How to Find Your Ambulance to Convert and What To Look For

Hello everyone, as we get closer to Christmas, I just wanted to take a minute and thank everyone for being a part of the channel by watching the videos, commenting and giving us the thumbs up. I really appreciate how much we are getting closer to Christmas and this time. of the year, a lot of things are happening, especially, I really wanted to sincerely thank you all for being a part of the channel. Those of you who have collected stickers. Thank you so much. We have some new left handed decals. In a couple of weeks I'll let you all know when they get here and you can show

your

love and support for this idiot here who's taking his morning nap so let's get into the video and thank you all so much again. coming and going in

your

mind and should I change my lifestyle?

Should I go from living in a house to living in a vehicle and you start

look

ing at vehicles and you don't know

what

you want to get? Have we all been through that? I'm sure you want to get a cargo van that you know like a Transit or a Promaster or a Sprint. Do you want to get a manufactured RV? Do you want an RV manufactured in Class A, Class B or Class C? Do you want to get one? old box truck as a transport truck and build it from scratch, um, if the answer to all that is no and you focused on an

ambulance

and you're watching YouTube videos of people living comfortable lives in these past lives. saving vehicles the attraction to an

ambulance

is easy to understand the storage the build quality and let's not forget the cool factor an ambulance is a cool vehicle to live in, that's for sure, but if you break it down into simple economic terms, uh an ambulance for the money you can spend to get into one, you can get a lot of vehicles, so let's take a

look

at my truck.

I paid six thousand dollars for my truck. I purchased a Ford Super Duty vehicle with a dual rear end. -3-stroke diesel power with 85,000 miles, good tires and no major mechanical problems, so for six thousand dollars it is a great truck, you can

find

very similar offers, like that. When I was looking for my truck, there were, you know? I had seen a lot of them that were in the price range between four five six seven eight thousand dollars right in that range, quite a few platforms that were in exactly the same price range, so if you are willing to travel from your location, Definitely, may you know that it opens up a much larger library of vehicles you can choose from and gives you the opportunity to shop around for an even better deal?

I'm going to go over how I found my truck and share it. with you some of the things that I've learned since I've had the ambulance and I've talked to a lot of different owners of different ambulances so today we're going to talk about that, how you can

find

one and some of the things. that you can search for when you're looking at all the different platforms that are available, so if you have a good story about how you found your truck, please share it in the comments so everyone can learn from

what

you went through, good or bad.

I hope we hear a lot of good stories, but I'm sure there are some bad stories, like any vehicle purchase, so let's share them all in the comments. I really appreciate you sharing all that information so everyone can absorb it, so the first thing we're going to do is talk about how you can find an ambulance. This is not a mystery. I have received many messages from people asking me exactly that. question, do you know how I find an ambulance? So, Facebook marketplace is currently the most popular buying and selling platform. It's super simple to use for the large number of people who have Facebook on their phones.

Do you know how many millions or billions of people have Facebook? That means that if something is for sale on Facebook, there are a lot of people looking at it, so what does that mean? You have to throw yourself into it if you're really serious about it. We are not going to talk about the Facebook market from the beginning. we're going to talk about craigslist, so if you're my age, you grew up using craigslist, craigslist was the place to find vehicles, motorcycles, well, anything, so all of you who are adult attendees like me will know craigslist inside and out. out and they will have I probably used it many times over the years until recently on craigslist to sell a vehicle on craigslist.

It was free, but recently and I don't know exactly when they implemented a five dollar charge. You can see it in two different ways. Make a much smaller selection because people don't want to pay the five dollars, but you can also see it as people who are listing things being more serious about whether they are going to pay five dollars to put something up for sale. They are serious about selling it and they are not, I don't want to say they are a scam, but they are not something that flies by, they are paying five dollars to sell something, so they are.

Seriously, you go to craigslist on the right and craigslist um is city specific so you go to craigslist and it's in your city basically and they've allowed you to search an area up to 200 miles around your surrounding area. Now they have a feature where you can say search for surrounding cities near me and you can select the different cities that are near you and it will also search there so they have some ability on the site or on the craigslist app where you can expand just from your main area of 200 miles. The problem with that is, let's say you're in a place that's not very populated or it's an area where vehicles are in bad shape in New York and you want to look for a vehicle outside of your area, so you want to look south. or you want to look out west where the vehicles are dry and rust free, that's hard to do on Craigslist.

You know, I could put myself in Phoenix, Arizona while I'm sitting in New York and search the Phoenix, Arizona area, but that can get very tedious. You would have to do it. I keep skipping cities and putting in different locations to search in those areas. What I did was find a way to do a nationwide search on Craigslist and there are several different websites that allow you to do this. I used one and have used it for years. because I like the way it presents search results and it's easy and fast to use. There is a big player in this field that has become popular lately: autotempest.com, you will look at craigslist and ebay and then a bunch of other smaller auto sales. websites, so you can definitely use autotempest.

I just don't prefer it just because of the way it presents information, so let's take a look at auto tempest real quick here so you can get an idea of ​​what it looks like and how it works. it works so the next site we're going to look at and this is the one I really prefer is searchcraigslist.org. Now this is a simple search bar, you type what you are looking for and it shows everyone's search results. nationwide, this is the one I like because it works quickly, it has a pretty simple interface and I like the way the search results appear, let's take a look right now and you can see how to use it very quickly, obviously, very simple and again this is the one I prefer to use so now you've started looking at ambulances for sale across the country and this is good because it allows you to start building an idea or a library of what they cost and what the different ones are. types that are available?

This is a good place to pause and let's talk about what the different types of ambulances are. There are three main classes of ambulances: class one, class two and class three, so here are the three different classes and you know, just a quick summary of what they are, the first one is a class one, a class one is an ambulance which is built on the frame and chassis of a pickup truck and then there is a box added on the back, now the box will be exactly the same box that is used in a class three, the difference is that the box is on the chassis of a pickup truck and then you have a class two, class two is a standard pickup truck that usually has a high roof added to it, so these are um, not as common, they used to be a lot more common, you know, back in the day. , but um, you don't see many of them on the road now, they're still out there, that's still a setup that some I like to use the facilities, but for living, you know, like I'm doing, I think a class two doesn't is really the option you want to go with, you want to see a class one or a class three and then a class three like Mine is built on a cutaway truck chassis so you have the front end of a truck and then the bed on the rear and again the bed in a class one and a class three, they will be the same beds whether you are in a pickup truck. truck or it's in a truck, the bed is the same so it's class one because it's built on a truck chassis, that's the type you're going to want to look at if you're looking specifically at four-wheel drive trucks, obviously.

They come in four wheel drive, so an ambulance that is on a truck chassis, you will find four wheel drive units now, four wheel drives are not as common as two wheel drives, but they are sold . in areas typically where the weather or road conditions require four by four, so we are talking about areas that have snowy dirt roads in their service area, so four wheel drive is a mandatory feature that They should have. The disadvantage, obviously, is if a vehicle is being operated in a snowy atmosphere, rust will be more prevalent than if it is in a dry, arid location.

I thought it would be really awesome to have a four wheel drive ambulance when I started looking but I found a lot of them that were in bad condition they had been operated on in the northeast uh and they were suffering from rust. I saw some that were in such bad shape that I didn't even consider it, so that started to turn me away from four wheel drive because they are not as common, they are more expensive, and the ones I saw were not in good condition. Now many class one ambulances don't have a full step that goes from the box to the cab, what many of them have is just a small service portal, a small window with a slide usually so you can pass information or talk about a side to side, but a full walkthrough is not as common in a class one van type ambulance, so if a walkthrough is important to you, you might want to look at class three, there are classes now that have tutorials, but they are not as common and those that don't, so if you have to take a tour, that was something that had to have you.

You may want to just focus on the class three platforms, now that's an advantage of having a class one because it's built on an aftermarket truck chassis and performance parts for the engine are available fairly easily. An example is the 73 stroke power in this cutaway truck. You don't have an intercooler, you can't find a fresh air intake because of the configuration under the hood, you know the hood is that big, but if you have a class one, a truck based platform, all of those things are available, they have intercooler, you can meet, high end intakes, you can get high end intercooler systems, boost pipes, all those modifications that guys are doing on their trucks, you can make your class one because it has a final truck front end, try to find all those same performance parts for a cut like this, they are not available your sol class three like my ambulance, one of the benefits I already mentioned is the forward travel, now I use that travel every day. when we're driving, especially that route is key, you know, we get to a place and I get out, no, I don't use the driver's door, I very rarely get out of the driver's door, I walk around the back and get in.

In the back of the house, here, to tend to the lefty, hook him to the leash, we go out and, when we are parked in the camp, as we are now, the cabin becomes a small storage area so you know that the food of your dog is stored there. in front of the passenger seat in a sealed container like a Tupperware type container that is at seat height um my ladder uh my extension ladder that goes up there I don't like to store that outside just because the weather wears those out my extra Gatorade uh Eight packs of Gatorade are stored there, so the advantage of having that run is that I can easily go up and get some and take it back as I need it.

A great benefit if you have a dog that you know I have. left-handed and that way for him when we're on the road and traveling and driving, you know, eight, ten hours a day, he'll get up from his seat there, his driver's seat, and he'll come back here to get water. I'll come back here and go to bed sometimes and sometimes I think I videotaped it. In fact, I stopped him. Jump on the bed here while I'm driving and look around like you know we're coming. miles an hour and I look back and he'll be stretched out in bed, but looking at me because he knows he's not supposed to be there for pet owners, dog owners, there's nothing better than walking, he can travel freely. get up and stretch your legs, I think it's essential if you have a dogand you are traveling.

One of the other things about a class 3 like mine is that access to the engine to do engine work from under the hood you have very limited access from the outside, on the contrary you have great access to the rear of the engine , you get in, you pull out the doghouse, you know, the cup holder console type, right there, you pull out the doghouse, you have full access to the back of the engine uh the transmission tunnel is right there the turbo is right there If you have to do it, you could do such a simple turbo replacement on a pickup instead of a van, that's something to keep in mind.

Access to the engine from under the hood is very poor, but access to the rear of the engine from the inside is very good. I'm sorry friend. you have enough, you need me to fill it for you, holy crap, okay, we've talked about the three different kinds of ambulances, so let's do your search again and talk about the Facebook marketplace. The disadvantage of the market is that it only allows you. search the specific city you're in and I was in Rochester and I'm searching 100 miles around, which basically gave me like Buffalo and Syracuse. I would put it in a different city and I would search that hundred mile radius and another city and I would put that hundred mile radius and that became very frustrating so I did a nationwide search on Facebook Marketplace.

There is a site I played with when I was doing my search. It's called searchworldmarketplace.com, but it's very strange and complicated to use. I quickly became frustrated with it, so I don't recommend it any more than that. I don't see any real solution for searching nationwide, so you're limited to city hopping and searching a 500 mile area around a city you enter. When I was looking in my backyard, basically, in New York there were ambulances for sale on Facebook Marketplace, but the ambulances I found in my area were in bad shape, some of them were the rockers, they were all rusty, so No.

They were units that I would have been interested in purchasing now, there were some that had been brought to the New York area from out of state and were in good condition, but the ones that were from service areas right in New York were in really good condition. bad condition because the market is very easy to use. I would definitely jump in there and just put an ambulance in your area and see what shows up. I guarantee you will see at least one listed and if you are in a busy metropolitan area probably more than one are listed for sale on the market and you can find one on the market but you will have to go from city to city and locate yourself. in different locations to expand your search area, that's the only downside, okay?

You have a couple of tools available to you when searching for a vehicle, so now the question is what type of vehicle and what you should be looking for. We talked about the different classes of ambulance, so first focus on what class you are going for. Do you want a type of truck or do you want a type of truck like mine? Do you have to have four wheel drive? Because then you're looking at some type of truck. Now let me chime in here, there are four wheel drive trucks. ambulances that have been

convert

ed to four wheel drive, they are there, you will pay a lot of money for them and they are not very common, but if you are stuck in a four wheel drive style van, you can find them, but you will pay some money for them, speaking of costs, you're doing searches, whether on Craigslist or Marketplace, and you see a very wide range of costs, some of them are four or five. thousand dollars and some of them are fifteen or twenty thousand dollars for the same type of year what is the cause of this why does the cost vary so much the main reason why the cost varies so much is whether or not the ambulance is still going to meet certification to be an ambulance like my truck for example was no longer going to be an ambulance, it had been decommissioned, some of the features had been removed i.e. it still had lights, sirens and some cool stuff, but it was not advertised in any way.

It is no longer an operational ambulance, so it is at the lower end of the price range. On the other hand, if you have equipment that you can take and put into service the day you buy it, you are going to pay a lot. money you're going to pay, let's say a 2002 like mine that's still in operating condition, you're going to pay fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, you get one like mine, you might pay five thousand dollars that's not advertised as ready to go. in service, that's the main reason you see such a wide variation in cost.

Do you need a platform that can be put into service the day you purchase it? I don't think so because he's not going to use it as an ambulance, so you don't need one that has every last detail in perfect working order, you don't need it now. I would have loved to buy one that had every last detail in perfect condition and shiny and shiny, but the cost. There's no way I was going to spend that kind of money, so obviously it goes along with a vehicle that's in perfect condition and cosmetically in perfect condition, but you're going to pay a lot of money.

I'd rather buy one like mine. It was that it needs a little polishing and polishing and a couple of things fixed and paying a lot less money. That's where I think the smart purchase is to get one that's not 100 percent operational and make it yours for a lot less money when I bought my rig, removed the sirens, the light bar and sold those things on eBay. I made back a little over five hundred dollars just by selling it and it had that standalone battery charger, all that stuff. I sold them and got over 500 dollars back so I paid 6000 and got 500 back so I paid 55 net for my truck so here's a little tip I'll pass on to you when you look at a rig and say really focused on one ask if you have service records available, many of these, you know these vehicles were used in municipalities or fire stations and they had excellent record keeping for maintenance and many times that can be passed on to the new owner, so if it's real focused on a truck but are concerned about the maintenance history of it ask if those records are available or not another thing you can ask and a lot of rigs I've heard come with wiring diagrams mine doesn't but I've heard stories from many people that they actually had paper copies of the wiring diagrams.

You can contact the truck manufacturer and request those schematics and they will send them to you. I tried doing that with mine. I located the marquee company. I was in Florida and asked if I could get some kind of registration or wiring diagram. This was early in my build, when I got lost in the wiring and it turned out that the marquee company had been bought and sold a couple of times in the last two decades and they didn't have any records going back to 2002, so They couldn't help me see if the truck has maintenance records and if it has wiring diagrams available, so another tip and I know a lot of people.

You already know that the mileage on the odometer is not the only indicator of use, so these vehicles also come equipped with an hour meter that records the number of hours it is in service with the engine running, let's say you find a truck that only has 10,000 miles on the odometer, you are like a saint, this is the best deal in the world, but the hour meter shows 490,000 hours, what does that mean? They drove very, very slowly for those 10,000 miles. No, that means the platform stopped. The service is inactive for most of its life, so imagine you are in a very busy metropolitan area and these ambulance crews are on duty 24 hours a day and are running 24 hours a day, possibly idle waiting for the next call. then you're going to rack up a lot of idle hours but not a lot of miles, so idling an engine for really long periods is bad for an engine.

I think there are a couple schools of thought on this, leaving an engine idling causes a different type of wear on the engine than one that is being driven other people think that an engine idling is much better than an engine that has been driven because it is not under load so I don't have the answer on that, maybe some of you can share comments if you have maintenance or mechanical experience, is it bad for an engine to idle compared to one that is being driven? Put any information you may have in the comments for us now beyond what we've already talked about other things you might want to consider when looking for a truck.

The different box configurations you're talking about. How many windows does it have? The configuration of the door. I think they all have the side door and the back doors, but some have additional windows here. I've seen some with windows here. You're going to see what brand you want for whatever reason. Most ambulances I see are Fords and Ford ambulances are the best we have. I know less um GM or Chevy and then the lease support that I see is based on Dodge, so you're going to want to see what the engine is, what the power plant is that you want.

Now we all know that the 73 stroke power is the best diesel engine ever produced and I'm joking. Well, I just know that the 73 stroke power is a very reliable high mileage engine and the knowledge base on it is very extensive, but the same can be said. for the cummins diesel and there is a diesel that chevy has the duramax and I'm sure there's a huge knowledge base on those now if you're going to focus on a ford and you're going to focus on a 7 3 engine. I'm going to want to make sure that you are looking at a 7 3 stroke power engine.

Someone contacted me recently and they had zeroed in on him. I think they could have even put a down payment on a platform. They were very excited because I had the 7-3 but then they said it was a 1992 and I responded and said you are looking at a 7-3 but it is what is called idi 73, it was an internationally produced engine, it is not the 734 powerstroke. engine that the power stroke was available and correct me if I'm wrong, but from 1995 to 2003 that was the seven three stroke turbodiesel power produced by four, that's the good one, seven three, seven three, idi, I don't know a lot about them. but i know you'll want to get one with the power stroke and not the idi.

The idi was less powerful so make sure you focus on 1995 to 2003 just for the 7.3 so let's go back to the Case configurations, outside cabinets vs inside cabinets for me the outside cabinets were very important because of the mechanical work I do so I wanted to be able to carry a lot of tools so I could work on all my projects and satisfy my anxiety about touch-ups for someone else. That may not be the case, but that will depend on you and what your needs and priorities are, so that will lend itself to your choice in the configuration of the box.

Now, one thing that came up recently that I met with. with the viewer and his 2002 Ford platform the same as mine, but his bed was, I don't know, it seemed to be about six inches taller than mine, I got into his truck and was able to stand up straight from the top of the truck cab up to the top of the box you could see that hers the box was higher, so there are boxes that give enough head room for us. I'm six feet tall, so there are boxes that give you enough headroom for a six-foot tall person. standing on mine is not one of those unfortunately from what I have heard they are less common but they are obviously available because I was on one a few days ago there are different lengths and mine is called uh the model is a command 166 and I think that denotes the length, there are shorter ones and really where you see this is the rear tire of the truck how much is behind the rear tire how much box is behind the rear tire from the front tire to the wheelbase of the tire rear is always the same, but how much box is there beyond the rear tire?

I've seen some that are shorter, just having a little bit of box behind the rear tire. Mine has a bunch of boxes behind the back. tires, that's an indicator of the length of the case, okay, let's finish this today. Thank you very much to all. I hope the video gave you some information and again, please share your stories or vehicle search information below in the comments and let everyone know. um if you had a good experience, a bad experience, how you did it, where you found it and you have some tips that I didn't cover here and remember, you don't need to spend a lot to get a good truck, I mean. look at us