Project "4Runner Loadout Plan"

[Ben Cleveland]

Sup guys! Thought I'd share our weekend with you guys as we get started on it. Basically, I read a random comment on here a while back, where an ex-military dude said he remembered spending DAYS packing and re-packing humvees before missions, simply working on perfectly finalizing their loadout and packing plan, and storage systems. They'd work on maximizing storage space, and I guess just ensuring that how the rigs were packed fit with how they were going to use gear throughout that particular mission. I had never really heard anybody talking about pointedly going through the exercise of packing/unpacking/repacking repeatedly, solely for the purpose of finding the best, most efficient and consistent practices before. It seemed like a good idea to me though and it stuck with me.

Fast forward to today. I'm not in the military, and I have no "mission". Its just me and my family going camping with our 4runner. But, as we've done more and more trips this year, we've found one of the key things we need right now is not gear, but a consistent packing plan for our vehicle. We've always done backpacking, so packing was less an exercise in efficiency and it was more an exercise in weight reduction, weight distribution, and generating a solid, compacted load. While those concerns are still a factor with overlanding, we now have a new goal of being able to access MOST of our gear from different places in the rig, without having to unpack and repack other things. And we've done a bunch of trips where halfway through the trip, literally every piece of gear we packed into our rig was scattered around on the ground, or in a jumbled mess inside the rig. I HATE that. Its messy, disorganized, and extremely inefficient.

So, this weekend is simple. We're not doing a trip, we're literally doing this in our driveway. But we are going to basically pack, unpack, setup camp, take notes, then repeat until we have a set system and packing diagram for our current set of gear and layout. End goal is essentially a top-down diagram, that shows where categories of equipment are packed in the vehicle, and this plan needs to allow for independant access for as much of the gear as possible, while also maintaining safety and stability of the loads. I have been purposely waiting to build our cargo platform and drawers until AFTER we have done this weekend, so we can ensure I'm building to match what we have found is an efficient system.

I'm going to take pics throughout the weekend, as we're playing with our gear, and if it seems to be helpful, I may even upload some of our notes and sketches. And since everybody loves pictures, here's some older pics of the 4Runner from earlier this summer on a drive through the Texas Hill Country.

 

[overland_squirrel]

I did this recently for a looooong road trip. I kept first aid and light accessible all the time with tent next.

 

[Luis Merlo]

Looking forward to the pics.....

 

[Nomadik Nova]

Great idea! Looking forward to the pics and hearing what you learn.

 

[WrightRunner]

I to am looking forward to seeing the pictures. I think this is something we can all use.

 

[Ben Cleveland]

We’re getting started! Just going to snap pictures as we go through the day and share what we’re doing.

Here’s what we’re starting with! We got our shed and most of our gear organized over the past few weeks, so this morning we’re just pulling everything out. Once everything is laid out we’ll start assessing and organizing the stuff that stays in the car full time. Then we’ll start playing with packing/unpacking/reorganizing.

Our camping gear stored in our carport shed



Camping gear laid out

 

[Ben Cleveland]

Aaaand the rig itself.

View attachment 71347

Tent stays on the roof rack full time, as well as the Plano case sitting at the front of the roof rack, containing recovery and tire tools.



Note on security: since this stays on the rig full time, the Plano case is bolted to the crossbars. You can just see one of the washers between the crossbar and bottom of the case itself.


Also, since it looks like something that might keep cool expensive stuff in it, I’ve taken a creative approach to avoiding theft and breakage of the case lid. Only one half is locked. The half that’s unlocked can be pried open. And this is what you see when you do that.

It’s boring. Just straps, nothing to see thieves, keep on movin! So far I have found the latches open after it was parked overnight once, but nobody had messed with anything inside. Pretty sure my plan worked.

We removed the 40 side of the 60/40 bench seat in the rear. Playing with keeping gear here instead.


Also we’ve found that on trips over 2 hours it helps our little girl, Eloise, if my wife sits in the back with her. Car seat in the center makes those mid-trip transitions way easier because it reserves a back seat beside the car seat that’s easily accessed without moving gear around.

 

[tstead60]

Hey man any advice on snorkels for the 4th gen. Definitely something I've been interested in but I haven't had the confidence to hack away at my fender yet

 

[Lindenwood]

Interesting! I have done this a ton with backpacks both as a hobbyist backpacker and in my 4 combat deployments.

Generally speaking, the best solution is almost universally to bring less crap. Not to say you have more than you need, but I have often been surprised how little I can have and be okay.

For example, my old 24-hour bikepacking kit was about 16lbs, including food and water. Being able to hop around on a bike for hours (we did exclusively offroad trails) without a huge pack actually kept it fun. I got cold a few times, but overall I wouldnt have changed much.

I packed this for a 1-2 week "trip" to Somalia a couple years back--I ended up staying there two months and I think I only just barely ran out of toothpaste. Obviously, I didnt have to provide my own food and water or shelter like one does for extended camping trips. But, again this just served as a reminder for how little I actually needed. Getting back to the main base and having to repack my extra 50lbs of gear that I brought--and clearly didnt need--only solidified that perspective!

 

[Ben Cleveland]

Hey man any advice on snorkels for the 4th gen. Definitely something I've been interested in but I haven't had the confidence to hack away at my fender yet

Yeah man! Mine is for a land cruiser 80 model. Looks like the one I got is unavailable right now but from my research any LC 80 model snorkel will fit pretty close.
TMS Snorkel Air Ram Intake Kit for 90-97 Toyota 80 Series Land Cruiser / Lexus Lx450
The thing is, it fits close. It does not mold perfectly to the body panels. I filled the gap with black silicone caulk and you can’t tell from a distance. If I could do it again, I’d spend an entire weekend with a heat gun, molding the back of the snorkel to perfectly fit the body.

Installation isn’t hard, took me 2 hours. I got over the whole cutting a body panel thing, front quarter panels aren’t really expensive if you ever want to go back to stock.

Look on T4R.org, several members have threads for installing this snorkel and I found their pics helpful.

I installed the A pillar bracket using sheet metal screws and double sided tape 3m VHB tape. Screws could probably be skipped if you can’t stomach drilling holes in the A pillar, I ran with just the tape for a bit and it was fine, I just like things over engineered.

LMK if you need any help and we can message back and forth!

 

[Ben Cleveland]

Interesting! I have done this a ton with backpacks both as a hobbyist backpacker and in my 4 combat deployments.

Generally speaking, the best solution is almost universally to bring less crap. Not to say you have more than you need, but I have often been surprised how little I can have and be okay.

For example, my old 24-hour bikepacking kit was about 16lbs, including food and water. Being able to hop around on a bike for hours (we did exclusively offroad trails) without a huge pack actually kept it fun. I got cold a few times, but overall I wouldnt have changed much.

I packed this for a 1-2 week "trip" to Somalia a couple years back--I ended up staying there two months and I think I only just barely ran out of toothpaste. Obviously, I didnt have to provide my own food and water or shelter like one does for extended camping trips. But, again this just served as a reminder for how little I actually needed. Getting back to the main base and having to repack my extra 50lbs of gear that I brought--and clearly didnt need--only solidified that perspective!

I totally agree Lindenwood. Every time I have pulled everything out of my truck, OR pack, I've ended up putting less back in. Weird thing for me is that I had an opposite experience backpacking...I have always been a bad overpacker, until we started car camping. Now, I actually end up packing a quarter of the gear (outside of vehicle specific gear) compared to what I used to take backpacking, which is ridiculous.

 

[Ben Cleveland]

So, just continuing on what we started this weekend.
The next big thing we did after laying out camping gear was pull EVERYTHING out that lives permanently in the rig, and assess and re-organize. This was actually the thing that I feel was the most helpful for us. All of these pictures show gear and tools that's been floating around in the back seats and cargo area since I bought the 4Runner. Super annoying. So below in this post was BEFORE everything was consolidated.

This is the bulk of it, the backpack contains several days of food, and some emergency camping gear, including means of starting a fire, emergency blanket, weather radio, and small means to boil water and cook a meal. This is 100% redundant to most of the camping gear we load up for trips, and that's purposeful. Got stranded in at work for a couple of days in an ice storm a few years ago when I did landscaping. I was in the middle of the city, but it was in Alabama, where ice on the roads is a bad thing that people are unprepared for. It was scary. There was no help for a lot of people, some people died. I was fine, but I was NOT prepared for that. I've kept enough resources to live independently out of my vehicle for multiple days ever since.


Milk crate with emergency water, and other stuff.


Tool bag. This is roughly 1/4 of the tools I used to keep in my vehicle. Still bulky and annoying.


Tons of extra roof rack hardware that has been rattling around in the truck since I installed the roof rack. And my wife looking over invoices and documents that I tossed in the back seat instead of dealing with.

 

[Ben Cleveland]

So, we went through all of that stuff. This is stuff that needs to be accessible independent of situation. Did a lot of consolidating too!

I didn't get awesome pics of what we ended up with, so here's a list of where everything ended up:

Milk crate remains, until I build some small cubby storage spots into my upcoming cargo platform/drawer system thing. It only has the water bottles, fire extinguisher, and "Repair stuff" ammo can (gorilla tape, zip ties, baling wire, thick wire, paracord, inner tubes for ranger bands, some extra tow hitch stuff, a grease and wax pencil). This is basically the "temporary storage" box. Everything in it still needs to be relocated.

Backpack remains, still not sure what I'm going to do with it. I'm probably going to keep it as a backpack, and let it float around. I value keeping it consolidated as a go bag.

Jumper cables moved up to the Plano box on the roof rack. I rarely use these, and they're bulky. Plano box is now exclusively recovery and "fixing problems" gear that needs to be accessible even if I'm buried in mud, but is out of the way the rest of the time.

Air compressor, tire deflator, pressure gauge and valve stem tool all moved into my glove box. Probably my most used tools in the whole vehicle and I'm tired of climbing up on the rack every time I want them. LOVE this spot for my tire tools. So easy to grab.

Straps and Roof rack hardware now live in the passengers door cubby. Straps need to be accessible, roof rack hardware doesn't. Just was an out of the way spot for it. The pic is actually a different door, when I was trying to decide which door my straps would live in, but you get the idea. The bag with the big, heavy duty straps that I never use sits under the drivers seat. I'll probably end up storing those straps somewhere in a cubby down the road.



Tool Bag was consolidated, and now lives under the passenger seat! Lifehack: I cut 2" off the end of the hammer so it fits perfectly in the bag now! The tools that remain:



New grab bag and misc tools live in the drivers door now. Basically, these are the random items that used to live in our gear tote, that we'd have to search around and find immediately after pulling up to a campsite. Now they're readily accessible all the time.




That JUST ABOUT covers the re-organization of our tools and basic vehicle organization. May not seem like much, but the cargo area is empty now. And the only thing that isn't stored is the milk crate that I know is temporary, and the backpack which is fine in the rear passenger floorboard.

I'll post up some pics tomorrow of roof rack loaded down, and the general plan for laying out and strapping down the bulk of our camping gear!