How I Built the Ultimate Jeep Overland Drawer and Bed System for Camping

Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. For those of you that are new here, my name is Drew Sims and for three years, I lived full time out of my Jeep as a photographer and a filmmaker. As you guys just saw, I completely ripped apart my build and took everything down pretty much to the base of the Jeep. That's partially because I'm no longer living full time on the road. Back in fall of last year, I got an apartment in Salt Lake City with my girlfriend, Sam, which has honestly been a really great change of pace. Living with her has been great and still being able to travel a bunch, but now come back to a home base has just been really nice, especially after being on the road for three years and living out of such a small space, it's been nice to have some consistency. I'm currently headed up to Boise right now to meet up with my buddy, Aiden, who is a partner at Long Range America. They've got a big shop up there and he's going to be helping me out with the build and installing a snorkel, fixing this leaky roof, and seeing what else we can get into. I'm hoping it'll take about six days to do the build. I think that's being very optimistic, but I hope you guys enjoy this video. By no means do I consider myself a woodworker. I know people are going to be commenting saying, you should have done this, you should have done that. I'm just doing whatever works for me and hopefully a brand new build comes out of it. After getting to Boise, the first order of business was to give this Jeep a very deep clean. I just used a pressure washer, some degreaser, and a brush just to try to get as much of the dirt and grime out as I could before starting on the actual build. Now that I'd given the Jeep a much needed cleaning, we filled up some of the remaining holes that we weren't going to be using during the build just to get everything nice and sealed up. After that, it was time to start laying the kill mat. This is a sound deadening mat, basically just meaning that it helps reduce road noise in the Jeep as well as insulates it. This is not something I did in my first build, and I honestly was a little bit hesitant to do this just because it's a bit of a tedious process, but I know it'll be worth it in the long run, and I don't know when I'll have my Jeep stripped again. Basically you just lay the kill mat flat and use this little metal roller to secure it to the Jeep. After getting the passenger seat out, we did have a little bit of difficulty getting the driver seat bolts out, so we just used a bit of WD-40 and let that sit and ended up getting them out no problem. For the majority of the Jeep, we just used one layer of sound deadening, but for the passenger side, we used two, and for the driver side, we used a full three layers just to help reduce road noise as much as possible. After laying down all the kill mat, it was time to mask the Jeep up and cover all of the windows, the dash, the doors, all the wiring and trim pieces, and just get it prepped and ready to spray in a layer of Raptor Liner. Before laying in the bed liner, we drilled out four holes in the rear of the Jeep and used nutserts to be the main points of contact to be able to secure the base of the build to the actual Jeep. Not only is Raptor Liner good for aesthetic purposes by covering up the kill mat, but it also adds a layer of protection by having an air and water tight seal. After finishing up with the Raptor Liner, we let the Jeep sit overnight just to ensure that it was completely dry before reinstalling the seats and putting back the center console. After getting the snorkel installed, it was time to remove the rooftop tent, the awning, and get the leaks on the hardshell fixed up. It was pretty comical how easily these windows popped out. I've had this hardshell for the entirety of being on the road. It's a Smittybilt product and I've reached out to them multiple times, but unfortunately it discontinued this hardshell completely. This window literally just popped right out with almost no sealant on it. Unfortunately, there aren't really a ton of great alternatives for a hardshell like this on the market right now. I would love to partner up with a brand and create and design a better version of this. I definitely think having the extra six inches of space on the interior is one of the main reasons I was able to live full time on the road for three years. The last thing to install before starting on the interior of the Jeep was this little front and under table. We installed this first just because it sticks out about two inches off the tailgate and that would affect how far the drawers and the bed could come out. For this build, I used three sheets of half inch birch plywood as well as one sheet of three quarter inch plywood. I had Chris and Aiden help me cut the bigger sheets just because it was tough to do by myself on the table saw and then it was time to cut and install the base of the build. Here you can see that the base is secured with those nutserts that we installed earlier. So we actually ended up using my previous bed from the last build. It was a piece of three quarter inch birch plywood and it was still in great shape and I figured it would be better to recycle this piece of wood and use it and kind of keep part of the old build with the new build so we cut it to shape and it fit nicely. Now that the majority of the wood was cut, it was time to break out the pocket hole jig. I didn't use this on my first build, but I'm very happy I did the second time around. It's a bit of a tedious process, but I feel like the joints are just a lot tighter and more stable than they were before. For the majority of this, I used one inch pocket hole screws, but for those larger three quarter inch pieces of plywood, I did use one and one fourth. So this whole cutting board design kind of just happened on the fly. I did have a base design drawn up for this, but a project like this kind of requires a lot of on the spot decisions. Staring at the Jeep for a long time trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. I did buy this cutting board beforehand with the intention of fitting it in the Jeep and after setting up the base, it kind of came to me that I wanted to set this up on a friction slide. This doesn't run off of drawer slides, basically the cutting board sits flush up against the bed and runs off two wooden slides on the interior of the base. Unfortunately after installing this, I realized I was having some creaking issues with the wood. So I ended up rebuilding the entire cutting board section with a piece of three quarter inch plywood instead of the original half inch and that seemed to solve the issue. Now that the back base was complete, it was time to start on the front. I used two by sixes on each side that are bolted directly to the Jeep to the main supports for the front base. I'm going to be doing a pressurized water system here running off this little pump. So I want to get all my wiring and hose set up before I bolt in the front base pieces. Now that the front and rear base pieces were installed and the Jeep was set up, it was time to start putting the drawers together. Now that all of the wood was cut, put together and sanded down, all that was left in the build was to put on the drawer slides and install the hardware as well as finish up the water tank. Aiden was heading out on a trip so I decided to finish the rest of the build in Salt Lake City. But before heading out, I did cut this little piece here and made a spacer for the drawer slide. I'd miscalculated how much room I needed to be able to clear the lift gate. Not a huge issue and it actually led to a really cool aesthetic design for the face of the drawers that I'll show you guys shortly. If you guys are interested on a little more info on how I set up this pressurized water system, I actually got the idea from a channel called Kramer Junction. He does a really great video breaking down this entire process, showing all the wiring, all the hardware used and it's just very informative so I'm going to link that down below if you guys are interested. For the drawer faces, I just used a brad nailer with ¾ inch nails, used some wood glue, tacked one nail on the front and then used all the rest on the back. Instead of doing locking drawer slides that have those little tabs on the outside, I ended up going with compression latches. These are great because they keep the drawers in place and you can also lock them. Alright, so that pretty much wraps up the build guys. As you just saw, I gave you a quick tour of the finished product. Really happy how everything came out. I know at the beginning of the video I said I was hoping it would take around 6 days. It took closer to 10. Definitely a lot more work than I was anticipating but really, really happy how everything turned out. I'll be doing a more in-depth, full-length tour within the next week or so. I've still got quite a few things in the mail that I want to add to the build. Plus I want to stain all the wood, seal it, add drawer liner, a spice drawer, and some other really cool stuff I'm excited about. So once I get the Jeep organized and all loaded up, I'll do a more full-length tour. But for this video, I just wanted to focus on the actual building process. Big thanks again to my buddy Aiden and Chris over at Long Range America. Aiden helped out a ton with the build with all the sound deadening, fixing the leaks, the wiring, the snorkel, all that good stuff. So big shout out to him. Definitely could not have done this within 10 days without his help, so I'll be linking his info down in the description for you guys to check out. Also want to give a big thanks to Jackery for sponsoring this video and for sponsoring the build. A big factor in choosing the height of the bed and the size of the camera drawer was being able to fit Jackery's new Explorer 2000 Pro in the Jeep. Jackery just recently released the Explorer 2000 Pro on Jackery Day, which was May 12th. The thing I'm most excited about, this is a 2,200-watt-hour lithium battery with a 4,400-watt peak surge, basically just meaning I can now run an electric grill, a blender, but most importantly, I plan on getting an electric kettle, so that'll be great to be able to get rid of the little propane tanks and get rid of having to boil water that way. You can charge up to eight devices at once on the new Explorer 2000 Pro with three AC outlets, two USB-A, two USB-C, and one DC 12-volt. They market this battery being able to be charged up completely within two and a half hours if you use six 200-watt Solar Saga solar panels. This new power station also allows pass-through charging, which basically just means you're allowed to charge your gear while the power station is connected to solar panels. If you guys want more detail on the Explorer 2000 Pro, make sure to go to jackery.com or just hit the link down below in the description. A big thanks again to Jackery for helping out with this build and for sponsoring the video. If you guys have any questions, make sure to throw those in the comments and I will try my best to either respond to those or answer them in more depth in the upcoming tour video. A big thanks again for watching, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you next time.