2006 Ford E-350 Ambulance Race Car Tow Rig

[Liftedwrx]

Wanted to document the progress on my ambulance tow rig.
Current album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/barUkCkb3oh1EmZ37
Album of the miata: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hTGVDk9fgePerkQw9
I had been looking at trucks to tow my race car with but couldn't justify spending over 3x what I paid for the actual car I was racing. Then I saw an ad on Craigslist for an ambulance someone had converted to tow their car, and this got me seriously thinking. I started doing research and was finding ambulances for super cheap compared to what the equivalent truck was selling for, and you get a bunch of storage and somewhere to sleep at the track. So I started strictly looking for ambulances. I had been looking at ambulances for around 6 months mainly on Craigslist and FB Marketplace, found a few pop up for sale close to me and inquired about them but they would all sell before I could get out there to look at them because I was traveling quite a bit for work. Well, fast forward a few months and I still hadn't bought anything and now Covid has come around. Everyone on the jobsite I had been working at got sent home. So I was working from home for the next 3-4 months and had started to look around on a few more websites. Ended up finding an 06 Ford E-350 Ambulance with 90,000 miles on Ebay for $4,500 with 0 bids and about 7 days left. Thought what the hell, I will toss a bid in, at $4,500 that is a good deal. About a day or two later someone out bid me by $50 so I just continued to watch the auction until the last day. No one had made anymore bids and it was still at $4,550 so I said screw it and did one more bid so it was at $4,600. Checked back in a few hours later with only 15 minutes left of the auction and I was still winning. I didn't want to bid again so I set a timer for 15 minutes and didn't look at my phone, when the timer went off I also got an email saying I had won my auction.

From here I contacted the seller who was in New York City and arranged a date for me to pick it up. A few weeks later after transferring the title and getting plates for it my buddy and I made the 20 hour trip out to NYC. Ended up taking my 2003 Honda Insight which can get around 70 mpg on average but with the speeds we were going it was getting closer to 57 to 60 mpg. But this is when the gas prices had plummeted and we filled up in WI for $0.99 a gallon, with the insight only having a 10 gallon tank we were basically able to go 600 miles on $9. By the time we got to NYC we had spend $20 on gas which was considerably less than we had to spend on the damn tolls. Eventually made it to the Bellerose Rescue where the truck was being retired from, exchanged the money, got a quick explanation on how stuff worked, gave us the keys and we were on our way. We drove for about 2 hours and pulled over in a Lowe's parking lot to spend the night as we had just driven 20 hours straight and were exhausted. So I slept on the bench and my buddy slept on an air mattress on the floor. The next day we hit the road bright and early as we still had an 18 hour drive ahead of us. We made it back very late that day and I was extremely tired after driving all day the last 3 days. My next free day I went out to my shop and started really looking at everything and taking a lot of "before" pictures.

 

[Liftedwrx]

The first task at hand was removing all of the stickers. This turned out to be a much harder and more time consuming task than I was expecting. In total it took me 4 days after work to get all the stickers removed, this was with the help of my girlfriend and a few buddies. It also involved me slicing my finger down to the bone trying to put a razor blade into a little holder I had 3d printed to help speed up the process. Ended up finding the best method to remove the stickers was to let the ambulance sit outside in the sun for a few hours then start removing stickers with the razor blade. I did leave one big white stripe on as I got tired of removing stickers and don't really mind how it looks, when I paint it in the future I will have to remove it but for now it is staying.



The stickers on the back really did not want to come off, they ended up taking quite a bit of paint off until I realized that letting it sit in the sun makes them come off easier and cleaner.

 

[Liftedwrx]

With my first event coming up I needed to get a hitch/trailer wiring done and a bed made. While I waited for the hitch to arrive I started gutting the interior of the bench and flooring and got started on the frame of the bed.







After Staining

 

[MTVR]

What kind of race car?

 

[Liftedwrx]

What kind of race car?

I am racing a 1990 Mazda Miata in the SCCA Spec Miata class

 

[Liftedwrx]

Next up was the hitch. Here I decided to use the rear step and just cut out a hole on each side as the material for the step was quite thick. I also got bigger bolts with lock washers and lock nuts. This is a class V hitch rated for 16k lbs. I don't think I will ever want to tow that much but it wasn't much more expensive than the class IV.

 

[Liftedwrx]

I didn't get many pictures of doing the wiring as it was pretty boring and not really worth taking pictures of. But it was pretty straight forward, this ambulance didn't have any plugs to just plug the wiring into so I had to run it all from scratch. Fortunately there was a junction box under the ambulance by the hitch that had all the wiring terminals I needed (turn signals, reverse, running lights, brake lights). So I just ran my wiring from the box that came with the kit to this junction box. From there I had to run a trailer brake controller wire and a power wire up to the front of the vehicle to connect to the trailer brake controller. The controller needed wiring as well as the conversion box that came with the kit, so those were tied into the power cabinet behind the driver seat where the house module timer and power input is. I fused all of these and wrapped them in corrugated wire wrap to make sure nothing ever shorts out in the future. Once all of this was done it was just a matter of mounting the conversion box and running the trailer plug to the hitch. I ended up taking out the driver rear turn signal and mounting the box behind that and running all the wires down and straight to the hitch. Here is a picture of the junction box that was already on the ambulance.


Also removed some unnecessary wiring and cleaned up the wiring I wanted to keep while I had the cab stuff out. I wish I had taken some before pictures of the rats nest that was under the switch box/dog house. It was very intimidating at first but once I realized what was going on and what could be thinned it made the job a lot easier. I was able to remove al lot of wiring for the switches and just keep what I was going to use in the future.

 

[Liftedwrx]

A few days after getting the hitch done I would be taking the maiden voyage of the ambulance towing to our first event. This event was a license school, it was a 3 days school up in Brainerd, Minnesota at Brainerd International Raceway. Once completing this course I would get my SCCA license. The trip went perfectly, no issues with the ambulance, got to park at one of my buddies cabins about 10 min from the track, and got to get a lot of seat time in the miata. This was a great first trip because it wasn't too far away but gave me insight into some things that could use improving. The biggest thing I took away from this trip was that the cab interior needs some serious work. The light bar needs to come off as it makes a lot of noise going freeway speed. Also the transmission in the miata is about to commit suicide but that has nothing to do with the ambulance haha.
Before heading out I needed to mount some rain tires on an extra set of wheels as rain was in the forecast.







Fortunately the rain held off all week and gave me some perfect weather for camping in the ambulance.

 

[Liftedwrx]

The weekend after my school I headed off to the junkyard on a mission to clean up the interior and get a center console. I took some before pictures (mainly so I didn't forget to grab anything from the junkyard). I was on the hunt for new door cards, corner/turn signals, headlight switch, vents, headliner, oh ******** handles, visors, center console, a radio, and possibly some rv/camper seats.

Before Pictures:







And After:





I was able to score most of what I was looking for, only things I couldn't find were different seats and a radio. I was able to get a pretty clean headliner, visor, door panels, a center console, vents, turn signals, and the headlight switch. I was able to get it all for $38 which really surprised me because the center consoles on Ebay go for over $150. Overall a very good junkyard run.
Also ended up taking the light bar off while the headliner was out.

 

[MTVR]

I am racing a 1990 Mazda Miata in the SCCA Spec Miata class
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Very cool.

My wife and I have been involved in motorcycle road racing.

What course(s) do you race at?

 

[Liftedwrx]

A week later was my very first official race. I would be making the ~5 hour trip to Road America for the SVRA Miata Heritage Cup as Mazda would pay for any miata entry fees. I couldn't pass up that opportunity. My grandparents have about 90 acres southeast of Eau Claire which works out to be almost half way to RA, so me and my girlfriend decided to make the first half of our trip the day before and spend the night there before finishing the trip the next day. Unfortunately the trip did not work out that easily. On our 2 hour drive to my grandparents the fan clutch wasn't kicking into high speed every time and it was starting to get hot going up some of the bigger hills in rural Wisconsin. We finally made it out to the property and spent the night with my grandparents.


The next day we decided to hit the road and hopefully the fan starts working again as it used to. That was not the case... We made it about 30 minutes before the temps started climbing. Once they would hit 235 I would pull over or just start coasting until they went down again. After about another 30 minutes of this we decided to pull over because the AC started to get pretty weak. I found that the AC compressor was getting seized, it would spin normally for a minute then get stuck for a few seconds so I started looking for shops nearby that would be able to fix it. Called about 10 places nearby but none of them had time to help us out, so we continued on. We drove about another hour on the rural highways of Wisconsin before stopping to fill up the gas cans for the miata and top off the tank of the ambi. When I started the ambi to leave the gas station I had no power steering and basically no brakes, they worked but it took all of my strength to slow us down. Turned it off and found an 11 ft belt laying on the ground... Turns out the AC compressor finally seized and wore through the belt. So now we were SOL, it was a Friday at 6pm and we were in rural Wisconsin. Called a few places to see if they had the belt but had no luck in finding one, I did find a Ford dealership about 10 minutes away in Fond Du Lac but they were basically closing. Called them anyway just to see if anyone was still there, the owner ended up answering the phone and was extremely nice and helpful. He said if we could make it to the dealership he would let us spend the night in the parking lot and would get 2 of his technicians started on it at 7am the next morning. Huge sigh of relief for us as it seemed we could not win that day, but we still had to get to the dealership somehow. The main issue was the water pump was also driven off of this belt. So we let the ambi cool down for about 15 minutes before trying to take off. To get there I would accelerate up to about 60-65 then shut off the engine and coast as long as I could, if I needed to slow down I would mainly use the trailer brakes which actually slowed us down quite a bit. So after doing this for about 15 minutes we finally made it to the dealership and the owner came out to show us where we could park and where to get some good food nearby. Once he left we walked to the Walmart across the street and got some sandwich supplies, beer, and some battery powered fans. That night ended up being pretty good, we sat on the top of the ambi with our sandwiches and drinks to watch the sunset, then hung out in the nearby grass area with a frisbee before going to bed. The next day we woke up as all the employees were showing up, once they opened I walked in to talk to the service writers and explain the situation. They were expecting me and already knew most of what was going on, so I unhooked the trailer and they pulled the ambi into the shop. They did some diagnostics for a bit and came back to say the AC compressor was indeed seized and we would need to get a new belt. The AC compressor wasn't an issue as they had one in stock, finding the belt on the other hand was proving to be tricky to find. He said they have already started tearing it apart to get the compressor changed out in hopes we could find a belt before he was starting to put it all back together. After looking with the service writer for about 30 minutes we finally found one at an O'Reillys about 45 minutes north of Fond Du Lac, unfortunately their parts runner was about 30 minutes south of us. We offered to run and get it if they supplied us with a car. So he handed me a set of keys and we were off. Once we made it to O'Reillys the guy hands me a belt that was about 2 feet long... Ended up looking on his computer and finding the one we needed but it was another 30 minutes away up in Green Bay. So we made the hike up to Green Bay, finally got the belt we needed, then drove around Green Bay for a few minutes and checked out Lambeau Field as my family and I are huge Packer fans. Also found a Gander Mountain so we stopped to get a bug net so we could keep the back doors open overnight in ambi. Made it back to Fond Du Lac just as the technician was getting the AC compressor installed so we waited at a nearby park for the call that everything was finished. About 2 hours later we were told everything was back together and working properly, we got a new fan clutch installed, the ac compressor, the system filled, and the new belt. All said and done it was a $2,200 bill which I know I could have done all the work myself back home for much less but I did not want to have to do all this on the side of the road, so I was very thankful this dealership was so helpful and wanted to help me get to my race. Once on the road it was smooth sailing for the last 45 minutes of the drive. We made it to Road America around 4 pm which was after my sessions for Saturday were finished so I didn't get to drive at all but they did have a drive in movie that night playing Ford vs Ferrari, so we unloaded everything and unhitched the trailer and took the ambi over to that. It worked out perfectly as we brought our chairs, blankets and beers up top to enjoy the movie, it was also her birthday so it was a relaxing way to spend that.



Racing the next day went great, no issues with the car and the rain that was in the forecast held off until about 5 minutes after we came off track. I was able to get a practice, qualifier, and a race in by the time we had to leave. For a free entry, I couldn't complain. It also was a lot of fun talking and hanging out with the people we were pitted next to. Everyone seemed to love the ambulance we had a lot of people come and check it out, in fact two different groups came up to us and said they were working on theirs to do the same thing but they just weren't finished yet. One of the teams actually all work together at an EMS station and had a lot of stories to tell and gave me lots of advice for things to do to mine. So all in all it was a fun experience once the very stressful drive was over with. But we still had the 5 hour drive home...


Once the race was over it was time to pack up and hit the road again. The drive went smoothly for about the first hour, then we heard a noise that sounded like a tire blowing so we pulled over again. No tires were flat so I popped the hood and found the other belt that drives the second alternator has broke and in the process slung up and took out the brand new fan clutch wiring... We felt very defeated at this point, as it was Sunday night almost at this point and we were 4 hours away from home. I had a flight to catch at 6 am Monday morning and my girlfriend had to work the next day as well. So I got my wiring tools/supplies out and tried to crimp the wires back together, which was extremely difficult in the space where the fan clutch is. Eventually I got it all connected, taped up, and ziptied as far away from the fan as I could (which only ended up being about 2 inches or so) and we hit the road. Started driving and the fan was working as it should until we hit a massive bump in the freeway with about 3 hours left in the journey. This must have bounced the wiring into the fan because the fan stopped working and she started getting hot again. Pulled over for diesel and sure enough the wires had been pulled out of the connections. It was getting quite late at this point and I didn't want to touch it again so I just drove the rest of the way home carefully watching the temps and slowing down when needed. We got a massive rain storm with an hour left and that kept ambi cool for a while which helped a lot as we could go a bit faster then. By the time we got to my shop it was about 2 am and we still had to unload everything. By the time we were on our way home it was about 3 am and we were both exhausted from the weekend, once I got home I packed up for my trip and got about 2 hours of sleep before heading off to the airport.

 

[Liftedwrx]

Very cool.

My wife and I have been involved in motorcycle road racing.

What course(s) do you race at?

So far I have only raced at Brainerd International Raceway and Road America. Next year I would like to hit up Blackhawk, Autobahn, and maybe Indy if the budget works out.

What kind of bikes? And where do you guys normally race?

 

[MTVR]

We're not currently racing, although track days are still on the menu.

We are on the west coast, so mostly we are at Portland International Raceway, where I have served as a road racing official, a road racing instructor, and an expert-licensed road racer. PIR has a really interesting history- it is built on the former streets of the city of Vanport, which was wiped out when a dike failed after WWII.

We have had numerous race and track day motorcycles. Most recently, I had a Yamaha R1 prepped in Supersport trim, so as to be legal for Open Supersport and Open Superbike. My wife had a hot pink pearl Suzuki SV650 in Supersport trim.

I also have an MV Agusta F3 800 that I keep for special days.

I also used to drag race out there, in NHRA's Pro ET class- in a red Mazda 2-door with a stick-shift. It was a '72 Mazda RX2, with a 250-horsepower 12A rotary and a '57 Pontiac spool rear end.

 

[Liftedwrx]

We're not currently racing, although track days are still on the menu.

We are on the west coast, so mostly we are at Portland International Raceway, where I have served as a road racing official, a road racing instructor, and an expert-licensed road racer. PIR has a really interesting history- it is built on the former streets of the city of Vanport, which was wiped out when a dike failed after WWII.

We have had numerous race and track day motorcycles. Most recently, I had a Yamaha R1 prepped in Supersport trim, so as to be legal for Open Supersport and Open Superbike. My wife had a hot pink pearl Suzuki SV650 in Supersport trim.

I also have an MV Agusta F3 800 that I keep for special days.

I also used to drag race out there, in NHRA's Pro ET class- in a red Mazda 2-door with a stick-shift. It was a '72 Mazda RX2, with a 250-horsepower 12A rotary and a '57 Pontiac spool rear end.

That sounds fun, I would love to make a trip out west and try some of the tracks out there. I am not sure if I trust taking the ambi on a trip like that yet haha. What kind of times was your Mazda running?

 

[MTVR]

That sounds fun, I would love to make a trip out west and try some of the tracks out there. I am not sure if I trust taking the ambi on a trip like that yet haha. What kind of times was your Mazda running?

High 11s at just over 110 mph on 87 unleaded, through the muffler. No nitrous, no turbo, no supercharger. All steel, 2,300 pounds.

It had a little 600 double-pumper Holley on a Racing Beat intake manifold and a Racing Beat header on a nearly stock 70 cubic inch '85 RX7 12A. I used Racing Beat templates to do race exhaust ports and small bridgeport intake ports myself, and built the engine on a kitchen chair.