TheRealPapaK
Active member
Hello everyone, I've been lurking on this site for a few weeks and reading all the ambulance conversion threads I could find. I am looking at converting an ambulance into a camper that my wife lives in part time as her job has her working in different city than we live in.
As a back story, we had an old 31' Winnebago chieftain that I used for work. It was too big to be practical but we had a lot of fun touring in that thing. We sold it 4 years ago but had talked about how we would like to have something similar but smaller. My wife wanted to do a van but I thought it would be too small. After she rented a van and did a trip down to SoCal with her sister, she let me know it wasn't too small and that she wanted todo it. After looking at van classifieds, I was blown away at the cost of used cargo vans. At that point I saw a used ambulance being advertised and that got me thinking. A few google searches later took me to this website and gave me the validation I needed.
I am currently looking at an auction that starts at the beginning of May. We originally going to to a fast and dirty conversion but the Acetech "brain has been removed and I will have to wire an entirely new electrical system so I figured I might as well gut the entire unit and add some insulation and raise the roof. I'm playing with the idea of adding a cab-over bunk if I'm cutting the roof anyway. In my mind, I will raise the roof up to the bunk and have the back slope down to almost normal height. Has anyone done a rain water collection system on something like this? Not that it's a huge deal to find water to refill the fresh water but if it can make you self sufficient for a while longer, it might be worth looking at down the road. I've attached a sketch of what I'm thinking. I think the sloped down roof will also be more aerodynamic.
I was initially thinking of skipping the inverter and running off 12V only but I had an idea to have a split phase inverter and have it hooked up to a large furnace fan with filtered air. The reason I want to do this is when we have camped in the desert previously, dust would fill the camper every time the door was opened. If I could have the fan kick on when the door light was triggered I am envisioning positive air keeping the dust out. Has anyone seen anything like this?
Anyhow, I'm looking for any tips or suggestions anyone might have. Products you liked, things you would do differently etc.
As a back story, we had an old 31' Winnebago chieftain that I used for work. It was too big to be practical but we had a lot of fun touring in that thing. We sold it 4 years ago but had talked about how we would like to have something similar but smaller. My wife wanted to do a van but I thought it would be too small. After she rented a van and did a trip down to SoCal with her sister, she let me know it wasn't too small and that she wanted todo it. After looking at van classifieds, I was blown away at the cost of used cargo vans. At that point I saw a used ambulance being advertised and that got me thinking. A few google searches later took me to this website and gave me the validation I needed.
I am currently looking at an auction that starts at the beginning of May. We originally going to to a fast and dirty conversion but the Acetech "brain has been removed and I will have to wire an entirely new electrical system so I figured I might as well gut the entire unit and add some insulation and raise the roof. I'm playing with the idea of adding a cab-over bunk if I'm cutting the roof anyway. In my mind, I will raise the roof up to the bunk and have the back slope down to almost normal height. Has anyone done a rain water collection system on something like this? Not that it's a huge deal to find water to refill the fresh water but if it can make you self sufficient for a while longer, it might be worth looking at down the road. I've attached a sketch of what I'm thinking. I think the sloped down roof will also be more aerodynamic.
I was initially thinking of skipping the inverter and running off 12V only but I had an idea to have a split phase inverter and have it hooked up to a large furnace fan with filtered air. The reason I want to do this is when we have camped in the desert previously, dust would fill the camper every time the door was opened. If I could have the fan kick on when the door light was triggered I am envisioning positive air keeping the dust out. Has anyone seen anything like this?
Anyhow, I'm looking for any tips or suggestions anyone might have. Products you liked, things you would do differently etc.
