The hole for the cooler cut in the top of the cart.
After looking at the pictures that I have, it appears that I didn’t take a lot of pictures of this particular step. I had some reservations about having to do this particular step, because if I screwed it up, then all of the work I’d done on the firebox including cutting the hole and building the firebox would have to be redone.
This step required me to take the top of the cooler off and turn the cooler upside down on top of the cart. At that point, I traced the outline of the top of the cooler onto the top of cart. To get the blade of the jigsaw in the middle of the top, I had to drill a hole in the material that would be cut out, run the saw to the line I scribe on the top and then follow the line I traced. After I got the material cut out the next step was to install the cooler. I tried for about 15 minutes and couldn’t figure out how to get the cooler in place. I knew it was going to be a tight fit as I didn’t cut the notches out to allow for the handles of the cooler to fit through. This was another customization that I added as it was gonna be my cart and I just wanted things the way I wanted them. It took quite a bit of thought and moving it around, but I was finally get the cooler to fit through the hole without cutting handle notches.
Cooler installed and sitting on its platform.
Having been able to get the cooler in place exactly the way I wanted it, next was the issue of how high it would sit in the cart. I moved the cooler up and down and decided how high I wanted it to sit and took a measurement. I then built a platform for it to sit on. The platform was just high enough to allow the lip of the cooler to sit about an inch above the surface. With the cooler temporarily in place, I had to decide how I’d secure it to the cart. The solution was bungee cords. I installed eye hooks on the platform and used the handles to run the bungee cord through. I secured the cords to the hooks and all done. After the cooler was permanently installed, I punched a hole through the floor of the cart and ran a drain tube from the plug on the cooler.ðŸŒ
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