Original Project Date: February 2006

Project Summary: I show how I installed a permanent CB antenna and radio in the H2.

CB are a commonly used
to communicate with others on the trail. They’re fairly inexpensive and don’t require a license to use. Since I really only plan to use it recreationally, I opted for a lower priced all-in-one/handheld CB model from Midland, 75-822. I can wire this to the vehicle antenna most of the time. But if necessary remove it and use it with AA batteries and a with a removable stubby antenna if I need to use it outside of the truck.

Contents

• Installing the Antenna and Coax
• Installing the Handset
• Finishing the Install
• Conclusions

Installing the Antenna and Coax

I started with the following parts:

• Midland 75-822 all-in-one handheld with the car adapter attached
• Firestik SS-J4 Jeep fender mount
• 3-foot Firestik Firefly antenna
• 9-foot Firestick MU8R9 coax
• Valor 203EZ foldover mount

This is where I planned to mount it right over the driver window on the roof rack rail. I wanted to be able to easily lower and raise it without getting out.

I scraped under lip of rails to get good ground with chassis. I tested this by measuring resistance between the grounding bolt in the back of the engine compartment and the scraped off portion of rail.

I opted to put the bolt head down and have the bolt threads pop up simply because it was easier fiddling with the washer, plate, lock nuts, nuts, etc this way given the size of my box wrench.

If you try this yourself, don’t tighten it down now. You’ll need a little play in order to add the antenna mounting stud.

Here’s a different angle where you can see the order of the hardware.

I opened up the marker light by removing the screw at the rear and pulling rear edge up and sliding from out of slot. See the tunnel toward the right edge of the plastic; the coax will go through here.

Next I pulled the gasket out, punctured it, and ran the coax through, but forgot to take a picture.

Underneath this hole is a second larger hole in the roof that you can feed the coax through. If you remove the door trim (which just sticks on) and pull down on the headliner you can see in there well enough to pull the end of the coax through with a needle-nose plier.

To route the cable down the pillar unto the instrument panel area, you need to remove the pillar trim by removing the handle over it.
To get the handle off work out the plugs in the handles. These aren’t covers for screws. They’re just the caps on the clips that hold the pull handle on. As others describe in the references threads, work around the edges carefully with a small flatblade screwdriver. Once they’re out enough, give them a firm pull and then they look like this:

Then pull the handle firmly to remove it.

For the curious, this is what the handle looks like once it’s removed.

I didn’t get pictures in between the headliner and the roof since it was too hard to get the light in there, hold it open and take the picture.

But once the coax is through the roof and pulled over to the sides, then it can be routed behind the pillar trim by pulling it out.

Pull this cover off the site of the instrument panel to access interior fuse box. Pull from bottom first. The top clips are hold pretty hard, but if you keep pulling it’ll come off.

If you keep feeding the coax down from the pillar, it comes out of a hole in the upper left part if the driver fuse box.

From that point, I routed it behind the dash, ziptied it along the rail that runs right behind the lower edge of the dash trim over toward the center console.

Back up top, I liberally applied sealant to the gasket where the coax went through, reseated it and screwed the marker light back on.

Then I mounted the stud to the mounting plate and the fire-ring connector to the stud. This is it from straight above.

Because of the way I oriented the bolts for the mounting plate, I found some nut caps I had lying around that just happened to cover the threaded end of the bolts to reduce the liklihood of snags.

Because the antenna is three feet long, it angled up quite a bit lying down on the front roof rack crossbar. So I slid them back.

Here it is with the antenna down.

And with the antenna up

Installing the Handset

Now for mounting the handset. It didn’t come with any provision to mount it on the dash. So I got a little white trashy.

I wanted a secure stud without having to remove the belt clip. I didn’t like the adhesive ones since they never stay on. So I took a small angle bracket and hammered it flat.

Then I cut it where the fold was, drilled a hole right near the bottom and attached a small pull I found in a junk box with a small bolt and nut.

Next I removed the belt clip from the handset, layered this makeshift stud bracket under it and screwed it back together.

Now for a hook on the dash. I tried to get it to hand with some heavy coat hanger but I just wasn’t talented enough to shape it right.
So instead I wandered the house looking for some raw material I could do something with.
Can you believe that there is an alternative use for these computer expansion slot bay covers that you just toss in a box when you add adapter cards to your computer?

There is. This is what I made with my dremmel and pliers.

And it mounts to the dash under one of the dash bolt heads like this.

This is the handset hanging on that hook. It’s an aluminum hook so can bend if you really pushed/pulled on it, but it’s pretty small and out of the way. And I filed the edges a bit so that it’s not rough on you if you drag your hand across.
If it doesn’t work out or if I come up with a better solution, I can simply remove it with no damage done to the dash.

Another unexpected, but nice feature is that since the clip holds the stud loosely, the CB handset can be flipped up to look at it without unhooking it.

And this is the view of it from a bit farther back.

After driving with the handset mounted this way for a while I was annoyed by the squeak of the metal stud on the metal hook. So I got some plastidip-like liquid brush on electrical tape and coated the metal parts of the mount.

Finishing the Install

If you do this yourself, either tune the SWR or have a radio shop do it for you. Make sure you tune it with the antenna up and with any gear on the roof that you plan to have up there when transmitting. If you change your gear regularly, get an SWR meter and a patch cable to insert it in between the antenna and the handset whenever you change the load. There’s a lot of good reading on line about how to tune the antenna. You might want to start with some of the tech articles at Firestik’s website.

The nice thing about the Firefly antenna, and some of the other Firestiks, is that you can electrically shorten or lengthen the antenna without cutting by using a thumbwheel in the tip of the antenna. I bet other manufacturers make similarly adjustable antennas, but I never researched the alternatives.

You can do a similar setup with dual antennas too as well as with shorter or longer antennas.

Conclusions

I’m pretty happy with this setup. It’s unobtrusive (i.e. doesn’t bang on my knee), but at the ready. I can pop up the antenna in a few seconds, even while driving. Shorter people might have a bit of a problem doing this.

Total cost was:

What would I do differently were I to do it again? I’d use a two thicker, two-foot antennas and mount them a little farther to the rear. The Firefly, where it’s mounted, it sticks up in the airflow over the front of the roof. Because it’s very thin it makes a high-pitched whistle that’s annoying at first, but which you can learn to ignore. Getting shorter ones, pairing them for better front back reception even though their shorter, and mounting them a tiny bit farther back would mostly eliminate this whistle, I think. I’d lost the ability to pop up both of them on my own while driving, but that’s not the end of the world.

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Summary: Mounting of a TabletKiosk oe i7210 UMPC in a HUMMER H2

In Part 1, I mention how Ram Mounts was the only mounting com ponent vendor (at the time) to have a UMPC holder that was sized well enough to hold the TabletKiosk eo i7210. Given that, I decided I’d go with an all Ram Mounts based solution to mount the eo in my HUMMER H2.

This is the full list of requirements I had in mind when planning this mount. Some were missing from my first post.

1. allow for quick insertion/removal of the UMPC into vehicle
2. don’t obscure air vents
3. don’t obscure shifter or cup holders
4. don’t obscure center console stereo, climate controls, transfer case, e-locker, and traction control buttons
5. don’t encroach on passenger space
6. securely hold it in offroad driving situations
7. position at convenient location for use by driver, i.e. don’t have to stretch or bend to reach or read it
8. allow for repositioning for use by passenger
9. minimize visible impact to vehicle – while I own the H2 and don’t plan to get rid of it until it dies, I’d prefer not to mar parts of the dash that are in plain view

This is a pretty healthy list of requirements. I decided that, to fulfill them, I had to use some sort of mounting arm that’s attached near the floor in a carpeted area where holes are out of sight, where the arm can be adjusted after installation, and the eo sits in a cradle at the end of that arm. It probably wasn’t going to be the cheapest or most turnkey solution.

Ram Mount Components

I did some measuring and decided to start with the following components that I ordered from expressmounts.com.

• (A) holder for LS800 tablet
• (B) 2.5″ base with 1.5″ ball – mounts on back of tablet holder
• (C) 7.88″ arm for 1.5″ balls – quick adjustability arm between balls (B) and (D)
• (D) 1.5″ ball with 0.5″ NPT threaded hole – to connect to lower end of arm (C) and top of pipe (E)
• (E) 12″ long powdercoated pipe with 0.5″ NPT threaded ends – to provide rise up from floor
• (F) 2.5″ base with 0.5″ NPT threaded hole – to mount pipe into side of console near the floor

When they’re all connected as described in the list above, they look like this. The cradle will bolt onto the upper-left end, and the plate on the lower right will be fastened into the side of the console between the driver and passenger seat.

Out With the Old

This is a picture of what I’m replacing. It’s a Creative Zen Touch mounted up near the 2 o’clock position on the steering wheel. I mounted it with an Arkon generic PDA cradle, bolted to an angle bracket that is bolted to the dash using one of the trim bolts that holds the bezel on the center console.
The an audio cable snakes down into the center console around knee level and then back up in the center console to an AUX input module that’s resting on top of the head unit.

Once I get the UMPC mount I’ll route the AUX input cable up it’s mounting arm and remove the PDA cradle.

In With the New

Mounting the Arm

First, I needed to open up the center console. I wanted to move the audio cable from the left side to the right. But more importantly, I had to place a block of wood behind the plastic console housing to screw the base into. Otherwise, the base would only be held with three screws through some thin plastic. Most of the Ram mount components are light, but the quick adjust arm and the UMPC itself are heavy enough that I wanted a solid base. The green arrows in the following picture show the 1×8 that I fit in there.

Next I screwed the base into the top right side of the center console so that the pipe is oriented straight up. I chose this location to mount the arm because if I ever remove it, the carpeting hides the mounting holes some. If you mount into the plastic dash surfaces and then later opt to remove it, you have very noticable holes and, possibly, a scratched up surface that hasn’t faded as much as the surrounding surface.

The screws go into the wood piece behind the console cover. But this isn’t enough. If I pushed on the pipe toward the driver side of the H2, it still torques the right panel of the console up a bit. So I fashioned up a brace from a spare window blind mounting clip that I had left over from a past project. The brace (circled in yellow in the picture below) is screwed into the floor and into the side of the console below the Ram mount base. This maked the mount much more solid. It does make for one more item that must be unbolted/unscrewed to slide the console out of the way in the event of service. And I might just paint it black to blend in more.

Here’s a view from the rear seat. While I have some removable DVD monitors strapped to the backs of the head rest, the mount is adjustable so that the UMPC could be pointed straight backward for viewing from in back.

And here is the arm from the driver’s side.

Modifying the Holder

The holder for the LS 800 almost works. The only problem with it, is that the clip that holds the top edge of the tablet, sits about an inch away from the tablet since the eo i7210 is about an inch shorter in height.

I tried cutting a piece of closed cell foam to fill the gap, but it neither looked very good nor did it hold the eo i7210 in place well. the foam was just too soft.

So instead, I decided to eliminate the approximately one inch rise in the sliding clip. I started by cutting the sliding clip into two parts:

Next, I found an only storage case that had a thick, fairly rigid, but also slightly smooth flexible plastic. From it, I cut out a rectangular piece to join the two pieces of the sliding clip back together.

Then I drilled holes in the plastic plate and the sliding clip pieces and bolted it all together.
Here’s a view of it.

You can see from the side that it drops the bump that retains the tablet.

Does it work? Yes, the clip does hold the eo i7210 in place.

From the side, you can see that the bump slides down over the front and the bolt heads don’t contact the eo i7210.

And it passes the gravity test.

Next, I retightened the nuts with a little LocTite thread lock instead of using lock washers, since I didn’t want to use any locking washers on the plastic nor did I want to make a trip to the hardware store for nylon locking nuts. And finally I cut off the excess bolt ends with a Dremel leaving a little extra thread to add some cap nuts if I remember to look for some the next time I go to the hardware store. Sadly, while cutting the last bolt, I let it get too hot and it started to melt the plastic plate and the sliding clip. I stopped before it got out of hand, but it doesn’t look as good as it could. My consolation is that in a few months, TabletKiosk should have their car mounting plate/holder on the market and I’ll replace the hacked LS800 holder with one made for the eo i7210.

In the HUMMER H2

Here it is in the HUMMER.

I paid full price for the TabletKiosk-supplied 12V DC power adapter. While it’s pricey, I saved myself the time searching for the right aftermarket adapter and power tip. Their adapter is a well made, compact unit that doesn’t run very hot. The power cord and AUX input cable are zip tied to the arm in a few spots to keep them orderly. It would have been nice to have more cord downstream from the power adapter box so that I could mount that on the console instead of tying it to the arm.

Does it shake at all? Unlike a solution that mounts the UMPC very close to a solid surface, this one puts it on the end of a foot or two of arm. So yes, it does shake a little as I touch the screen. And at speed or over terrais does vibrate some. Not enough to make it unusable however. In the near future, I may pursue bracing the upper end of the pipe on right right side of the dash center console to reduce vibration further. Of course, that will violate requirement #9 above. We’ll see.

What software am I running? Currently, I’m running regular desktop apps such as Thunderbird, iTunes and Windows Media Player and using DeLorme Street Atlas 2006 for mapping. I’ve got a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth enabled GPS receiver stashed in the center overhead console bin. I’ll be experimenting with more driving friendly front ends in the future, but will make do with what I’m currently using for now.

I have no plans to wire in a rear view camera. I may also wait a while to figure out if I can pipe video out into the portable DVD player with strap-on-headrest monitors. There’s no video out on the device. There’s an S-video out on the docking cradle, but integrating that into my mounting solution is not something I’m interested in. So this capbility will have to wait.
Also, I don’t have plans to run XM/Sirius or anything like that from the UMPC.

Conclusion

Am I happy with it? Yes.

It definitely wasn’t turnkey. I struggled at first to figure out how to mount it solidly without hacking up the dash or console. And since the tablet holder was made for an entirely different model, it took a lot of brainstorming to come up with this solution, not to mention a couple hours of careful cutting and tinkering to get it right. If you don’t have scrap components lying around, don’t have a good set of basic tools, or you just aren’t all that handy (I’m not tremendously handy BTW), this may not be the route to take.

Further, the Ram Mount components, while high quality, are not the most low-budget. I spent just over $100 including shipping to get all the pieces I needed.

Still I had fun doing the project and I love the fact that I didn’t have to compromise my requirements to gain a versatile mount for my TabletKiosk eo i7210.

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The moment the UMPC platform was unveiled at Microsoft, I immediately knew that I was going to put one of them in my HUMMER H2. My H2 doesn’t have an in-dash nav unit. It’s just a stereo, CD player, tape deck. I’m currently using a Creative Zen Touch to pipe audio into the head unit using an aux input module from Pacific Accessory Corporation that I installed a while ago. I figured, if I’m going to have a UMPC, it’s going to replace my Zen Touch and add every other capability I might want in-vehicle since it’s a complete Windows PC.

Now, one major problem is that there is no mounting system available for the TabletKiosk eo’s yet. TabletKiosk has a “Universal Mounting Plate” spec’ed out, but I don’t know when they’ll be available. I contacted Arkon, Ram Mounts, Panavise, and ProClips and no one had anything specifically made for the i7210, nor were there any generic/univeral holders that looked to be the right dimensions to hold the i7210.

What I did find is that Ram Mounts has a tablet holder for the Motion Computing LS800 (Part #RAM-HOL-MOT3U). The LS800 is 8.95″ wide and 6.7″ tall. The eo i7210 is 8.9″ wide and 5.63″ tall. The widths are nearly identical. The heights aren’t, but I was hoping that the Ram holder could be adjusted smaller or that I could pad the holder or modify it as needed to fit the eo i7210.

So I ordered one of these holders from expressmounts.com and it arrived today.

After opening the box, I discovered that with the mount adjusted to it’s smallest size, the vertical gap from the top of the eo i7210 to the top clip of the holder is about one inch (prior to ordering, I hadn’t been able to obtain this specification from any person or website source).

Luckily, it is a nearly perfect fit width-wise. The lower corners of the eo are perhaps a bit more rounded than those of the LS800, but it sits nice and snuggly inside the cradle.

I plan to keep this holder and start by padding the gap with a carefully trimmed piece of mini-cell foam. I think I can do that with out interfering with the air vents on the i7210 and without it looking too ugly. If that doesn’t pan out, I will hack up the adjustable top plate and fabricate something to position the retainer clip at the right height and depth.

I’m ordering the remainder of the Ram Mount components later today to mount it in the HUMMER.

Stay tuned. When the components arrive, I will post part 2…installing it all in the H2.

Addendum

I added this because of Fej Nnud’s question. Here’s a slightly better picture of the back of the holder. I initially thought I’d cut up the sliding clip so that it can go an inch lower. It would be easy to cut the lower area scribbled in yellow to allow it to slide down farther. But the body of the holder needs to be cut too on the upper yellowed areas. Unfortunately those areas need to have about an inch cut away which would be below the position where the bolt that holds the sliding arm in place is located. The result would be two very cut up pieces that I couldn’t attach any more.

Continue on to Part 2

Part 2 >

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Original Project Date: July 2006

Project Summary: I mount a Hi-lift farm jack on the roof rack cross bars on my H2.

A Hi-lift farm jack is a useful tool to have with you when you go off road. The factory jack that comes with your vehicle to help you change the tire is really designed to lift the vehicle on level ground just enough to raise the tires off the ground. However, in an off road situation uneven ground may necessitate lifting the vehicle much more than the several inches to change a tire.

This is what a hi-lift jack looks like.

For off-road use you typically will use a 48″ or 60″ model which, because it’s made of steel is quite heavy (30-40 lbs) and unwieldy…48-60 inches long. That’s long enough that it requires a fair amount of space to store it.

In a HUMMER H2, there are plenty of places to store a 48″ model inside the vehicle. It will fit anywhere in the rear cargo compartment. But it will also fit under the second row passenger seats. But if you have other stuff you’d like to put in those spots or if, like me, you rather frequently fold down the second row seats to carry large items in the back, the jack becomes a nuisance that has to be moved out of the way a lot.

So, what a lot of people tend to do with these jacks is mount them outside their vehicles. Do a google image search for hi-lift and you’ll see that at least 1/3 of the matches are pictures showing how people have mounted the jacks in various places.

Given this and searches at elcovaforums (A hummer discussion forum site), I found that on the HUMMER H2 people have mounted them in all the following places:

• On their after market roof racks
• On the front or rear bumbers
• On their brush guard
• On the backside of their rear, swing-arm spare tire carriers

I don’t have a roof rack…just the factory cross bars. My spare tire carrier is not the OE model that HUMMER started including on later model years. It’s a Husky Liner’s model that, unfortunately, positions the post that holds the spare wheel/tire too close to the rear lift gate to fit a hi-lift in between it and the truck.
The rear bumper won’t work because that’s where the spare tire carrier is mounted.
Furthermore, my wife insists that mounting the hi-lift on the front bumper or the brush guard is just too “redneck.”

That pretty much leaves me with somewhere on the roof. So that’s what I’ve done. I positioned the cross bars on the roof to be close enough to anchor the hi-lift at each end.

I started with the following parts:

• (2) 3/8″-16 x 3.5″ long carriage bolts fully threaded
• (4) 3/8″ washers
• (2) 2 3/8″-16 stop nuts
• (2) 3/8″-16 nylon lock nuts
• (2) 3/8″-16 wingnuts
• (2) rubber stoppers 1 5/8″ tapering to 1 3/8″, about an inch thick

Try to find the hardware in stainless steel. It will stand up to weather better in the long run than something like zinc alloy.

I drilled the centers out of each stopper to accommodate the bolts.

Then on the fat side, I widened the holes with a knife large enough to allow the stop nuts to countersink flush in the stopper.

I planned to put a small hole in the end of each bolt so I could put small locks on as a minor deterrent to stealing the jack. I clamped the bolt to the corner of a storage shelf to imobilize it as I don’t have a good table mounted vise. To make it easier to drill the holes, I flattened a spot about and inch from the end with a square file.

Then I used a center punch to start the hole and a 1/8″ drill bit to drill it by hand (make the hole large enough to accept whatever lock you plan to use).

Next I removed the end cap on the roof rack cross bars. This is what it looks like:

Then I slid the carriage bolts in, and hand tightened it with a washer and stop nut.

I slid it in from the end about 10 inches and tightened it securely there.

Notice the rubber strip that I had to pull up. Rather than remove this, you can either poke the bolt through it or cut the strip to go around the washer. I chose the latter so that the nut/washer that secures the bolt makes solid contact with the plastic of the cross bar rather than just quishing the rubber strip.

Next, slide the stoppers over the bolt then tighten the nylon lock nut over the top. In this picture, I put the nut on upside down because otherwise it sticks too far through the hi-lift frame holes and makes tightening the wingnuts on top difficult.
Also, since taking this picture, I put a washer under the lock nut to distribute the weight of the jack across the top of the stopper.

Next, repeat the above process for the bolt for the other end of the jack on the other cross bar. Then slide the hi-lift over the bolts making sure it sits firmly on the top of the washer with the lock nuts inside the holes in the frame of the hi-lift. Then secure it with a washer and wingnut on each bolt.

Since taking this picture, I placed a rubber washer under each nut under the wingnut to help prevent the wingnuts from loosening from vibrations.

Finally, here’s a picture of tthe finished project. I temporarily inserted some heavy wire through the lock holes since I didn’t have locks at the time I took the picture and I wanted something to prevent the wingnuts from accidentally backing all the way off the bolts.

What does this do for my vertical clearance? Well, it makes the H2 about 7′ 3″ tall. Fortunately, my garage has an 8-foot door. Also, fortunately, I don’t currently live where I need to regularly use parking garages. Unfortunately, when I do go somewhere (like Minneapolis airport) I don’t have clearance to fit in them and will have to us an outdoor park-and-ride or remove the jack temporarily.

I am very happy with the space I’ve reclaimed inside the vehicle. Plus it’s very inconspicuous up there. In the past 5-6 weeks, not one person has said anything about it, including my wife.

Conclusion

If you want to always carry your hi-lift with you on your H2 but don’t have a nice Gobi rack with the special-purpose hi-lift jack mount, you don’t want to mount the jack on your front or rear ends, and you have enough vertical clearance, this is an easy way to mount the jack on the roof for just a few dollars in hardware and an hour of easy mechanical labor.

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Original Project Date: April 2006

Project Summary:
I explain how I level the H2 front to back.

The front end on my H2 had always been a little bit lower than the front. At first, I liked it this way, but it began to bothering me. It was about 16 inches to the bottom of the rockers in front, and just over 17 inches to the bottom of the rockers in the rear.

The H2 has an independent front suspension that uses torsion bars to provide upward force on the lower suspension arms, thus setting the ride height (and firmness). When you can tighten these torsion bars it raises the front ride hight.

I tightened the torsion bars on each side. On the passenger side about 4 turns and on the driver side about 5 turns. Each turn results in about 0.2 inches in ground clearance at the front differential.

I never measured the difference in height at the front differential or the front bumper, but I did bring the front and rear lower edges of the rocker bars withing 1/4 inch of eachother on each side.
I’m guessing that I obtained about 1.25-1.5 inches more of clearance under the front differential and skid plate, which obviously is important on an independent front suspension vehicle if you take it off road.

Caveat #1

Whenever you make this sort of adjustment, you are changing the camber alignment of the front wheels. So you need to get it aligned soon after making the change. It’s recommended that you wait until driving about 50-100 miles before doing the alignment to allow the front suspension to "settle" into where it wants. It certainly doesn’t hurt to drive over some rough dirt roads to accelerate this proces .

Caveat #2

As I mentioned above, tightening the torsion bars will not only change the height of the front end, it will also increase the firmness of the ride. Some people will find the ride too harsh. I personally prefer a stiffer front end.

Caveat #3

You can be overzealous in trying to obtain increased ride height. If you tighten them too far you limit the ability of the bars to dampen the suspension arms through their full range of movement. On a recent wheeling trip, I noticed that I’d hear lound clunks frequently from the passenger front corner whenever coming down on that wheel in ditches. We straightened out all the undercarriage protection and made sure all the bolts under there were tight, and still it would clunk.

A couple HUMMER techs and I all concluded that the right torsion bar is probably a little too tight. Nothing that will result in a chronic wear problem, but rather just something that’s going to clunk a lot when a lot of weight is put on that corner while wheeling off road. Next time I plan to get rotate and alignment, I’m going to back off the tightness on the torsion bars a turn or so and see if that makes a difference on my next wheeling trip.

Before and After Pictures

I set up a camera on a tripod to take a picture before and after the change without moving the truck. This allowed me to make the following two pictures.

Picture #1 – Composited before and after picture. The difference between before and after is most readily seen in the lines of the front door edges.

Picture #2 – Before and after pictures animated in a loop.

Conclusion

If you have a torsion bar front suspension and they’re not already too tight, there’s an easy way you can adjust them to raise, or lower, your front end a little bit to improve appearance of your vehicle when viewed from the side, and maybe even gain a little bit of front end clearance over off road obstacles.

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Original Project Date: March 2006

Project Summary:
I explain how I securely mounted a large toolbox above one of the wheel wells in the rear cargo area of my HUMMER H2.

The HUMMER H2 SUV has a pretty decent amount of rear cargo storage space. When I got my 2003, the spare tire, which is a full-size wheel and tire was stored inside the cargo area as you can see in picture #1.

Picture #1 – Stock cargo area with spare mounted inside (note that 2nd row seat backs are folded down).

I quickly made more space back there by installing an aftermarket spare tire carrier that swings out. I’ll write that project up some other time. The result is what’s shown in picture #2.

Picture #2 – Cargo area with spare and 3rd row jump seat removed.

Now, since having a break down situation a few years ago where I needed to use a second car to go buy tools and supplies to do a road side repair, I’ve always tried to carry tools and supplies with me. These can get heavy and just stowing them loosely in the back is a bad idea. In a sudden stop or crash they may start flying around and hit me or one of my passengers. So this is just not an option in my opinion.

For a while, I kept a storage box with a top in back put the stuff in there and anchored it with a webbing strap to one of the tiedowns you can see in the pictures. This was fine, but everything I needed to haul something in the back, it was in the way. Plus opening it requred removing the strap that was wrapped around it.

I finally decided to use some of the space over the wheel wells to mount a storage container. I figured mounting on the driver’s side would be perfect as there were solid anchor points left over unused from when I removed the interior spare tire carrier. I asked around on the h2source.com forums and got a good suggestion from H2Finally. The discussion thread can be read here.

I basically copied H2Finally’s idea, but with a different toolbox. The toolbox I chose was black steel Craftsman box with dimensions 24.25″ x 9.5″ x 9.5″(available on line only). It’s completely rectangular and has thin edges and thus wastes very little space. Here’s what I did:

Starting Point

Here’s the driver’s side cargo area:

Picture #3 – Wheel well cover in cargo area (sorry about camera angle)

Making a Level Surface

The wheel well cover isn’t level. In order to mount a toolbox over it, I needed to level it out. I cut wedges from a block of closed mini cell foam that I originally purchased from NRS to make some custom kayak seats from.
I opted to use two wedges because it was easier to cut plus it would leave access to the bin to store little things.

Picture #4 – Foam wedges to level surface.

Solid Anchor for the Toolbox

If couldn’t just set the toolbox up there. That would be more dangerous than leaving my tools randomly scattered around the truck.

I bought a 1/8″ thick, 1 1/2″ wide, 36″ long strip of aluminum that I picked up in the metal by the piece section of a local home improvement store. Then I folded it to fit along backside of toolbox.

I drilled a hole to mount it using the bolt that holds the top of the tire jack (right side) which was where the front of the interior spare tire carrier used to be anchored. I pushed the toolbox into it to establish the bend point in the back left, then folded it again to align with the rear anchor point that the interior spare tire carrier mounted to. Then I drilled three holes in the strip, two on the long edge, and one on the short edge on the left side. I filed these holes square to accept some 1″x1/4″ carriage bolts which will be inserted into the back edge of the toolbox to hold it in place.

Note that I trimmed the strip on the left end to that the rear lift gate can close without hitting it. A hacksaw (recommendation: use goggles. I broke a blade and it hit me in the eye, ouch) will do the cut easily and a file to smooth off the edges/points.

Also, I used several washers behind the strip on the right to ensure it sits out from the trim a little bit and then I put several strips of foam tape along the back side of the strip to reduce scraping of the trim over time.

Picture #5 – Aluminum strip folded to fix along back side of tool box and anchored.

Mounting Toolbox to Aluminum Strip

I used wingnuts secure the toolbox on the carriage bolts mounted through the aluminum strip in the previous step and still allowme to easly remove the toolbox if necessary.

I drilled holes in the toolbox to accept the carriage bolts from the aluminum strip. This is the view on the inside.

Picture #6 – Wingnuts hold toolbox in place

Final pictures

Here is the toolbox with the top closed

Picture #7 – Toolbox with top closed

and with the top opened. The top nicely folds up into the recess for the rear driver’s side window

Picture #8 – Toolbox with top open

Because the toolbox is all metal, it rattled a lot. So I threw some shop towels in with the gear I placed inside, and put some furniture slide strip material along the edges of the red tray that sits in the top. The lock on the center latch rattles a tiny bit, but as I didn’t plan to ever lock it, I wedged some putty in it to eliminate that rattle. Still the center latch has some free play in it, so I just leave it open and use only the side latches.

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I just added a new section to the website. It contains writeups on some customization projects I’ve done on my 2003 HUMMER H2.

The new page is here. Enjoy!

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