Stove and Storage Boxes
This modification really helped evolve the Discovery from a car with a bed into a proper camper. One of the best decisions we made was to modify the car in steps and use the vehicle in between. This made it more of an evolution and gave us a much better idea of what we wanted and how to do it. It is undoubtedly better than it would have been had we just drawn plans for the whole thing and cracked on immediately. This is actually my number one tip for building a camper of any kind.
The back of a stock discovery is mostly a sea of plastic. We went camping several times with it all still in place and it worked adequately. However it was frustrating to have lots of stuff loose around the back of the car. Having to move bags around when setting up the bed was inconvenient and we were drawn to the potential of the empty space behind the acres of black plastic.
It is very easy to remove the lower section of plastic from the walls of the boot. If you were to take it off and then want it back again, you'd have it back on in a few minutes. Remove some small screws, the seatbelts, rear seats, some plastic fasteners and a bit of wiggling brings it free.
The photo shows the useful rubber grommet in the vehicle wall. This leads to the outside world and now carries the gas safety vent and waste water pipe from our sink. It also shows the bolts formerly used to hold the rear seats in place. These are useful as electrical earthing points. Be extremely careful in this area, don't drill into the vehicle wall here as the fuel filler pipe is behind that panel.
Budget
Funds were tight so we mostly used spare wood that we got for free. The boxes themselves are made of 6mm chipboard while the top surface is cut from the doors of an old Ikea wardrobe we got for free off gumtree. We ended up spending about £100 on hinges, 1x1 inch wood batten, wallpaper, paint, varnish, screws, aluminium corners and some other bits and bobs which I have forgotten. We had the stove already and it was originally £10 from a camping shop.
Plans
The drivers side is the utilities section, it holds a gas bottle underneath the stove, a 10 litre water tank (we carry more water in other containers behind the front seats) and pump, sink, tap, and fusebox for all the electrics running off the leisure battery. The passenger side is entirely storage, mostly for bedding, which is monumentally difficult to store without it being annoying. We left space at the back of the dividers for wires to be passed behind. Except the gas bottle locker which has a wooden backplate and is sealed.
We built the boxes and then wallpapered over them, to be sneaky and hide the chipboard. Obviously wallpaper isn't especially hard wearing so we coated it in exterior varnish. That seemed to do the job and it hasn't got too scuffed up.
The annoying thing about the Discovery is that every single panel we made had to be irregularly shaped in order to fit properly. We used an electric jigsaw for the cutting, which was a lifesaver. If you are planning to do something similar I would certainly recommend getting hold of a decent jigsaw. Here is the work surface from the passenger side to demonstrate the point. In order to get the shape of the top right, we made a template from chipboard first and only cut the real thing when we were absolutely happy. It was not a quick process, but it worked well and we would do it the same way again. In the long run I think it's better to take it slow and do it better!
The hinges we used were a mixture of door hinges and cupboard hinges. Basically whatever we could scrape together from the junk in my parents garage. The latches were bought from a DIY store for a few quid each. We sealed the inside of the cupboard for the gas canister and vented it using a pipe that fed out through the factory fitted rubber grommet in the vehicle wall.
To finish it all off we screwed our camping stove into the worktop. The corners of the units are covered by aluminium to protect them from wayward windsurf kit and other insults.
