DIY Fridge Slide For $100 NO WELDING! - Tacoma Overland Build on a Budget 

Thank you!

I love removable, I don't like permanently mounting anything, ever!

how did you mount the plywood ?

@@Proviction - If you have a Rav4 Prime, you probably know that the car comes from the factory with only a compact donut spare. This is because the fuel tank on the Prime had to be moved further aft from where it's located in the ICE Rav4 and Rav4 Hybrid, to make room for the traction battery. So the fuel tank partially intrudes into the spare tire well. I hate those compact spare tires, and wanted to mount a full size spare. The full-size spare is about 3-1/2 inches wider in cross-section than the donut spare, so I fabricated a "rim" around the perimeter of the tire well, out of 2x6's and 1x6's, ripped down to 3-1/2" on a table saw and held together with screws and a steel plate on one of the joints. This rim supports the outer edges of the plywood floor, and the tire itself supports the center of the floor. I cut the floor from a sheet of 1/2" plywood, using the OEM plastic floor as a template. It reduces available cargo height by about 4", but it was worth it to me to have a real spare tire. The Rav4 Prime weighs 4,400 pounds, which means each tire is supporting 1,100 pounds, and that's too much to risk having a donut spare on the car, especially at freeway speed. Now, as to the ARB fridge. Fortunately, the rear hatch on the Rav4 Prime is tall enough for me to still access the fridge with it sitting on the cargo floor against the rear seat back, so I don't need to slide it out to open the fridge lid. So I never went ahead with a slider, since it turned out that I don't need it. There's another problem, too, with putting a slider in a Rav4: there's no steel sub-floor under the cargo deck like there is in a 4-Runner or Tacoma, onto which you could through-bolt a slider, because most of the space under the cargo floor is taken up by the spare tire. And everything around the perimeter of the tire well is plastic. There's nothing there to which you could bolt a fridge slider. There's a steel floor under the tire, but just under that floor is the fuel tank and the muffler, so there's no way you could drill bolt holes under there anyway, even if you were carrying the spare tire on an external mount, and were using the tire well for storage or a big battery and inverter setup, as some Rav4 owners have done. Bottom line is that the Rav4 is a unibody car, and the 4-Runner is based on a truck chassis, so there is a lot more you can do to a Tacoma or 4-Runner to prep them for serious off-pavement adventuring. But the Rav4 Prime is capable of 45 mpg, compared to 18 mpg for the 4-Runner/Tacoma, and that makes the Rav4 a better daily-driver, especially here in California where even "cheap" gas is almost $5.00/gallon, and the name-brand stations are charging close to $6.00/gallon now.

@@laura-ann.0726 yeah i have a rav4 and am about to get an ARB fridge, was curious if a slide out was possible. not a huge fan of the platform in this video due to lack of bolting options. i’m going to think about it a little more, currently toying with the idea of using a ratchet strap across the d rings to act as the counterweight for the slide out

@@Proviction - Is your Rav4 the "regular" model (not Hybrid), or a Hybrid or Prime? Either way, if your ARB is the 50-quart model, you should be able to access the fridge just fine with it just sitting there on the cargo floor, without needing to use a slider. The late model Rav4's have a pretty tall cargo hatch. Or is your Rav4 a pre-2012 model (Gen. 2 or 3) with the side-opening rear door with the external spare tire carrier? Those Rav4's are not as tall as the Gen 4's like mine, and in one of those, you might not be able to open the fridge lid enough to get food in and out without a slider.

Or just reach.

@@silverrunner8687 nah, to awkward for a truck