Sorry, I've been in the hospital for a few days, I did get the brackets made and holes drilled for the new rear bumper/spare tire carrier I'm making though. Everyone tells me to take it easy I just say whats that LOL.
I have alot of new update photos to show everyone but I've been way too busy with the hospital BS, helping my dad get a new truck and gathering the parts to do a cummins conversion on it, and many other things. I'll get some more pics up asap, espeically of the interior which I'm very proud of how its turning out.
Here are a few shots of the outside. As you can see we also upgraded to the newer style Econoline/ F series side mirrors. I just welded up the holes in the doors before sending it to the painters.
We went with a ford charcoal grey with a very light bit of pearl in it to make it kinda sparkle just a bit.
Here is a shot of one of the windows I got installed its a double pane insulated window from Hehr just like the rest of the windows in the ambulance. I decided to go with a smaller window on the drivers side so I'm waiting on the new one, for now this is the only one done. You can also see the roof mounted A/C we installed, I tried an indoor portable unit but it was worthless and took up valuable indoor space. This thing cools great so far, its a coleman unit 13,500 btu so it shouldnt have a problem keeping us cool even in this 105* texas heat. I had the painter mix up the paint to hold up the plastic and shoot the a/c unit to blend it all in. I think it turned out well.
New wheels and tires, 18" rockstars, I know the rockcrawler guys hate them but the wife likes them and I've never seen them on any expo vehicles so I figured they'd be different. The tires werent my first choice but they were alot cheaper than my favorite BFG's, we went with the Nitto Terra Grapplers 295/75/18 with is a 34.5" tall tire but nitto calls a 35". These should clear everything fine with I get the last few bits for the Ujoint conversion.
Speaking of the conversion, we have most of the parts and will start installing everything we can very soon. I purchased an 04 F350 single wheel front axle (Dana 60) with 4.10 gears, replaced seals, etc. I also ordered a set of warn hubs from Chris at Ujoint and went ahead and installed new calipers, brake pads and turned the stock rotors down since they were plenty beefy still.
I did a quick search and couldnt find a good tow hitch for the cutaway van chassis and I needed a way to mount a spare tire anyway so I decided to make my own bumper/hitch/tire carrier. I went to the local steel yard and bought some high quality 2x6 1/4" wall steel for the main part and 2x2 1/4" wall for the rest of it. I think it will all be plenty beefy to tow our 20ft bass boat or to have a luggage rack attached to the back to haul a generator when we go to alaska or other remote places. I'm using a large hub and spindle assembly as the pivot point and just need to go to grainger to pickup a heavy duty latch assembly to keep it all tied into place.
Trust me there is a bumper in there somewhere.
Let me know what you guys think.