Back Seat Delete

We own a 2013 Ford Fiesta, color: lime squeeze. We bought her when we were in Texas and Vitali accepted a job 150 miles away in Houston... On the drive home we already had transmission problems but the dealership said that was "normal"; that is another story entirely. We fondly call her Numa (Hebrew for asking What the Fuck is going on when you know something is not right).

In preparation for our upcoming five month camping voyage we took a serious look at the size of our car compared to the volume of stuff required for a road trip of this magnitude. Yeah, we could go ultralight, but then we would be miserable.

We are planning on mostly car camping this summer with backpacking excursions interspersed. We have done a lot of camping in the past and after suffering through various discomforts we decided to upgrade our camping game and invest in a few items that would greatly increase our comfort, both physical and psychological. The primary increase in volume is attributable to a 6-person Instant Cabin which is approximately 4 times as large as our previous car camping tent -- BUT, sets up in 20 seconds. Setting up the tent is the bane of our existence. It's fine when you're going camping every other weekend but when you are going to be setting up the tent and breaking it down every 4 or 5 days, for months on end, it will start to get old.

So! Our new luxurious glamping tent is very large along with all of the accoutrements to go with it and the inside of our car is very small.

Vitali suggested we look at getting a roof rack and a roof top cargo box but I didn't like the idea of having our possessions in something someone could conceivably abscond with -- or spending several hundred dollars for it. We came across a few blog posts about people removing the rear seat of their Fiesta's to save on weight or create a larger cargo area. After a bit of research we came up with a game plan -- we'd remove the back seat, make sure the road noise wasn't too bad, and then figure out the specifics for creating a level space.

It took us a little bit to figure out how to get the back seat out...

Four T50 torx bolts are unscrewed from the cargo area, and a couple of latches underneath the front of the seat released the seat portion, and then three more bolts accessed from the passenger area, and two ridiculously stupid plastic pins that held the plastic trim to the edge of the seat, which required prying and frustration. We also did all of this while it was about 25 degrees out, without gloves, because we like pain. After getting a lay of the land we took some measurements and devised a plan.

Seven years of detritus. The second key fob to this car lost in 2015 was not found. The cable is the fuel pump wiring.

One trip to Home Depot and Joann Fabric later...

We used the existing bolt holes to create an attachment point for the plywood and used a 1x3 furring strip so we could re-use the same bolts. We also routed out a path for the wiring.

Funny story, we removed seven bolts total and immediately lost one. We put all of them in a sealed bag but somehow one of them left this plane of existence. I suspect the seventh bolt has been reunited with the second key fob in another dimension where car parts are sentient.

We used the extra plywood we had to add a spacer since we do not possess the technology to countersink the bolts. It also ended up being the perfect height for the plywood to be level, so it worked out.

The 1/2" plywood surface with bearing points on the right. These rest on the edge of the foot well at the front of the fuel tank. We wanted to make sure the plastic latch mechanisms were protected. We bought felt from Joann Fabric and stapled it to the bottom of the plywood, and left the edge free so we could attach the plywood to our furring strip. We wanted to jigsaw a curve out that followed the shape of the door to maximize surface area but that was quickly abandoned as I thought it might be valuable to have that taller space for oddly shaped items, and, because we are lazy.

The final product! It would have been great if the lip wasn't there (we could have used a piano hinge and another piece of plywood for over the spare tire). For the level of intervention we were willing to do, it works, our cargo space has so much more room for activities, and we preserved the space at the foot well. Total cost was about $30 -- we had to buy the T50 torx bit, a pre-cut plywood panel, furring strip, and a yard of fabric.