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Friday, August 22, 2014

Preparing the Toyota Starlet for sleeping in it


How am I gonna sleep in the Toyota Starlet you may ask?

Let me tell you. The approach to the "new" car was a bit different than the Kia. On the Kia Pride I could push the front seats forwards (max) and recline the backseat to make it "almost" flat towards the backseat. That solution was not possible with the Toyota Starlet. Yes! Of course I tried it, don't make me out to be a fool. ;)
So... on the Toyota I decided to remove the front passenger seat. (Yes, I might have showed this before, but it was a long time ago, and you probably have forgotten it haven't ya?)
I also removed the sitting seat ( in the back so that the backseat could be folded almost flat to the boot floor.) Are you getting anything of what I´m trying to explain here? I guess not, ...
..anyywaaaaay...
Ok, so when the seat was out, I had to find something to support a bigger board (that I took from an working office desk, which I earlier scrapt). So.. I found a cooling box and a plastic box that fitted not perfectly, but "ok" according to my "standard".. I will explain more in the pictures that follows.


Here you see that the passenger chair has been removed. Here are the board (wood) put on top the cooling box and another plastic box. Not totally flat but "ok". LEAVE the fashionistas opinions outside the car.. :)

To smoothen things out I put a sleeping underlay on top of the whole thing. The pieces that is missing from the underlay I blame on Rasmus, a dog (poodle)  that I had before. On top of this goes the mattress.

So here the foam mattress is put into the car. It is an Ikea Moshult mattress that is suppose to be "firm". And yes. it it pretty firm. The size is 80x200 cm. That turned out to be a perfect size. You can also see a sleeping bag, and a warm fleece piece to the left.

Okey, so here the bed is ready to sleep in. As you can see the bed is not totally flat. It's a little like sleeping on a small hill with some slope. I figured that more blood in the head (because of the slope) would only make me smarter.. (win-win?) When sleeping the feet are closest to the dashboard.
A good bed I must say. I will use it on the 2014 roadtrip. Coming up! The only problem that I have found is that the gear-stick is under the bed, so you have to drive the car lifting somewhat the bed up, when changing gears that is. No big problem I would say..
What else?
On this picture I have also fitted the new curtain holders to the handles in the roof. Works super I must say! Also Ikea stuff.

This solution I am very happy with!. Since I used parts that I already had, the only thing costing was the mattress and some sheet and cushion. About 5-600 Swedish crones or 70-80 dollar (yes everything i more expensive here in Sweden than in the states, more taxes and so on.) I think it will work nicely on the holiday roadtrip. More info about that coming up soon.

Til next time, bye!

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