Belafonte Reboot....Ambulance to 4x4 Camper Conversion

[guidolyons]

Good news Everyone! Backing up my driveway saturday and reverse in my freshly rebuilt tranny flew south for the summer. Good times. Good times...

Ouch! who did the rebuild? You or a shop? Either way, another opportunity to excel.

Edit: I scrolled back through the build...I guess you'll be calling the transmission shop ASAP.

 

[tgreening]

Funny you should mention that, because that's one of the ideas I had also. A light gray with subdude lettering, just a shade darker like this F-18 Super Hornet. You could still leave the upper portion white and it would tie in OK, I believe.

View attachment 285931

Funny you should mention those. Back in the day my aircraft wing was the first to receive the newly commissioned F-18 Hornets. They replaced the F4 which was physical proof you could fly a brick if you put big enough engines in it. Great bird in it's day but a maintenance nightmare. Other than training squadrons we had them even before the regular Navy. I really enjoyed that job. Wrenching on these is something I miss to this day. Manning the Hush House, a closed "hanger" where we did full power and afterburner tests, was quite an experience. Standing feet away from one of these when it went to afterburner was not incredibly pleasant. You could feel your teeth and bones vibrating, I kid you not, and it hurt. Ahhhh, those were the days.

 

[tgreening]

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Well since my ride is back at the tranny shop there's not much I can do with it except dream. With that in mind I wouldnt mind some opinions on the above paint scheme, with or without the logos, and paint color TBD. The black has started to grow on me though. Biggest question is what do you guys think of the actual lines of the design? I feel its quite a bit of paint bang for the buck without getting overly complicated, IE difficult to do. I can picture banging out the basics fairly quick.

 

[patoz]

That design is kinda growing on me, and is very doable. You could find a black that matches the wheels, which would tie them together, and maybe add some type of pinstriping between the black and the white. I assume you will carry the black around and across the back also, right? Have you checked to see how it will interact with the windows and doors on the right side as well as the rear also?

I know the two logo's on the side are from fictitious corporations in a couple of movies, but just FYI there is also a real Umbrella Corporation Weapons Research Group.

Umbrella Corporation is a research, development, and engineering firm incorporated in 2007 with primary focus on small arms design to include complete weapon systems as well as functional parts and accessories...

https://www.ucwrg.com/index/

 

[tgreening]

That design is kinda growing on me, and is very doable. You could find a black that matches the wheels, which would tie them together, and maybe add some type of pinstriping between the black and the white. I assume you will carry the black around and across the back also, right? Have you checked to see how it will interact with the windows and doors on the right side as well as the rear also?

I know the two logo's on the side are from fictitious corporations in a couple of movies, but just FYI there is also a real Umbrella Corporation Weapons Research Group.



https://www.ucwrg.com/index/

Hadn't thought about pinstriping but that was a good call. Would probably look better.

It'll definitely carry on around at least in some fashion. Probably a continuation of what I have above would look best. I think on the far side pretty much all the compartments will be contained in the black, along with two windows. Across the back probably all the windows. Not a big deal since those are fairly easy things to tape off.

I'm surprised by that companies claim of copyright on the name and logo. The movie corp and logo precedes them by quite a bit. I'd hazard that if the studio wanted to throw down over it that firearm company would be hard pressed to defend it. I was under the impression that in film the movie and everything in it that they created becomes their coprighted(sp?) material. There's small differences in the design but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that they're trying to play off the movie popularity.

Anyway, yeah, the design is growing on me as well. What do you think about the color? The logos were just a bit of fun. I'd like to do something on there to add some detail and something interesting, other than just a two tone paint scheme.

 

[cjken]

Black white and red look nice
Or black white and yellow.
I would not mix the red and yellow. One or the other.
I thought the grey stripes looked nice as well. That one would require the least effort I think.
You could possibly have a sign shop do the striping or a partial wrap.

 

[patoz]

I spent a couple of hours last night, looking at both standard and custom ambulance paint jobs to try to get some more ideas, but didn't really find anything worth posting.

As I mentioned before, if it had a theme of some sort, picking colors and logos, etc. would be much easier.

 

[tgreening]

Black white and red look nice
Or black white and yellow.
I would not mix the red and yellow. One or the other.
I thought the grey stripes looked nice as well. That one would require the least effort I think.
You could possibly have a sign shop do the striping or a partial wrap.

Where you thinking the red or yellow would go?

The stripes are definitely the easiest, but still a bit ambulancey (yeah I made that up) to me. The black and white I did still looks like something from the local PD, or County Sherrif, but thats still better than ambulance.

 

[cjken]

I was just talking about the two logos you had in the pic.
It actually looks pretty good as is.

When do you expect to have the tranny issue worked out??

Is it drivable with the current gearing or is a re-gear on the short list??

 

[tgreening]

I was just talking about the two logos you had in the pic.
It actually looks pretty good as is.

When do you expect to have the tranny issue worked out??

Is it drivable with the current gearing or is a re-gear on the short list??

Gotcha on the paint.

Hopefully the tranny will be worked out by the end of next week. It's not really going to matter much if it isnt because we're headed to Disney for 2 weeks on the 10th.

It's driveable, but still in the short list. Its ok at highway speeds in relatively flat ground but it doesnt take too much hill to start dumping gears.

 

[patoz]

Black white and red look nice
Or black white and yellow.
I would not mix the red and yellow. One or the other.
I thought the grey stripes looked nice as well. That one would require the least effort I think.
You could possibly have a sign shop do the striping or a partial wrap.

Agreed! After all you don't want it looking like a Chinese restaurant! I would wait on the stripe color until you decide on the logo(s) and use a color that ties it all together.

I know that picture was just an example, but I would only use one or the other of the logos since they are from two different movies, and two different 'corporations'. Probably, what I would do once you decide, is use a big one on the rear sides and then find a smaller one or something related to it for the cab doors. When I was looking at the Umbrella Corp. stuff, I found a pretty good assortment of related decals you could buy on eBay, etc. Just Google one of the logos, and select 'Images' to see several pages of related material.

 

[tgreening]

I had thought about modding the logos a bit to tie them together both visually and...physically? I could change the yellow to red. I dont think there is a hard and fast rule on the colors for that one like there is for the other. I had thought about adding a slogan to the Umbrella Corp. For Weyland/Yutani its "building better worlds", and thats official. For the other I thought about "Umbrella Corporation- Building a better You". If you know the movies it fits. To tie them together I was going to make one "A division of...", I just cant decide which one should be the division.

With a name like Umbrella Corporation its the logical choice as parent, but from an assets and resources standpoint it seems like Weyland/Yutani would be the one pulling the strings.

How geeked out is THIS getting?

Anyhow, I think I'm going to go with that general paint scheme, black and white, and as silly as it is I'll probably go with some form of those movie references. Should be fun. The best part is I'm going to do it with plasti-dip so if I dont like it/get tired of it I can peel and be right back to where I started.

 

[patoz]

I know, we are probably putting way too much into this, but it's gotta look GOOD!

I am actually thinking of using the Dharma Initiative logo from the movie 'Lost' on mine. This design is so simple, that even if I didn't want to use plain black and white, I could use gray shades or even do it in a dark blue (instead of black) and white. I want blue stripes so a blue logo would fit right in.

I never watched the series when it was on TV, but about a year ago, I watched the entire thing back-to-back on Netflix. It got so complicated, I never would have been able to keep up by watching on TV. If you missed even 10 or 15 minutes of it, you were then the one 'Lost'! I got so in to it, that on some weekends I would start watching in the morning and go 12 hours before stopping.

Dharma = Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications. And under that, or somewhere on the body add, 'Dynamic Response Unit'. Is that a bunch of technobabble BS or what?

The Dharma Initiative placed nine known research stations around the Island (as well as the off-island Lamp Post), most of which take the form of hidden underground facilities or bunkers.

Research stations


Station 1: The Hydra
Station 2: The Arrow
Station 3: The Swan
Station 4: The Flame
Station 5: The Pearl
Station 6: The Orchid
Station ?: The Staff
Station ?: The Looking Glass
Station ?: The Tempest
Station ?: The Lamp Post

They had labels and tags for everything, including their own beer.

So, lots of options for me to work with here.


Can you imagine pulling up in a campground late at night somewhere with about 10,000 lumens of LED lights going, and jumping out dressed in uniforms, complete with patches and nametags? Would that freak out the neighbors, or what?

This is the only time having an aluminum body is a drawback, because I would like to have all of this on magnetic sign material so it could be removed for more 'serious' engagements.

And then there is always this...

 

[huskyhauler]

Your original paint scheme is very similar to what mine looked like, white with a red stripe. I opted to leave the cab and box white and just paint the red stripe a different color because one, the original paint job was really well done and still glossy, and two, it was much cheaper than painting the entire rig. To paint out just the stripe cost me around $500 at Maaco. Maaco has a reputation of being great or terrible, so I did some research and found a shop with high reviews on several online sites (google reviews, yelp, etc). It's been three years and the paint has held up great. No fading or peeling whatsoever, though I am in temperate Western Washington where our temps range from only 20 degrees to 90 degrees.

As far a color scheme is concerned, we went with a purple stripe with purple box lenses as this was going to be used as a tailgate rig during the football season. We also went with a large, ,somewhat custom husky logo on each side to fill in the blank white space. Fast Signs was able to print and install them for $500 total.

 

[patoz]

Are the logos decals or painted on? Just wondering about the cost of one vs. the other.