ive had no rear seats for a long time. I never ever carry more than one passenger (my wife).
back is always full of my r/c stuff when I'm heading to the track, or if I dash into bunnings and buy a pile of house stuff, garden stuff, whatever. the cargo area is just so much easier now, easy to get things in and out now, just slide it in/out. no reaching over into the ugly depths of metal-ville.
the frame is MDF, and about 60 or 70mm slats, 16mm thick. you can make it as high as you want really. Just be aware of the jack position in the back so you can still get the jack in and out easily.
you could lay anything on top of the cargo area. carpet, front runner, rubber, etc. Originally I was going to have a metal shop make me a metal tray, with sides, so you can have sh1tty/wet things in there too (garden crap, etc), but cost is a lot to get made and I cant bend large sheet metal. Was going to do it out of 3mm alumn.
you could still make this frame and screw 3mm alumn onto it instead of the ply. but it will be heavier.
Amsterdam is cheap, and tastes okay, I've put a load of people onto it already. they freak out when you tell them how cheap it is. My other fave is Cascade premium.. and then there's coopers green, becks, stella, etc.
fyi I had 6 cartons of amsterdam, two cases of 12 bottles of red wine, four cases of 6 bottles of white wine, 10 2L soft drink bottles, two midori bottles, a blue curacao bottle and a few other things, all stacked in there at once. (alc for my wedding recently... I just got married hehe)
You COULD goto a foam shop and cut to shape a perfect size 'lil mattress' to put in there too, you can easily lay in the back with ya legs hanging over.. back it into the drive'in's with ya chick... nice. hahaha
The ugly metal parts in the back, well, even the factory carpet doesnt cover it all up. Another way to fix this would be to paint the metal in a vinyl-look paint that matches the colour of your carpet, then put the factory carpet back in. that would look tidy. Or if your handy with gelgrip and a heatgun you could mould vinyl onto every surface, that'd be trick, but hard. There's other things you could do but these are the most simple I'd say.
stay tuned for the fully carpeted final setup
