Wood in your trunk?? BEWARE LOTS OF IMAGES

[bbrown]

Well the other day I got a little board sitting around the house on one of my days off. So I went looking around the garage for something to do. I was upstairs in our garage when I came across some left over hard wood flooring from our living room remodel. I asked my dad if he had any plans for the left overs and he said, "No, what do you want to do with it?" I kind of smiled and said I had a plan. You see the other month while on the Tex I was browsing some classified listing and noticed a Jetta with a hard wood trunk floor. I did a little more searching and found a few other people that had done the same mod. My main inspiration was from this: .

So I made a trip to Lowes and picked up a sheet of MDF since that would be used to make my sub floor for the hard wood and the remainder of the material would be used to make the sub bod. I know, I know, I said when I first got started with this VW that there would be no sub in this car as the trunk is small enough already, but I almost NEVER us my trunk and I am tired of the lack luster sound system. I have on the way set of Polk Audion 4 x 6's for the doors 3.5's for the rear, a 10" DVC Polk SR sub, a PA 600.1 mono amp, all new speaker wire and a capacitor to help the alternator (which oddly enough is a 65A in and A/C car and which will be replaced with a 90A alt very shortly, six if you read this I need to touch bases with you on getting an alternator).

So on to my first part of this large scale project, the trunk. I removed the old carpet, spare tire, jack, lug wrench, and about two pounds of dust and dirt (a little Murphy's Oil and some warm water used with an old wash cloth will clean your trunk and leave it smelling very good). I used the carpet as a template and it worked very well. I cut the MDF and test fitted a couple times making some small changes to make sure the fit was good. After i was sure the fit was good I took the MDF floor outside for an application of rubberized underbody coating on the bottom side of the board.. This was to help weatherize the MDF as it is not all weather material.

Then it was on to the hard wood. I must admit I am not a carpenter at all and this was my first time doing anything like this. I have used skill saws, chop saws, jig saws, nail guns and all the other goodies before so my knowledge of the tools was good enough so that the project really sailed along. I measured and cut to size the board and nailed them down using a brad nail gun. I shot the nails in at 45* or so off from the top of the joints of each piece. This worked very well and was much better then the planned uses for wood glue. Once i got all the hard wood nailed down I cut the excess off using the Sawz All (the jig saw wanted to die cutting the hard wood). Then it went into the trunk. The fit was pretty good for a first time craftsmen.

Here are the pictures:





I don't have a before photo of how much road grime had accumulated, but it was dirty trust me, but nothing the Murphy's oil couldn't fid


Tools of the trade:

[bbrown]

More Pictures:





Nailed boards on the right and loose boards on the left (I worked left to right to keep tolerances from stacking up)






Skip the trimming stage (I got excited and stopped takeing pictures) and jump to the installed in car stage


Looking back from passenger compartment








Please ignore the shop light


So there you have it, my hard wood trunk is complete and within a week or so I will be starting
the sub box and wiring in the new system. It should be fun an pose a new set of challanges, but
I am sure that I can work through it as I have done some wiring before and there is a lot of info
on the net on how to set up steroes so it is not a major worry, plus I got the extended warranty
on everything so if I fry something it can be replaced. Tell me what you think. As far as I know
the hard wood tunk has never been done on a Cabby, but I could be wrong.

[CalAltaDubber]

Nice job. It reminds me of my old custom van days (or is that daze?).

I had oak floors in both vans I owned. Instead of MDF, I used 5/8" plywood for the subfloor.

I like how you made it so it would just drop in. Is it removable? Do you still have access to the spare tire?

I met a Cabby owner last week with a huge sub in his trunk. He said it was quite a pain, but was still able to get to the spare. He was glad, because he needed the spare once and it was available.

[Briano1234]

I like wood...... and to think I thought that this was going to be that you found a whole big bottle of Viagree....

[bbrown]

Thanks guys. I do have access to my spare, but it is not in there at the moment as I took it out during the build. To make spare tire access easier I was thinking of recessing a handle much like you would find in a boat (I think the general term is recessed floor ring) kind of like this:



The reason being for the handle is the tight fit of the floor and it weighs roughly 30+ pounds (I am just guessing on that figure) and it would make life a little easier removing the floor.

As for the sub, the Polk sub that I have on the way is intended for a small box (aprx .88 cubic feet) so it will not take up too much room, but it weighs something like 24.5 lbs so I will definitely know that it is there.

















Briano, pills are for old guys us young guns don't need 'em

[gull]

That looks really cool.

One of these days I need to make a new trunk floor for my car. The original carpet is long gone; I suspect it got moldy and was thrown out.

[BandB]

Great job! With your creativity I'm sure we will be seeing more of your projects. Thanks for sharing.