able to then remove the ratchet straps and lay the top member at the top of that headboard and that will allow me to draw on my angles again here i'm just eyeballing it cutting that angle and then i'm gonna have to cut an angle also on the top piece there's actually a slight gap between the two pieces but i fill that in a bit later underneath i just put a slither of metal in there and and weld all the gaps it's funny on these these bespoke jobs where you only have to make one of them you know if i was to make 100 of these you trays i would get everything perfect and i'd know all my dimensions and my angles and i'll be able to punch it out but with these ones you just um you're really wrestling with it and you it's kind of anything goes and you just make it work so making one of anything is usually a lot harder than making like three or four of them i mean obviously there's more work in making three or four of these but your um your process changes and becomes much more efficient the more you have to make i'm just welding a support here so the checker plate has to mount or something these are just the backing plates things that you won't see but you need them to to make it work then exactly the same thing here where the edge of the sheet meets the end of the tray there's nowhere to support the checker plate so i've just welded on these little brackets now marking out the center lines for the pipes doing a bit of quick math calculating the distance that they need to be separated by yeah i couldn't live with myself if these things weren't square that's why i'm taking so long here getting everything right it's funny how if you make something you know all the imperfections and everything wrong with it but um if someone was to come and look at it they wouldn't even notice so there's a few things on this trade that i notice but other people don't and i think i might just keep them to myself do you ever wonder how productive you could be if there were three of you if you haven't got one of these little these little pistol grip things for your spray can i'd recommend getting one there like a couple of bucks from the hardware store and really handy they save your finger okay so moment of truth now i'm putting the tray back onto the rails and i'm going to put a few tacks on to hold it in place i can't remember exactly what i was thinking at this point but i think it was something like damn that looks good that's my uncle giving me a lift now i'm just finishing off those worlds this is very very close to finishing or at least mounting it to the car so i'm actually i do remember how i felt i was buzzing at this point [Applause] now i'm just putting those six mounting bolts on okay and now finally taking off that fuel line so yeah you could it might be hard to tell but there's no way i would be able to fill fill up the fuel tank from where it was it would have been running uphill so i had to get a bit tricky with this one just giving it a clean probably hasn't been cleaned since the day it was made and doing a slight modification taking off one of the brackets i ran down to the automotive store and grabbed as many of these various radiator hoses as i could find i couldn't get a roll of that hose size that i needed so i'm using a bit of a frankenstein mismatch of hoses and um pipes to connect them so you can see the thinner hose is the breather hose and then the fat one is for filling up with diesel and um this was meant to be a temporary solution just strapping it to that bracing pole there but it was one of those things that is still on the car it's now been about six months since i finished it so i i will come up with something better but until then that that's where it'll stay uh now i'm just redoing all the electrical so i've had to find a few faults and replace a few wires and now just just wrapped it up protected it and attaching the number plate light i didn't use nutserts on the number plate light although i wish i did these are the reverse lights going on the neighbor has a slight obsession with the birds and feeds them a lot of food and they're overpopulating so you probably hear a few bird noises now and again and these are the indicator lights slash brake lights slash night lights i was very excited to see these work i'm sure you've heard a lot of things about the swishy effect hey nan did you help me for a sec can you hear some of the lights are working lights yeah right indicator um two little square ones what are they oh they are very very oh yeah tell me if they stop flickering i'm not sure why it does that they're definitely 12 volt lights and it's a 12 volt battery on my car but they do flicker less when the car is on probably regulates the voltage a bit better when the car's running if anyone knows please tell me i'm trying to fix the flicker issue still these mud flap heights are actually illegal it has to be at the midpoint of the tire and after making this video i have put on longer ones so don't bust me [Music] i was actually planning on getting this aluminium checkered plate cut on a guillotine at an engineering workshop i found that circular saw is actually really effective it's almost just like cutting a a piece of acrylic or perspex or something so my plan to take out the the rattle and the vibrations from the checker plate was to put some sicker flex which is just a a black silicon type adhesive on all the surfaces all the contact points this works really well and now we're just putting some texture marks above where all the cross members will be so that we know where to drill our holes for the rivets we had a good little system going here so i was going around drilling the holes and robs putting in the rivets with these fancy little rivet tool come on rob hurry up mate it's actually really funny because he was he was flying along with this rivet tool that he's got for his impact driver as soon as i pointed the camera around it started jamming up so it was excellent timing now he's uh he's using another one [Music] what do you do josh the silicon was so messy and it gets on everything this this was a pretty long afternoon it took a few hours to do all this but now we're cleaning off all the texture marks and i was getting ready to get away for the weekend so i managed to get out of sydney for the weekend and uh this is at my mates farm and i was very proud of the tray at this point it was drivable i wasn't quite finished there's more things i want to do but this is just a little checkpoint so really really happy with the way those um those triangles look cut out of that steel oh isn't that gorgeous it's really too nice to put anything on to be honest like i wouldn't want to scratch anything at this point no rattles or vibrations and i think this tray is actually about half the weight of the old one but you definitely notice it in the suspension let me tell you one thing i didn't realize is that if you take all the weight out of the back of the car then the springs actually harden up they stiffen right up and so it feels like you're um you're driving without suspension here's a little flashback this is a toolbox that i used to have attached to the tray and it was just full of all my ratchet straps and and uh automotive tools uh air compressor and jump starter and so i'm about to attach some under tray tool boxes get get the tool off the tray and store it underneath where there's heaps of space so [Music] here i'm just marking where the holes need to go and guess what i'm going to attach it with nutserts baby [Laughter] [Music] oh man yeah we had a lot of rain over the last few days and um the water was somehow getting into those um those cross pieces i've since found where the holes were and filled them up with silicon this is a special tool that i got uh it's for attaching nutserts you just put in your drill and uh similar to the to the rivet adapters that you can get for your drill but this makes it a lot easier so keep my ratchet straps on the right side and on the passenger side i just put a socket set and a job starter air compressor and an impact driver for changing the wheel if i have to okay this is really really close to the end of the project now this is the these are the drop down sides for the tray so i'm just making a couple of rectangular frames and i'm going to be welding some sheet metal to these so i just wanted something really simple simple rugged robust and easy to make okay so this steel i did get cut to size i would have had a tough time cutting these straight edges at my place and i probably over specced the uh the gauge of the steel i think it's three mil and i probably could have got away with two mil or two and a half mil and it would have taken a bit of weight out of it but not jeopardize the strength too much i think as it stands they weigh about 15 kilos each which is quite heavy here you can see all the mounting hardware that i had to buy for these sides so those are the strap hinges that get welded on gunge and pins and then the toggle latches so before i paint it and give it a clean up i'm just getting all the hardware attached getting it in the right positions and then i'll take it off and make it look prettier definitely not pretty but um prettier [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] what do you think man do you like it [Music] thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Scrivscribe

Views: 7,120

Rating: 4.9683795 out of 5

Keywords: Ute, Tray, Build, Custom, Weld, 4WD, 4x4, Hilux, Toyota, Patrol, Canopy, steel, aluminium, mig, gasless, diy, scriv, scrivscribe, josh, scrivener, Australia, NSW, Sydney

Id: dpXoi-IcMmE

Length: 45min 5sec (2705 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021