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Parts Used In This Episode

Decked
CargoGlide
Decked
Drawer System

Video Transcript

[ Eric ] You're watching Powernation!

[ Eric ] Today on Music City Trucks we're bringing the party to this 2025 Nissan Frontier by adding things like t-vs, a grill, and anything else you might need to entertain anywhere. [ Joel ] Now this show's addicting. [ Music ] Nothing cooler than an old pickup, am I right? [ Music ] [ Eric ] Underneath all this dirt there's probably a pretty good truck. [ Music ] [ Joel ] Today we've got Project Trailgater back in the shop styling, profiling, looking like a real off roader's dream truck. Phase one is now complete but now we're moving on to phase two. Almost everything we're bolting on today could be commonly found inside your house but not so much a pickup truck. [ Eric ] And as you can see in front of me here the first modification we're making today is gonna be to add our t-vs. If you look behind me you might see that we've already got one mounted up on the truck, and that's because we wanted to make sure we knew how we were gonna mount it so we could should you guys at home how we did it. If you've ever had to fabricate to put something in a place it's not supposed to be in then you understand that fabrication is a very fluid process. You've got to constantly be analyzing what you're doing before, during, and after fabrication. Once you get done you need to analyze your work and see where you can improve or what you might want to do differently if you have to do it again. Our first step here is gonna be to get our lower bolts on this rail uninstalled and loosen up the top just enough to be able to adjust it. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Music ] [ Eric ] Give it a couple of taps before we put the level back on. [ Music ] That is dead on right there. All we've got to do here with these tabs is get them set in place. Then make sure that we're hitting both of these bolt holes. Take a Sharpie. Reach in there and mark them. With these holes being that close to a flat surface I like to take the Sharpie like this so you don't have a finger sticking over it and you can actually get all the way up against it and as close to center as possible. Now that we've got both of these marked I'm gonna run over to the work bench real quick and drill a couple of holes, and then we can bolt them on. [ Music ] Another thing we're making sure to do during this entire process is add lock washers or lock nuts to everything we're installing because the last thing we want is any of this stuff rattling loose. [ Music ] [ ratchet clicking ] [ Eric ] I've got our plates finished up, and I already checked them against our mount to make sure everything lines up and it fits perfect. Now that we're done with that we can go ahead and get the back of our case, the t-v mount itself, and these reinforcing plates all installed. This is one of the things I want to do different, mounting this side, adding this reinforcement plate on the back of the plastic, just kinda help stabilize things a little bit. [ Joel ] Follow you. [ Eric ] Make sure we get it lined up right. Almost lost a washer. Hold on, bring it back one. Right there. [ Joel ] Eight billion people on this planet and we're probably the only two knuckleheads mounting a t-v to a bed rack right now. [ Eric ] That's a good point. [ Joel ] What we are doing is statistically improbable. Dare to be different. [ Eric ] Makes you wonder what if there is somebody else doing this? [ Joel ] Like in the upside down. [ Eric ] Either way I'm sure they're not doing it as cool as we are. [ Music ] That's actually pretty close. Keep that nice and even. [ drill humming ] [ Eric ] Mind your hands and your face. Not the moneymaker. Moment of truth. See if this side's any sturdier. Lower hook! [ Joel ] Look at that! That's a setup right there buddy. [ Eric ] Let's get it screwed in and give it a shakedown. [ Joel ] Is the t-v on? Some jack wagon in the screen. Never mind! [ Music ]

[ Eric ] See how she sits. But the whole reason we were mocking it up again was to make sure that it was sturdier. [ Joel ] Earthquake test! She ain't going nowhere. [ Eric ] It's not quite finished yet. We do still have a couple of finishing touches that we've got to make, but once we get those done it's gonna look a little something like this. [ Music ] Coming up, we add some bed room to our Frontier. [ Joel ] It's like a little fort. [ Eric ] Then we slide in a matching set of drawers.

[ Joel ] As a lot of you know there are many benefits to owning a pickup truck. Some of you may be blue collar workers or you might be into some recreational activities. Either way you're gonna need some cargo space, and nobody knows that more than the folks over at Decked. That's why they've designed this drawer system to fit a lot of different makes and models of pickup trucks. These things have a lot of benefits including being lightweight, weatherproof, and installation a total breeze. [ Music ] Alright we've got our first hole marked. Now Decked wants you to use a drill stop on this but if you don't have one what you can do is take some electrical tape or masking tape and use it as a drill stop. [ Music ] [ drill humming ] [ Music ] [ Joel ] Now also included in your Decked kit is what is called a plus nut tool. Basically this works like a drywall anchor, and the more you tighten that bolt down the more it spreads the little fingers on the riv nut so you can have a nice, solid base when you're mounting your bracket. The easiest way to make sure that this thing is fully seated is give it a little bit of a wiggle and if there's no play you're good to go. The kit also comes with these little mounting brackets that you can use to anchor down with the included turnbuckles and can adjust the tension to ensure your Decked system is properly centered and torqued down. [ Music ] [ Eric ] That's a lot of space in there. [ Joel ] Got them stubbies? [ Eric ] Somewhere. [ Music ] Watch your head in there. [ Joel ] It's like a little fort. Awfully cozy. [ Eric ] Get you a couple of tarps. [ Music ] [ Joel ] The Decked box is at 27 and a half. We're there buddy! [ Eric ] That's pretty close. I've got this one tightened up. If it was gonna pull over it should have. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Joel ] Don't mind me. Just working on my pose for the men of Powernation calendar. Mister June! [ Eric ] Back heavy. [ Music ] [ Joel ] There we go. [ Music ] [ Eric ] That's smooth! [ Joel ] Slides right out. [ Music ] [ Eric ] You've gotta close it like a man. [ Joel ] That was my first problem. [ Music ] [ Eric ] Some nice little bins here too. [ Music ] [ Joel ] Gonna come in handy when I pull the state record Walleye out of there. [ Music ] That's looking pretty sweet. I think we're ready for that cargo glide system now. [ Eric ] Let's do it. [ Music ] Guess that means I've got to crawl up in there huh? [ Joel ] You drew the short straw. [ Eric ] There's a lot less room but it's a little more comfortable. Right there, cool! [ Joel ] A little earlier Eric mentioned a surprise. Well this little setup is that surprise. This is the brand new cargo glide drawer system new from Decked. It's actually so new that we got our hands on one of the first ones. Stuff's not even in production yet. The bottom side of our Decked system has mostly been around storage but this is more for functionality. It allows us to continue using the truck bed as a truck bed was intended to be plus an additional 75 percent outward. Once Eric gets this one bolted down we've got another one just like it that goes on the other side. [ Music ]

[ Music ]

Now what's cool about this cargo glide system is it bolts directly to your current Decked drawer system using two big dumb brackets. No that's not being facetious. That is literally what they call it in their instructions. These guys know how to market to their customers. [ Eric ] With this install complete you can see that these things are plenty sturdy cause not only can I lay on it, I can bounce on it all day with it extended and it's not going anywhere. [ Joel ] Which is a good thing because we plan on putting on all kinds of goodies for our first trailgating party. [ Eric ] What a minute. Where you going? [ Joel ] Up next, we put our back seat on a level playing field. Got a new bucket seat for Eric's Bronco.

[ Joel ] With phase two of Project Trailgater pretty much complete we're gonna start dipping our toes into phase 3, which is setting up our power hub for all of our utilities including the t-v, the lights, the coolers, etcetera. In order to do that we need to utilize as much space in the back area here as possible for mounting our batteries and our inverters. So back seat's gotta go. [ Music ] One thing we have to address is making sure all the safety features stay intact. So while I'm pulling this back seat out I've got to reconnect all the sensors to the buckles and straps just so it doesn't start buzzing at us when we go down the road. Got a new bucket seat for Eric's Bronco. Never been one to jump out of a perfectly good airplane or disassemble a perfectly good truck yet here I am. [ Music ]

Not the kind of fishing I was hoping to do today. [ Music ]

[ Music ] With our back seat out of the way we can take a step back and look at the big picture. The only dilemma I see at the moment is this factory subwoofer. We can't just pull this out because it's tied into the main harness for the navigation system. I think what our best bet is gonna be is to build a platform that just runs straight across here just above the subwoofer and runs all the way across back the other way. Then we can stack our batteries one by one, by one. Plus add an inverter, and then the fridge can be mounted on that side. It's gonna be a lot of work but burning metal just happens to be one of my favorite hobbies. [ Music ] Burn baby burn, disco inferno! [ welder crackling ] [ Music ]

[ welder crackling ] [ Joel ] For this I'm using some three quarter inch tubing. What that's gonna do is give us a lot of extra strength but it's not so heavy that it's gonna compress the rear suspension. [ Music ] Got the first part of our base mocked up here. Give it a test fit. A little earlier Eric mentioned fabrication being a fluid process, and this thing is a prime example of that. Basically I had to go back a few times and add some extra bracing as well as these L-brackets to give a raised level playing surface. Next thing we're gonna do is grab some 18 gauge sheet metal so that we can build our platforms for our batteries and our fridge. [ saw buzzing ] [ Music ]

[ Joel ] Now the flammable jacket's flammable. [ saw buzzing ] [ Joel ] Any time I'm cutting sheet metal I don't just let the cutoff wheel dig right into it. I let it glide across until it naturally falls through. [ saw buzzing ] [ Joel ] Now this gives you a better chance of a nice, straight cut as well as keeps the edges from pinching on your cutoff wheel causing a catch and a potential safety hazard. [ saw buzzing ] [ Music ]

[ Joel ] Well our platform for our batteries and our fridge is pretty much done. One last little detail I added was slapping in some riv-nuts and some 10-24 machine screws to hold those plates in place. This also makes them removable so that we can do all our wiring for our inverter. For the most part I'm gonna call this thing mission accomplished. [ Eric ] Up next, we get a leg up on our customized cooking station. [ Joel ] You ought to patent that thing.

[ Eric ] While Joel was working in the cab I was over at the table working on a little something of my own, and that is now bolted onto this Decked cargo slide. As you can tell it is a mechanism that's gonna allow a grill to fold in and out off of this cargo slide. It's gonna be fully adjustable, user friendly, and more than sturdy enough to keep itself from wiggling around when you're out on the trails. Before we talk about the final product and its cardboard counterpart here we need to head back to the table and talk about the steps that got us here. This crude cardboard and duct tape monstrosity on the table is essentially a mockup of the cargo slide, a frame, and a little grill mounted in the middle of it. The idea was for this to fold off the side of the cargo slide on a pivot point out the side, and then the grill itself would be hinged and gyroscopically stabilized in the middle so that as you folded it down the grill would level itself and you could get to cooking. But after getting this designed and put together and comparing it with the setup we've already got on the truck we realized we would more than likely run into some clearance issues with the frame and our bed rack. That led me to do a little bit more thinking. So we came up with this setup here utilizing an arm and a bracket. And after we had the brackets made we had to figure out how to get the grill itself to pivot on the ends of the arms. Then we had to machine some shouldered washers to fit on the side of the grill. The easiest way I could think to stabilize this was to add some legs. So I built a base for it that fits perfectly around the inside, and then added some modified square tubing on it that acts as the receiver. I also made them telescoping so that they can fit perfectly under the grill and it doesn't take up any more space than it did before. Plus having those legs attached to the grill itself allows you the opportunity to remove it from the pivot mechanism on the truck and set it wherever you want. The only design change that was made for this final prototype was to add this slot here on the side that allows the grill to go forwards and backwards as it's stowed. Just to demonstrate, as you come up you hit that breakover point and you see those bolts start to slide down. Once you reach the end of it you can hold it there, set your legs, and you're ready to go. Now that we're done with that we can look again at the actual pieces we're gonna be using. You'll notice that I did extend the arms a little bit just to allow us to get further away from our slide out. Now that we're at this point I've got to get these pulled back off and get them painted before final installation. [ Music ] Now that we've got all this stuff painted the first step is to get these brackets reinstalled utilizing these specialty nuts that came with our Decked system that lock it right into these tracks. One of the things that's nice about these is you don't have to go fishing for them after you drop them in there. You can get them started before you put them in the track and tighten them down afterwards. [ Music ]

[ Music ] Our next step is to get the arms put on that the grill is actually gonna be mounted to. For this I'm using some seven-sixteenths hardware and a mechanical lock nut so that we can adjust the tension on how these move. Now that I've got this nut snugged down I can begin to adjust the tension. We're just gonna do that by testing the movement of this and see how stiff it is. Because there's gonna be weight on it we're gonna have to tighten it up a little bit more than we would if it was just moving on its own. So we're gonna get it tight just to where it'll hold itself up without falling down. Just like that. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Music ]

[ Eric ] Perfect! Now comes the fun part of getting our grill up here and installed. [ Music ]

[ Music ]

[ Music ]

Last step here is gonna be to get our cook top installed and see how this thing looks all put together. With all that finished up we can go ahead and close the lid on this install. I do see a couple of adjustments I'd like to make but all in all this is exactly what I was going for. Today was a busy day here in the Music City Trucks shop but we got a lot done, including getting our t-vs installed, getting our Decked system put in, and getting our grill and custom mount put on to one of the slide outs. [ Joel ] Plus we got our back seat ripped out, got our platform built for our batteries and our mini-fridge. This thing's already made one heck of a decent transformation. We've got a few more tricks up or sleeve before we wrap this thing up. You ought to patent that thing. That's pretty slick.
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