Way back when I was working in the surplus yard in Pembroke Pines inspecting and prepping the rig for it’s maiden voyage north I had found that the cab mounted emergency light bar had been removed as part of the decommissioning process. I noticed it in a pile of various lightbars, controllers, police car cages…
Author: Michael Kurt
Scene Lights
The ambulance came equipped with pairs of fixed, halogen lights on the left, right and rear of the module. These were used to light the area surrounding the vehicle when “on scene”. Each individual light head had a 60 watt halogen bulb, a chrome reflector and diffusing lens in addition to the rubber weather strip…
Module Ceiling
The ceiling design was of particular importance given my desire to retain as much headroom as possible. I’m 6’2″ (74″) and the module, with the existing ceiling completely removed, is also 6’2″. In bare feet, I can stand comfortably without having to duck my head. In any kind of footwear I have to tip my…
Finishing Touches
There is a seemingly endless number of things to polish on the truck and the more I polish the more things I find that need polishing. By far, the biggest time suck has been the 78 light heads on the exterior of the vehicle. My original intent was to leave this task until much later,…
Galley
This will detail the design and construction of the galley counter. Below is the counter as designed in Sketchup. The countertop itself, which will be 1.5″ butcher block, is only wire-framed so that the underlying structure is visible. For the front face of the counter, which would also be the primary support for the butcher…
Cabinetry
While the truck has copious amounts of built-in storage that I intend to re-use with little or no modification, I also needed some additional cabinets, shelves and drawers to make living in it full-time a little more comfortable. Wood would be the obvious choice, but I have zero skill when it comes to woodworking. It…
Water, Part 2
My previous water post primarily covered how I’m going to store water. This post is an overview of the entire plumbing system; How water comes in, gets moved around, heated, used and ultimately departs. The schematic above illustrates the overall design of my water system, which I’ll further describe in the sections below. Water Pressure…
Electric Boogaloo
I’ve previously covered my power audit and the overall electrical design of the truck. That described how much power I think I’ll need and the various ways I’ll collect and store that power. The next step is power distribution. In the photo above, the various breakers for the solar panels and other DC sources are…
Wax On, Wax Off
Besides the window polishing, I’ve also been polishing the many, many plastic lenses covering the various emergency strobes, turn signals, scene, reverse, brake and intersection lights spread all over the truck. Some of these were in okay condition, but many of them were over-tightened resulting in stress cracks and most have fogging from sun damage….
Updates and Whatnot
I realized today that it has been months since my last post. I assume no one is reading this dreck, but I still like to try and maintain some kind of consistency. Here’s a few things that don’t really justify their own post. Inline Vent Fan I was spelunking in the far reaches of the…