Our Defender is a Station Wagon, meaning that before it could be used, the second row of seats and the inward-facing seats at the back, all needed to be removed. This is a temporary measure and they will be reinstated once we get home.
We decided that we could sleep in the top half of the rear of the cabin, assuming that most of our gear could be stored underneath. For this we needed a strong support that wouldn't reduce load space.
On older Defenders the wheel arches are square section inside and this meant that we could easily mount our sleeping platform supports on them.
These two are just resting on the wheel arches and not bolted down (avoids holes in the floor).
Behind the front seats there's another support. Again this isn't bolted down.
The rear construction is used to carry substantial sleeping platform support ribs.
These slot into places marked by some of those plastic kitchen unit connector things.
At the front, three further supports connect to the front frame behind the seats.
Using funky spring bolts to locate the outer two...
Then we used 9mm plywood, cut to size by the nice man in B&Q ( what a service that is), so that we had two pieces for the rear two thirds and then the front third was split again to allow access.
The strips underneath act as locators to engage against the ribs that the sheet sits on. This prevents the sheets sliding around and they also stop the plywood from warping as much as it otherwise would.
I'm not claiming that it's easy to get in and out, especially when it's pouring down, but we have so far slept four separate times like this, twice in the rain. We are expecting to do this again for either security reasons or when we don't want to unpack and pitch the tent.
Once we are lying down its really only like being on a bottom bunk, there's a reasonable space above.
If you have found this interesting ;-)) look out for a future post showing our boxes and what's in them all!!
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