Ambulance recovery. Bought without any details and then road trip across the country.

patoz

Expedition Leader
Yep this one was "WAS" bought as a potential donor for Big Red. But it is so good so far it would be a shame to part it out. Difficult decisions ahead.

Pat the wrench loop is from harbor (hated) freight. They hold a reasonable amount of wrenches and give you a bit of a workout every time you need to open them. Another thing I have used in the past is the fishing leaders used for ocean fishing. Being flexible they can cover sockets as well as wrenches. I have also seen plastic coated wire rope with screw together ends used but that was a few more $ and I am a tight bugger.

Bevan, I do have some of these wire loops, but they are only about 6" long and were meant to be key rings. However, I do know Amazon has them in longer lengths, so that may be the answer. Not as fast to clip and unclip, but secure anyway.
 

Ozrockrat

Expedition Leader
Looks like a fair bit of defrosting went on here. Now to grab some gas and try a recharge.

1f68d3669f8d72bc3ae61c3276426d31.jpg


And a mirror for the drivers side. No excuse for cutting people off now.

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In Abilene heading for Hell Paso. Hope I get that AC working.
 

Ozrockrat

Expedition Leader
Wow now I remember how bloody stupid I am. When I pulled the plugs on the cruise switches and put them out through the dash I remember thinking it was strange that the tabs stuck out. Fast forward 1600 miles and I go to run the high idle to pull some AC gas in. No high idle. Light bulb comes on and I pull the dash again and check the switch. Swap the connector around and put it all back together.

Now I have cruise control. While feeling very relieved it is worked I feel like a total dweeb for getting it wrong in the first place.

 

rlrenz

Explorer
Stan Laurel once told Oliver Hardy "Gosh, I'm dumb today." We all have dumb moments. That's life.
 

Ozrockrat

Expedition Leader
Made it to Deming NM. 865 miles, 95 gallons of diesel at 62 mph average and 9.1 mpg.

AC is working OK. Giving it a little recharge worked better the 2nd time when I got the gas into the correct system :Wow1:

Cruise is a major bonus. I have slowed down a little as I found I was resting on the governor while manually controlling the speed. Now setting it on just under 70 (sweeter spot for vibration) and it just pulls along nicely. It did drop a gear once pulling up a steep climb out but so far this engine/gearing combo seems the best of the 3 trucks. It is only rated at 240hp the same as the Cummins but makes its power in a whole different way.
 

rlrenz

Explorer
When I was driving my ambulance back to MN from Philadelphia, my son rode along and helped with the driving. After he had been wheeling along for a few hours, he grumbled that "this thing really needs cruise control!" I told him that it had cruise, but that the buttons were on the dash and not on the steering wheel - his comment was "oh...".
 

Fugly

Adventurer
Oz,

On reading your list of goodies you took ..
I to was going to say bull to the coffee machine
On reading the second page and saw the pic of the coffee machine ..
I let google be my friend...and found a shop here in Perth West Oz.......
Selling them i now own a minipresso bloody great little machine......
Have a great trip I enjoy reading your adventures/ machine builds.....

Cheers Fugly
 

calicamper

Expedition Leader
Made it to Deming NM. 865 miles, 95 gallons of diesel at 62 mph average and 9.1 mpg.

AC is working OK. Giving it a little recharge worked better the 2nd time when I got the gas into the correct system :Wow1:

Cruise is a major bonus. I have slowed down a little as I found I was resting on the governor while manually controlling the speed. Now setting it on just under 70 (sweeter spot for vibration) and it just pulls along nicely. It did drop a gear once pulling up a steep climb out but so far this engine/gearing combo seems the best of the 3 trucks. It is only rated at 240hp the same as the Cummins but makes its power in a whole different way.

I bet it runs cooler having been gassed. Ha ha!!! Its been fun reading your adventure!
 

Peneumbra2

Badger Wrangler
Regarding the mounting of a light bar on the roof of (whatever): ALWAYS try to mount the legs of the bar on the rain gutters. Doing it any other way will cause problems when you take the apparatus out of service. It's worth it to obtain a light bar with a wide enough span to reach gutter-to-gutter.

And, if you check for "used fire apparatus for sale" on your search engine, you'll find an occasional 4X4 ambulance for sale, including some medium-duty ones.
 

Ozrockrat

Expedition Leader
Oz,
..
I let google be my friend...and found a shop here in Perth West Oz.......
Selling them i now own a minipresso bloody great little machine......
Have a great trip I enjoy reading your adventures/ machine builds.....

Cheers Fugly

Glad to serve the international brotherhood of caffeine addicts. ☕️☕️
 

Ozrockrat

Expedition Leader
Well the trip is over. Worked 1/2 a day out of the hotel in Deming NM and then an easy run up to Phoenix. Stopped in and let Hobitony have a look at the rig (sort of a tradition now after stopping there with all 3 Freightliners) and checked out his mods to IMHO the best 4x4 Ford ambo conversion out there. The latest mod of 285/70R19.5 Toyo's is bad arsed.

Then a quick pit stop at IKEA to buy another sink (another tradition for ambo registration) and home in time for everyone to come around and ogle it.

42 hours, 2500 miles at 59 mph and 8.3 mpg.

I will also be updating the initial post to outline some of the tools and suggested processes.

ca5eac2a7d9cc517dfd080494470006b.jpg
 
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rlrenz

Explorer
That's a hard enough drive to think about doing ONCE, let alone three times. My congratulations to you for surviving the journey!
 

rlrenz

Explorer
Regarding the mounting of a light bar on the roof of (whatever): ALWAYS try to mount the legs of the bar on the rain gutters. Doing it any other way will cause problems when you take the apparatus out of service. It's worth it to obtain a light bar with a wide enough span to reach gutter-to-gutter.

And, if you check for "used fire apparatus for sale" on your search engine, you'll find an occasional 4X4 ambulance for sale, including some medium-duty ones.

I'm a member of an emergency vehicle upfitter's group, and this question comes up periodically.

Generally, most police vehicles have gutter mounted light bars. These vehicles are in daily use, and have a relatively short life in a municipal fleet, so resale can be a concern. Increasingly, police vehicles are leased, with prohibitions against drilling any holes in the body, so a gutter mounted light bar (or an interior bar) becomes the only option. Routing the power cable can become challenging, though.

Fire apparatus has a much longer life with a municipality - they are fairly low mileage, and are parked indoors, so deterioration is much slower. I have seen long light bars bolted to the apparatus roof and I have seen a pair of shorter light bars end to end bolted to the roof, but I don't think I have ever seen a gutter clamped light bar.

New ambulances tend to use the manufacturer's body-mounted emergency lighting, though body bracket mounted lightbars are occasionally seen, as are roof mounted light bars. I have never seen a gutter mounted light bar on an ambulance, even on the smaller ambulances. Ambulances operated by fire departments seem to favor lightbars over body lights.

2002 mm-fl.jpg

2005 mm-w-ac.jpg

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Horton height.jpg

Light bar mount with added support.jpg
 

java

Expedition Leader
How do you like that little espresso machine? Is it worth the trouble?

I love my nespresso, but it draws 200amps @ 12vdc :Wow1:
 

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