The Nissan Path

Ok, I know this has been bandied about in passing, and there's even one member who did it (who seems to be permanently inactive), but does anyone have some real input/experience making a lockable storage area to replace the third row seats? Somebody robbed my Pathie blind this past weekend at the fiancé's house, stealing probably close to $3-$4000 worth of equipment and gear, including my bug-out bag, all the sound equipment for the wedding, my tools, and my 12ga. My dash cam was off, because it's a nice neighborhood (or so it was believed), so I have no idea if any of it is going to be recovered. So, moving forward with slamming the gate after the horse has run, I've decided to move forward with the project as time and funds allow. I need something covert and secure, and the third row seats serve no purpose for me personally. If anyone has input or advice, please fire away. Thanks!

STik

Shit that sucks man!

Just wonder how much space you could actually find, even with the seats removed I don't think its more than 8" deep.

Hope you had insurance!

t

Indeed. Talked to my auto ins, and it's not covered. Homeowner's will, but deductible is 1% of the value of the house... Soooo, I'm not gonna be getting a whole heck of a lot back. But at least no one was assaulted and they didnt smash or vandalize the Pathie itself. As to the space, I know it'll be rather shallow, but I didnt really have anything terribly tall besides my Stanley booster pack (also stolen). Considering the sheer area of that space, it should hold a surprising amount. I know they make drop in replacements for the Jeep XK Commanders, but those bad boys are a smidge over $500...

I think I am the inactive member to whom Stik is referring, as he PM'd me about this topic back in June. I have been largely, though not permanently, inactive due to being busy over the last 7 months or so with moving, getting married, knocking my wife up, and remodeling my new home, on top of my day job as an attorney. So, this forum hasn't been my top priority but I apologize to Stik for not responding until now.

In any event, the storage unit I built has worked pretty well thus far. I'll post some pictures later, but briefly describe the design now. It is made entirely out of plywood and 1x pine. The top of the box is flat, spanning basically the entire area from the rear hatch to the back of the second row and between the wheel wells. It is about 7 inches taller than the floor of the trunk, so I did lose some vertical storage capacity.

There are two storage areas. One is a drawer that fits in the extra 7 inches of height and can be pulled out of the back when the hatch is open. It extends forward to around where the back of the third row seats would be if flipped up. Besides storage, I found that putting a thin piece of ply on top of the drawer allows it to work as a pretty nice table for tailgating. The second area is accessed by a hinged lid on the top of the box and extends down into the extra space gained by removing the third row. It is actually fairly spacious when you add in the additional 7 vertical inches. I keep a 10" sub box in there and still have room for a back pack and miscellaneous tools.

I built my box primarily for organization purposes and would not trust it to secure a fire arm in its current configuration. For that reason, I have actually been considering fabricating a replacement of basically the same design only out of metal, as I have some ability to weld (see my rock slider post). I don't know if I'll keep a trunk gun around regularly, but want the peace of mind that my rifles will be secure if I decide do so or even if I leave the truck in a parking lot to stop at a store on the way to or from the range.

Nonetheless, I am very happy with the design and even the plywood version, which can be made with nothing more than a jigsaw and drill/driver for I would guess around $75, does offer some level of theft protection and could probably be beefed up in that regard. I'll try to post some pictures tonight or over the weekend.

Ok, I finally took some pictures. Hopefully these will help you in your design if you decide to build something similar. I'm going to post them in two posts because I'm not sure I remember how to add pictures and don't want to do them all a second time if I screw up.

So, here is the first view and test picture:

Inside the back drawer; pretty decent room to store all my weird hiking/survivalist crap:



View of my simple latch to keep the drawer from sliding and the rings I added to fill in for the factory cargo hooks buried under the box:



Here's the side of the box that faces the second row, including of course my 10" sub to relive highschool music:



Here's the inside of the back (really front) compartment. It's pretty spacious, as it takes advantage of the area formerly taken up by the third row.


Finally, a picture to capture the most difficult aspect of the build.



The plywood in the back of the picture separates the space where the sliding drawer sits from the deeper compartment where the sub sits and the third row used to be. You have to cut this piece and the one that faces the second row to contour the floor and sides of the cargo area. No big deal, but took some trial and error. Next, you can see the area where the light mark where the plywood is split. That's from me drilling a hole for the mounting bracket. I used a standard L bracket from the hardware store to mount to the plywood bulkhead, and then bolt to the floor of the truck on a mounting point for the third row, like the one in the foreground here. I'd have to take the drawer out to show you the actual bracket, and didn't feel like it. Sorry. If anyone is actually building this and wants to see how I did it, let me know and I'll put the effort in.

The top surface where cargo rides on top of the box is just shelf liner from Lowe's that I attached with spray adhesive. This is my second version of the box, as the first was too tall and too heavy. Version 3.0 might be sheet metal, but I'm worried I might get weird reverberations from the subwoofer. If you don't have a sub and can weld, then I'd recommend that route because the only drawback is I feel like I can only put 200 lbs on top of the box near the tailgate without it breaking.