Ambulance Camper Conversion Update-Cabover Added..

welcome back to overland outfitting i'm fred and i'm dave this is the next update on dave's ambulance project dave decided he needed an ambulance to turn into a camper and he's doing a heck of a job with it and as you can probably see behind me he's made an awful lot of progress on the cab over for the sleeping quarters show us what you've done and sounds good give us a tour sounds good all right so we uh so we started off with the original box and uh we selected the height about an inch high above the cab and we added on this section this is a a five foot section and it's level with the top of the ambulance it's made with the same materials that the ambulance is made with 8 inch skin and aluminum framing and we had a air dam it was a air deflector uh made out of fiberglass already bolted to the cab and we thought well we can use that because it makes a nice transition between the cab over and the cab itself with a nice seal around there already so we cut that down and we found out that there was a box inside a box so the box inside was aluminum box and that was so the interior could be finished out sufficiently and their electrical needs and all that sort of thing to facilitate the pass-through into the box from the cab so we use that and we cut this fiberglass down to about an inch above the cab in the back it rolls off here so we're about an inch and a half high and this goes all the way around and our cab over sits on there we're bolted and glued to the original box and cantilevered over there's not a lot of weight on here we were about an eighth of an inch off of this we had to kind of bring it down and pull it down but we're bolted to the cab bolted to the box this is aluminum bottom here the top piece is uh four feet wide and it has a nice break in it so it makes that bend on the top and it goes over to about here and we added another section of roofing on there um one of the things we really are happy about is our connection here with the box it's all smooth and the same level and we had to bevel this back edge here to make that all come out uh even uh our goal here as we had mentioned before was to make this look like it came out of the factory this way instead of just an add-on so we use the same we have a drip rail up on top and we continued that on from the original and that's aluminum there's one on the front that mimics the one in the back and so uh all these strips everything is aluminum we cut a little notch out of here so we could bend this aluminum aluminum around the corner and we use the same kind of corners as they did originally and we have a seam here that mimics this scene in the on the box so our goal is to uh to make uh bring this down and have a smaller front face right here so we don't have to block so much wind we also did something else this the front of this is six inches narrower than the original box so we tapered the front end in so it would kick the air out to the sides as you're going down the road and that way you have less drag on the side of the uh ambulance it was a kind of a an experiment to see if we could uh grab a few more miles of the gallon yeah well have you seen it somewhere else before well yes i've seen that before uh we've seen that on uh earth roamers okay they're their front cab overs are are tapered in in fact their cavalry is this same angle right here we took a side profile from earth roamer knowing that they've done a lot of engineering on their rigs and thought well maybe we'll see how that works for this one and it's it uh drives really nice it uh you don't even notice this cab is up here you don't even see it from the inside uh when you're sitting behind the wheel you can't even see this you have to kind of duck down to see the top the cab over okay dave uh nicely done let's um let's give a walk around let's show folks what things look like on the inside good idea all right uh this is a little step we built that kind of splits the difference between here in the ground we haven't decided whether we want to put an electric step on or just carry this one kind of makes a nice footstool as well as the step outside we also had a pretty deep stairwell here you were needed to be able to just jump in this thing and go as a emt or a medical person it was a little too high to be comfortable to draw to climb up into the rv so i added a step right here and i split the difference both length and height so we have an even transition from the ground right into the uh box here oh nice all right i'm glad we revisited that because we saw it only from the top side before and i think this helps make that a little clearer let's head on up alright sounds good all right so this is looking real good there's the entry the uh the steps the fold down steps that we talked about last time and you've kind of finished out and cased in the entryway here i see it gives us a nice transition also a nice warm spot to get out of bed sitting on and coming down the stairway here yep very nice and you got the interior finished out uh up there you've got the fan that's a max fan it's a two-way fan excellent and uh the interior is this uh floor underlayment that's a birch plywood okay and uh the windows on either side or from rec pro they seem to give us nice ventilation the size of the area this is a full size mattress a five inch mattress so our height over the mattress between the mattress and the ceiling is 26 inches and so it's a nice nice cozy spot but not claustrophobic yeah super all right well nicely done the uh it looks like a cozy place and um are you still thinking a headboard yes except that uh for getting in and out i changed directions i've been using this a little bit to see what works what doesn't work and so i'm putting my head on the passenger side it makes getting out a lot easier so i'm still thinking about a cabinet but i think it'll be a footboard cabinet more than a headboard cabinet and we have lots of room because it's almost eight feet wide inside here so we're going to put a cabinet at the base it'll still be a place to put books and whatever you need up up there extra bedding or pillows or whatever and uh that way your head is still not out here in the in the open it seems to give you a little more cozy feeling there excellent so those are the kind of things that we just have to learn as we go here yeah absolutely okay moving on real quick uh we've got just another view of the the kitchen and got some second thoughts on potentially putting an oven in here i understand that well we're thinking about an oven the problem with ovens and rvs is there both oven and a stove stovetop combo so we haven't been able to really find an oven by itself this may end up being just a bank of drawers so we were kind of up in the air about that um yeah it'd be interesting to know uh what other folks think but i know myself when we had our camper in the oven it ended up a not getting used very much and b becoming a bit of a maintenance nightmare yeah so traditional oven well we were also thinking about a coleman uh collapsible oven that we could use on a stove outside especially in the summertime you don't want to necessarily heat up your rv right with the oven so it it like it's kind of a work in progress there that's right um okay and finally what do we have going on here you've got some new thoughts on the uh we've been moving this around we were thinking about we don't have a table as you might see uh this was uh the bed that we were using before the cab over now we don't need a bed down here and uh but it would be nice to have a single bed for a um uh a guest or you know a child or whatever so um the new thought is that we're going to this is a nice rollover couch and it makes into a bed really easily so what we're going to do is we're going to take this couch out and we're going to put a dinette in here and it'll be a two-person dinette and the table will drop down and it'll make into a bed it'll also make it into a six-foot bed instead of this is a five foot and so the reason we got a five footer is we were going to do some uh tables on either side of this couch one of the things i don't particularly like in a with a couch facing this direction is i don't get to see out the window so i like to sit at a dinette looking out the window and uh looking at if we put a video screen up here we can see that from the dinette also and uh it's it's a nice space it's got storage under here our heater our diesel heaters in a compartment on the outside that comes in right here we're going to change that up a little bit and um so we have some new uh something new to look at at the next video right another another adventure to explore here that's right yep all right dave well i'm looking forward to it it's going to be it's going to be a fair amount of work to get this part of it done you're going to have some put your carpentry skills to work here absolutely yeah yep um but i think it makes a lot of sense uh you know to give it we've got a really comfortable living space back here why not make a dinette um you know people are going to want a place to lay out maps and not have to unfold the table right right or or be limited by a small table that's maybe a a couch side table yeah and it gives us that again that opportunity to look out the window as you're sitting here at the dinette absolutely it's kind of a nice nice area so the the area doesn't change as far as our floor space very good well dave it's great you've been able to spend uh spend some time in here you've spent a few nights out with it already how's it going down the road it is a dream these ambulances are so nice and tight it's a one-ton chassis with the dual wheels it's the best driving vehicle i've ever best rv driving vehicle i've ever had so it's it's just perfect that's excellent to hear that's was uh nice to know that it's solid with the uh the cab over on there yeah didn't notice it was there and uh uh that was kind of a concern we didn't know if it was going to catch the win a certain way but it doesn't it it makes a great space that was otherwise untapped and so now we've we've done it with this one all right so we got the proof of concept and now we can focus on dialing it out and making it a right now we're going to work more on the interior yeah and finish out our kitchen finish out our water system now the dinette and uh then we have more to come so that's right we've we've got some more secrets uh to reveal here in the next few months well i look forward to it uh folks i hope you do too if you have enjoyed this video um and want to see more please like subscribe and ring the bell for notifications once again we thank you for stopping by and spending your time with us i'm fred and i'm dave you folks have a great day and be well

Channel: Overland Outfitting

Views: 8,814

Keywords:

Id: Z6yaXntwGLM

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022