Leaf cargo deck. Day #1

A few months ago I purchase a Nissan Leaf. I do allot of driving and found that the payment on a Leaf was not much more than gas in my V6 car. Its fast, like my V6 car, cost nearly nothing to drive, and its better for the environment. I use mine for a delivery vehicle and found that it was really not very well suited as a delivery vehicle. The rear seats fold down but they are still a foot tall over the rear compartment. What i needed was that damn seat gone. And one day I finally did just that.

The seats

View from the rear hatch (back carpet taken out as well)

With the seats removed there was plenty of room for cargo but it still left me with an uneven floor that would be awkward to load gear in and out of. I then began design for a cargo deck that i could build to give me a nice flat floor to slide cargo in and out of. The first part of my design was to figure out what I wanted to fit under the deck since there would obviously be unused spaces underneath.

It turns out the road cases I use for my gear are the perfect height to fit within a 2x10 wood frame. Also it worked out well that using a 2x10 frame for the back would bring the main cargo deck height up to the same level as the rear sill. this also brought the deck up to the level of the rear shock towers so they would be less of an obstacle for loading cargo. The design for my cargo deck would now need to incorporate a hatch to access the compartment underneath.

 I trimmed a 2x6 to bolt up in front of my main 2x10 frame so i could have a good support across the full width of the car

With the bulk of the rear framework done it was time to move onto the front. where the front lip of the back seat attached was a raised portion that was conveniently dead strait and level. if the front portion was well attached to the rear it could rest there and cantilever the rest of the way to the back of the seats. to make sure I would have good structure i used two 4x4 beams lengthwise attached to a 2x4 across the width of them that would rest on the raised portion. For the very front part that would be against the back of the seat I cut a 2x4 that would run the full width to support the top. I also made the front portion match the width of the rear to keep everything uniform.

 Front portion of frame

And here it is. loosely attached to the rear portion and it worked out perfectly level across the top. its almost like the leaf was designed for this kind of modification. No trimming or shimming needed. I could move on to paint... Tomorrow