Our 76 Series Land Cruiser Rear Seat Conversion is a Game Changer
In this post we take you through the rear seat conversion in our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser that has been an absolute game changer when it comes to storage and usability.
As there are only the two of us, plus the dog, we only need two seats in our 76 Series Land Cruiser. This opened a bunch of opportunities to completely change the way we use our Cruiser when camping and touring. After many trips we slowly pieced together how we wanted our 76 Series Land Cruiser rear seat conversion to work for the way we use our setup. Long drives on quiet outback roads provide a perfect opportunity to think your way through all sorts of modifications. We must give a massive shout out to our good mate Rick from Svnty6 Fab who played a huge part in helping us put this together. As well as VFM Group for their awesome Titan AV Hexa Pattern plywood that we used for this modification.
Most of our regular readers know we go into a lot of detail in our blog posts, so if this is your first time reading welcome and thank you, give yourself a good 10 to 15 minutes to read through this. It is quite a long and detailed story as we have a lot of information to cover.
Our Goals With the 76 Series Cruiser Rear Seat Conversion
Our goals with our 76 Series Land Cruiser rear seat conversion were as follows:
- Have a net weight benefit by removing the rear seat as it weighs 35kgs.
- Gain more usable storage space.
- Move all heavier gear from our rear drawers to the centre of the Cruiser.
- Easier access to our 12V setup as it all sits behind our fridge.
- Have tie down points to secure our bags and other gear for those bumpier trips.
- Water storage in the centre of the vehicle for better weight distribution.
- Easy access to all our gear when needed.
- Somewhere for the dog to be safely secured.
Net Weight Improvements
As we never use the rear seat it is a waste of space and additional weight we just do not need to carry. One of the goals with this project was to have a net weight benefit. In other words, the rear seat conversion weighed less than the rear seat. When we removed the rear seat, we weighed this on an industrial scale, and it came in at 35kgs. I forgot to take a photo of the scale at the time so you will have to trust me on this. Our overall weight saving ended up being approximately 17kgs with the rear seat conversion weighing around 18kgs, almost the weight of one 20 litre jerry of water. It is not a great deal but as everyone knows, every kilo of weight saved adds up quickly.
We decided on using 9mm Titan AV Hexa Plywood that we sourced from VFM Group in Brisbane. Our decision to use 9mm ply over anything thicker was to sacrifice some strength for optimal weight savings. Our aim was never to store any heavy gear on top of the unit. As a result, 9mm ply with some additional aluminium reinforcing and a well-designed unit, provided more than enough structural integrity for the way we plan to use it. Goal one achieved.
Gain More Usable Storage Space
Our Cruiser rear seat conversion obviously achieved this objective with a significant increase in storage space once the rear seat was removed. The finished product ended up providing us with three additional storage compartments, water storage at the front of the unit, and additional gear storage on top of the unit. We were basically able to completely empty our rear drawers, moving all our gear from the rear to the centre of the vehicle. This has been a massive benefit as it allows us to use our rear drawers to store all our pantry items, cookware, dry food, cutlery, crockery, and a bunch of other gear. This makes far more sense for us as we use the rear when touring without our trailer as our kitchen and we now have easy access to everything we need when preparing any meal. On longer trips with our trailer, this does give us plenty of additional storage for food and other items.
Better Weight Distribution
Another one of our objectives was to try and move all our heavier gear from the rear of our 76 Series Land Cruiser to the centre of the vehicle. When it comes to setting up wagons for touring everything ends up being stored in the rear of the vehicle, plus your drawers, fridge, water, accessories, rear bar, spare wheel, long range fuel tank, and so on. This is a significant amount of weight on your rear suspension, wheel bearings, and axles. Aftermarket suspension setups including airbags assist with this increase in rear weight, but they do not alleviate additional pressure on mechanical parts. If possible, the ideal solution is to try and move some of this weight forward improving weight distribution across both front and rear axles. The 4WD will be far better to drive and there will be less stress on several parts.
Our Cruiser rear seat conversion allowed us to move all our heavier gear from the rear to the centre. This includes all our tools including battery tools, recovery gear, spare parts, oils, coolant, tyre jack and accessories, tyre repair gear, 12V spares, tent pegs, axe, and a bunch of other gear. On top of this, we can store all our water between the front seats and the new unit perfectly in the middle of the vehicle. There was a noticeable difference the first time we drove the Cruiser after moving all this gear to the centre and our rear drawers were empty. Another big benefit of this change has been that we have been able to store all this heavy gear at the lowest point in the wagon. This provides a massive benefit ensuring our 76 Series Land Cruiser is not too top heavy. Before this change, when fully loaded or the trailer hitched up, there was a noticeable drop in the rear suspension and our airbags had to be utilised. Since the change, our airbags are used far less.
Better Access to Our 12V Setup
Obtaining better access to our 12V setup was important to us due to the way we installed all our 12V gear. This will be different for everyone’s setup. For us, Drifta added a battery recess to the back of our drawers behind the fridge slide. This is a good spot for us to secure of second battery out of the way. However, when we had our rear seat in the Cruiser, if we needed to check a fuse and we had any gear on our rear seat, we would need to remove everything from the seat before we could fold the seat forward to access our 12V setup. By removing the rear seat, we were able to create a compartment that can be easily opened to access all our fuses as well as where we now store all our 12V spares, batteries, electrical testers, and more. We do not need to unpack the rear to access anything, other than move a bag slightly to access this compartment.
Safely Secure Our Gear
One frustrating part of any trip that involves bumpy tracks or loads of corrugations (prime example is driving through the Simpson Desert), is bags moving around constantly if they have no way of being secured down. When we threw gear on top of our seat, there was no way to really secure these. One other problem with gear not secured, is after driving for long periods on corrugations, the vibrations through gear that is not secured, will damage other gear and your vehicle. We therefore made sure we had many tie down points fitted to our rear seat conversion to give us plenty of different options in safely securing our gear. To do this we used anchor track that we cut to size and bolted three of these sections down to the top of the rear seat storage unit. This provides loads of flexibility depending on the size of bags we are storing on top of the unit. We also fitted four large eye bolts to the sides and front of the unit to safely secure our jerry cans. This allows us to individually secure three jerry cans if needed, less for a shorter trip.
Water Storage
Water storage was one that we thought about for quite some time. We weighed up the pros and cons of a permanent water tank with a 12V pump, a permanent water tank without a pump, or jerry cans. The first option of a permanent tank with a 12V pump sounds great and looks good for social media. But the more we researched the idea, the more we realised that it was a waste of money (as tanks and pumps are not cheap), it is not necessary, more things to go wrong, storage space would be comprised due to the way we wanted the unit to be designed, additional weight, and the tank is permanent making it more difficult to fill up if you do not have a hose, and harder to keep clean.
We therefore decided to save money and use the three good quality Australian made jerry cans we already own. These jerrys only cost $30 each which is significantly cheaper than a large permanent tank. One of the big benefits of this is that it does give us a huge amount of flexibility. If we are only going away for a few days, we only need to carry the one jerry can. If it is longer, we can carry all three. When we are not camping our touring, we can remove these from the Cruiser. When it comes to filling these up, we can do these outside of the Cruiser eliminating the risk of leaks as well as providing flexibility with where we can fill these jerry cans up when on the road. It does also make keeping them clean and free from bacteria so much easier as we can use a tank cleaner easily when they are not stored in the Cruiser.
Due to space limitations with how the jerry cans are stored, we made a hand pump contraption that works an absolute treat in pumping water out of each jerry. We will write another post showing you exactly how we made this if anyone is interested in the future. This does make accessing water from these jerrys while on the road extremely simple.
Easy Access to All Our Gear
Another objective was to be able to easily access all our gear without having to unpack half the vehicle to get to something. All our heavier items that we moved to the centre from the rear are items that we do not need to use too often unless there is a problem. Items we need to access more regularly when we arrive at camp are easy to access by the way we use our setup. Let me explain. Our bags with our clothes and toiletries, plus pillows, and other bedding are stored on top of the rear seat storage unit. When we arrive at camp, our bags are moved from the rear to the front seats. Before the swag or Oz Tent is setup, pillows and any bedding will be placed on top of the bags. We now have access to the rear storage compartments. So, we can easily access tent pegs, our hammer, gloves, straps for the awning, guy ropes and so on. When all setup, the rear storage unit now acts as a place where we can each store the stuff we need for the night, toiletries, change of clothes, towel, and so on. When we pack up the following day, once everything has been packed away, the final step is to move our bags from the front to the rear and strap back down. Then off we go to the next camp. This works well for us and gives us easy access to all our gear throughout the Cruiser.
Don't Forget the Dog!
I better not forget the dog. The final goal was to make sure we have somewhere for the dog when we are travelling with him day to day or on camping trips. When we are camping with our dog, we will be towing our trailer, so we do have far more storage. As a result, the rear seat storage unit does not need to store any bags (these can be stored on top of our drawers). To make this comfortable for the spoilt dog child, we had a piece of 70mm foam cut to size at Clark Rubber to fit perfectly across the top of the storage unit. We then asked our mates at Underkover Australia to make a custom Australian made canvas dog bed cover to fit. To keep this in place we asked Underkover Australia to secure two eyelets on each corner of the canvas which allows us to secure the dog bed to the anchor track. Our dog wears a harness when travelling in the vehicle, this harness is secured to the anchor track. The canvas dog bed is great, and it does allow us to remove it easily when not needed, and when we arrive at camp it can be removed for the dog to lie on. Overall, it turned out to be a great solution for the dog child. There is enough space for another, but I will be trying to delay this for as long as possible.
Making Our 76 Series Land Cruiser Rear Seat Conversion
As I mentioned at the start of this post, we are extremely lucky to have a good mate with a CNC machine handy. Rick from Svnty6 Fab is legend, and he did make this project ridiculously easy. What we had made could be easily done with a table saw and circular saw, it will just be more time consuming. When you have access to awesome technology, you might as well use it.
Before anything was cut, we had drawn up exactly what we wanted after removing the rear seat to determine measurements, angles and so on. Rick then took these poorly drawn sketches and drew them up professionally in CAD. To double check the size and angles, we first CNC cut the top of the unit out of a cheap piece of MDF. This worked as a template that we could place inside the vehicle to double check all our measurements. It also allowed us to accurately work out the side and front pieces and exactly where these needed to go. Once all this was worked out, drawings were updated, and then the Titan AV Hexa Ply was CNC cut. The way Rick cut these was extremely clever with cut outs on the lid and notches on the side and front panels. This allowed us to click the pieces together providing additional structural integrity. This also allowed us to put the unit together to double check it all fitted correctly before putting together with glue.
As we chose to use 9mm ply over anything thicker, we chose to reinforce a few sections with 3mm angled aluminium. We chose to bolt and glue these aluminium pieces into the corner sections below the anchor track. This assisted in additional structural strength, as well as providing a more secure area to bolt the anchor track through the ply and the 3mm aluminium. We also used 3mm flat aluminium pieces for additional strength behind all the eye bolts. To secure the unit in the front, we used two steel L brackets from Bunnings that we cut to size. These were secured to each side of the unit and then bolted to the existing rear seat mounting points. The rear of the unit we secured using three stainless steel turnbuckles. We secured these to the sides of the unit and then to the existing tie down points in the rear of the Cruiser where we have our rear drawers secured.
When it came to the lids for the storage compartments, we decided to keep things simple. We stayed away from using hinges and handles to save money and weight. Instead, we did exactly what my dad did back in Africa when he built his plywood storage boxes for the back of the truck. Lids with two holes cut out on each end to slide your fingers in and remove the lid. This is super simple and works perfectly. Nothing to go wrong and we can completely remove the lid when we need to access gear. Sometimes simple is best.
How Well Has It Worked 12 Months On?
As the title of this post states, our Cruiser rear seat conversion has been an absolute game changer for our setup. We have done several trips with this updated setup over the last 12 months, and we would not change a thing with it. These trips include long outback touring trips, shorter weekenders, some with our trailer, and others without. All our goals with making the change have been exceeded and our setup is far more user friendly than it ever has been. Even though we chose to use 9mm ply, we have not had any issues with strength, it has stood up to hours and hours of corrugations, a Simpson Desert crossing, and everything else we have thrown at it.
If you drive a wagon and do not need the rear seats, we highly recommend you do something similar for your setup. You will not regret it. Our only advice with it, is to keep it simple where you can. You do not need expensive water tanks, 12V pumps, or do you need fancy handles and other bits and pieces that look cool but are really a waste of money. Simple works with less things to go wrong.
Would We Change Anything?
After 12 months we would make a couple of small changes to our Cruiser rear seat conversion, but these are only cosmetic. The main one is carpeting the Hexa Ply. We do love the look of the Hexa Ply and if our drawers looked the same, we would not change them. But we have found an upholster who can source carpet to exactly match our Drifta drawers, so we will eventually carpet the rear storage unit ourselves when we find the time. The only other change is again not necessary, but it is to do with out 12V setup. Now that we have better access to all the 12V gear we will be creating a panel to fit in behind the fridge to mount our fuses and a few other things far better. This will provide even better access to these items as well as give us a little more storage space in the rear storage unit.
Again, we just want to say thank you to Rick from Svnty6 Fab for helping us make this happen. This is not something that he usually does for others, so we appreciate his time in assisting us with this project. We have written several reviews of the Svnty6 Fab gear that you can read here. If you are interested in the Titan AV Hexa Plywood, you can find it here on the VFM Group website.
Thanks for reading this story on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser rear seat conversions. It is a long post, so we appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you want to read more of our 76 Land Cruiser build posts, you can find them all here. To keep up to date on our future stories, join the 4WD Adventurer Community here.
Thank you for reading.
The thoughts of Peter.
01/04/2024 @ 6:09 PM
Hi guys your product looks great would this same set up fit in a 79 dual Cab as well do you think . Thank you in advance ☺️
04/04/2024 @ 11:17 AM
G’day Mate,
I sent you an email about this. This was made as a one off from my mate at Svnty Offroad – https://www.svntyoffroad.com.au/
He bought a 79 Series last year and I know this is something that he is working on developing as it has been highly requested. I am not sure on how far they are with development of the product so best to reach out to them and find out when they hope it might be available.
Cheers,
Peter
26/05/2022 @ 1:20 AM
Hi,
Love the rear seat conversion, I’m just wondering if you have the dimensions for that at all?
30/05/2022 @ 8:56 AM
G’day John,
Thanks mate appreciate the feedback.
Just tried to find the drawings we did up for this but I can’t seem to find the updated ones. I only have the dimensions for the top section as we manually measured up the base once we CNC cut an MDF template for the top. The base will really depend on what height you are trying to achieve and your existing rear drawer setup. The rear of the top (back section that runs along the back of the rear drawers) is approximately 1380mm. The front (length closest to the back of the front seats) is 1060mm. We tapered it from the rear to the front so that there was enough clearance for the passenger door arm rests (hope that makes sense). The opening for the larger storage compartment (on the driver side) is 415mm x 590mm. The compartment on the passenger side (LHS) is 350mm x 490mm, and the battery / electrical compartment behind this one is 240mm x 540mm.
Let me know if you need any other dimensions. I can always measure up the height for you when I get a chance. We set the height of the top to be inline with the side wing infills on our Drifta drawers.
Cheers,
Peter