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

[Music] hi everybody as we get close to christmas here i just wanted to take a minute and thank everybody for being a part of the channel for watching the videos commenting giving us thumbs up i really appreciate all that we're creeping up on christmas and this time of year a lot of stuff going on especially i just really sincerely wanted to thank all of you for being a part of the channel uh those of you that have picked up stickers thank you so much we've got some new lefty stickers coming should be within a couple of weeks i'll let everybody know when they get here and you can show your love and support for this knucklehead over here he's taking his morning siesta so let's get into the video and thank you all again so much so you're going back and forth in your mind and and should i change my lifestyle should i switch from living in a house to living in a vehicle and you start looking at vehicles and you don't know what you want to get we've all been there i'm sure do you want to get a cargo van you know like a transit or a promaster or a sprint do you want to get a manufactured rv uh a class a a class b or a class c manufactured rv um do you want to get an old box truck like a u-haul truck and and build that from scratch um if the answer to all of those is no and you focused in on an ambulance and you're watching youtube videos of people living comfortable lives in these uh past life-saving vehicles the attraction to an ambulance it's easy to understand the storage the build quality and let's not let's not forget the cool factor an ambulance is a cool vehicle to be living in that's for sure but if you break it down in like simple economics uh an ambulance for the money that you can spend to get into one you can get a lot of vehicle so let's look at let's look at my truck i paid six thousand dollars for my truck i got a ford super duty vehicle with a dually rear end a 7-3 power stroke diesel with 85 000 miles on it good tires and no major mechanical issues so for six thousand dollars that's a lot of truck you can find very similar deals just like that uh when i was searching for my truck there were uh you know i had looked at 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 rigs that were in that exact same price range so if you're willing to travel from your location you can definitely you know it opens up a lot bigger library of vehicles that you can choose from and gives you the the opportunity to chase down even a better deal i'm gonna go through like how i found my truck and i'm going to share with you some of the things that i've learned since i've had the ambulance and talked with a lot of different owners of different different ambulances so we're going to talk about that today how you can find one and some of the things that you can look for when you're when you're looking at all the different rigs that are available so if you have a good story about how you find your truck please down in the comments let's share it down there so that everybody can can learn from what you went through good or bad i'm hoping we're going to hear a lot of good stories but i'm sure there's some bad stories just like any vehicle purchase so let's um share all those down in the comments and i appreciate you guys really sharing all that information so everybody can soak it up so first thing we're gonna do is talk about how can you find an ambulance um this is not uh a mystery i've had many many people message me asking that exact question you know how do i find an ambulance so facebook marketplace is currently the most popular buying and selling platform it's super simple to use the sheer number of people that have facebook on their phones is you know how many millions or billions of people have facebook what that means is that if something is for sale on facebook there's a lot of people looking at it and so what does that mean you gotta jump on it if you're really serious about it we're not gonna talk about facebook marketplace off the bat we're gonna talk about craigslist so if you're my age you grew up using craigslist craigslist was the place to find vehicles motorcycles well anything really so all of you that are a full adult aides like me will know craigslist inside and out and have probably used it many times over the years up until recently 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 look at it a couple of different ways that that's gonna make a lot less of a selection because people don't want to pay the five dollars but you can also look at it like people that are listing things are more serious about it if they're gonna pay five bucks to list something for sale they're serious about selling it and they're not i don't want to say a scam but they're not just a fly-by-night kind of thing they're they're paying five bucks to sell something so they are serious about it you jump on craigslist right and craigslist um is city specific so you go on craigslist and you will be in your city basically and they allowed to search an area up to 200 miles around your surrounding area they have a feature now where you can say search surrounding cities near me and you can select the different cities that are near you and it will also search there so they have they have some ability in the site or in the craigslist app where you can expand just from your your core 200 mile area the problem with that is let's say you're in a location that's um not highly populated or it's an area where vehicles are in bad shape in new york and you want to search for a vehicle outside of your area so you want to search down south or you want to search out west where the vehicles are dry and rust free that's difficult to do on craigslist you know i could put in phoenix arizona while sitting in new york and search the phoenix arizona area but that can become very tedious you would have to keep skipping cities and putting in different locations to search those areas what i did was i found a way to perform a nationwide search on craigslist and there's several different websites that allow you to do this i i used one and i've used it for years just because i like the way it presents the search results and it's easy and fast to use there's a big player in this arena that has been popularized lately it's autotempest.com it will search craigslist and ebay and then a whole slew of other smaller uh auto sales websites so you can definitely use autotempest i just don't prefer it just because of the way it presents the information so let's take a look at at auto tempest real quick right here so you can get a sense of what it looks like and how it performs so the next site that we're going to look at and this is the one that i actually prefer it's searchcraigslist.org now this is a simple search bar you type in what you're looking for and it brings up search results from all over the country this is the one that i like because it operates quickly it's got a a pretty simple interface and i like the way the search results show up let's take a look at it right now and you can see how to use it real quick obviously very simple and again this is the one that i prefer to use so now you've you've started looking at ambulances for sale all across the country and this is good because it lets you start building a uh an idea or a library of what what are they costing and what are the different types that are available and this is a good place to pause and let's talk about what are the different types of ambulances there's three main classes of ambulances out there class one class two and class three so here's the the three different classes and you know just a quick uh summary of what they are first one is a class one a class one is an ambulance that's built on a pickup truck frame and chassis and then there's a box added to the back now the box it will be the exact same box that's used on a class three the difference being that the box is on a pickup truck chassis and then you've got a class two class two is a standard van that's typically 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 a lot of them on the road now they're they're still out there that still is uh a configuration that some facilities like to use but for but for living purposes you know like i'm doing i think that a class two is not really the option that you wanna go for you wanna look at a class one or a class three and then a class three like mine is built on a van cutaway chassis so you've got a van front end and then the box on the back and again the box on a class one and a class three they'll be the same boxes that is whether it's on a pickup truck or it's on a van the box is the same so a class one because it is built on a pickup truck chassis that's the type you're going to want to look at if you're specifically looking for four-wheel drive pickup trucks obviously come in four-wheel drive so an ambulance that's on a pickup truck chassis you're gonna find four-wheel drive units out there now the four-wheel drives they're not anywhere near as common as two-wheel drive but they are sold in areas typically where the weather or the road conditions require four by four so you're talking about areas that have snow dirt roads in their service area so four wheel drive is a mandatory feature that they must have downside obviously is if a vehicle is being operated in a snowy atmosphere the rust is going to be more prevalent than it is if it's in a dry arid location i thought it would be really awesome to have a four-wheel drive ambulance when i first started looking but i found many of them that were in rough condition they had been operated in the the northeast uh and they were they suffered from rust i saw some that were in such bad shape that i wouldn't even considered it so that that started pushing me away from four-wheel drive because they're not as common they're more expensive and the ones that i did see were not in great condition now many class one ambulances do not have a full pass-through going from the box up into the cab what many of them have is just a small service portal a little window with a slide on it typically so you can pass information or talk back and forth but a full walk through is not as common in a class one pickup truck type ambulance so if a walkthrough is important to you you may want to look at class three now there are class ones that have walkthroughs they're just nowhere near as common as those that don't have it so if you gotta have a walk through and and that was something that i had to have you you might want to just focus on class three rigs now an upside to having a class one because it's built on a pickup truck chassis aftermarket and performance parts for the engine are pretty readily available an example is for the 73 power stroke in this cutaway van doesn't have an intercooler you can't find a fresh air intake because of the the configuration under the hood out there you know the hood's what this big but if you've got a class one a pickup truck based rig all of those things are available they have intercooler you can get you know uh high-end intakes you can get high-end intercooler systems boost pipes all of those modifications that guys are doing in their pickup trucks you can do to your class one because it's got a pickup truck front end on it try to find all those same performance parts for a for a cutaway like this they're not available your sol class three like my ambulance one of the benefits i already mentioned is the walkthrough to the front now i use that walkthrough every day when we're driving especially that walkthrough is key you know we pull into a place and i get out i don't i don't use the driver's door very rarely do i get out through the driver's door i walk through the back and into the back the house here uh to tend to lefty to hook him up to the leash we go outside plus when we're parked in camp like we are right now the cab becomes a little storage area so you know his dog food is stored up there in front of the passenger seat in a sealed container like a tupperware type container that's seat height um my ladder uh my extendable ladder that goes up in there i don't like to store that outside just because the weather wears on those my extra gatorade uh eight packs of gatorade are stored up there so that's a benefit of having that walk through is that i can easily go up there and get something and bring it into the back as i need it a big benefit if you have a dog you know i have lefty and that walk through for him when we're on the road and traveling and driving you know eight ten hours a day he'll get out of his seat there his driving seat and he'll come back here to get his water he'll come back here and lay down sometimes and a few times i think i've caught it on video i've actually busted him jumps up on the bed here while i'm driving and i look around as you know we're going 70 miles an hour and i peek back and he'll be stretched out on the bed but looking at me because he knows he's not supposed to be up there for pet owners dog owners you can't beat having that walk through he's able to freely travel around get up and stretch his legs i think it's a must-have if you have a dog and you're traveling one of the other things about a class 3 like mine is that access to the engine for doing engine work from under the hood you have very limited access from outside the converse to that is you have great access to the back side of the engine you come in you take the doghouse out you know the cup holder console type thing right there you take the doghouse out you have full access to the rear of the engine uh the transmission tunnel is right there the turbo is right there if you've got to do it you could do a turbo replacement so simple on a van as opposed to a pickup truck that's just something to keep in mind access to the engine from under the hood is very bad but access to the rear of the engine from inside is very good thirsty sorry dude you got enough you need me to fill that for you holy smokes okay so we've talked about the three different classes of ambulances so let's get back to doing your search and let's talk about facebook marketplace the downside to the marketplace is it only lets you search your specific city that 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 i would put in a different city and search that hundred mile radius and another city and put that hundred mile radius and that became super frustrating so doing a nationwide search on facebook marketplace uh there's a there's a site that i did mess around with when i was doing my search it's called searchworldmarketplace.com but it's very strange and clunky to use and i quickly became frustrated with it so i don't recommend it other than other than that i don't see any real solutions for doing nationwide searches so you're limited to just city hopping and searching a 500 mile area around a city that you put in when i was looking right in my backyard basically up in up in new york there were ambulances for sale on facebook marketplace but the ambulances that i found in my area they were in rough shape some of them were the rockers were all rusted out so they were not 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 those were in good shape but the ones that were from service areas right in new york they were in really bad shape because marketplace is so easy to use i would definitely jump on there and just put in ambulance in your area and see what pops up i'll just about guarantee you'll see at least one listed there and if you're in a really busy metropolitan area probably more than one they are listed for sale on marketplace and you could find one on marketplace but you're gonna have to city hop and put in different locations to to broaden your search area that's the only downside to it okay so you have a couple of tools available to do a search for a vehicle so now the question is what kind of vehicle and what should you be looking for we talked about the different classes of ambulance so first focus in on what class are you going to look for do you want to pick up truck type or do you want a van type like mine do you have to have four-wheel drive because then you're looking at a pickup truck type now let me interject here there are van four-wheel drive ambulances that have had a conversion to four-wheel drive done they're out there you're gonna pay a lot of money for them and they're not very common but if you're if you're stuck on a van style with four-wheel drive you can find them but you're gonna pay some money for them speaking of cost you're doing searches whether it's on craigslist or marketplace and you're seeing a really 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 year type what is the cause of this why is the why is the cost varying so widely the main reason that 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 instance was no longer going to be an ambulance it had been decommissioned some of the features had been removed i mean it still had lights and sirens and some goodies but it was in no way advertised as or meaning to be an operational ambulance anymore so it's on the lower end of the price range conversely if you've got a rig that you could take and put into service the day that you buy it you're going to pay a lot of money you're going to pay for let's let's say a 2002 like mine that's still in operational condition you're gonna pay fifteen to twenty thousand dollars you get one like mine you could pay five thousand dollars that's not advertised as being ready to be put into service so that's the main reason that you see such a wide variance in the cost do you need a rig that could be put into service the day you buy it i don't think so because you're not going to use it as an ambulance so you don't need one that has every last little thing in perfect operating condition you don't need that now i would have loved to buy one that had every last little feature in perfect condition and shiny and sparkly um but the cost there was no way that i was going to spend that kind of money so obviously it goes along with a vehicle that's in perfect condition that it's cosmetically in perfect condition right but you're gonna pay a ton of money i'd rather get one like mine was that needs a little spit and polish and a couple of things fixed up on it and pay a heck of a lot less money that's where i think the smart purchase is you get one that's not a hundred percent operational and you make it your own for a lot less money when i got my rig i took off the sirens the light bar uh and i sold those things on ebay i got back just over five hundred dollars just by selling off um and had that standalone battery charger uh all of those things i sold them and got back over 500 bucks so i paid 6 000 and got back 500 so i paid 55 net for my truck so here's a little tip that i'll pass on when you're looking at a rig and say you're really focused on one ask if it has service records available many of these you know these vehicles were used in municipalities or fire stations and they had great record keeping for maintenance and many times that can be passed on to the new owner so if you're real focused on a truck but you're concerned about the the maintenance history of it ask whether or not those records are available another thing you can ask and and a lot of rigs i've heard come with wiring schematics mine didn't but i've heard stories from many people that theirs actually had paper copies of the wiring schematics you can contact the manufacturer of the truck and request those schematics and they will send them to you now i tried doing that with mine i tracked down the marquee company they're in florida and asked them if i could get any kind of records or wiring schematics this was early on in my build where i was just lost on the wiring and it turned out the marquee company has been bought and sold a couple few times in the last couple decades and they didn't have any records going back to 2002 so they weren't able to help me see if the truck has maintenance records and see if the truck has wiring schematics available so another tip and i know a lot of people know this already is the mileage that's on the odometer is not the only indicator of use so these vehicles also come equipped with an hour meter that clocks the number of hours it's in service in use engine running let's say you find a truck that's only got 10 000 miles on the odometer you're like holy cripes this is the best deal in the world but the hour meter shows 490 000 hours what does that mean that they drove really really slow for those 10 000 miles no that means that the rig sat in service idling for the majority of its life so imagine you're in a really busy metropolitan area and these ambulance crews are these rigs are in service 24 hours a day and they're running 24 hours a day quite possibly idling waiting for the next call so you're going to rack up a ton of idle hours but not a lot of miles so is idling an engine for really long periods is it bad for an engine i think there's a couple of schools of thought on this idling an engine causes a different type of wear on the engine than than one that is being driven other people think that an idling engine is way better than an engine that's been driven because it's not being put under load so i don't have the answer on that maybe some of you can share comments if you're from a maintenance or a mechanical background is it bad for an engine to sit in idle as compared to one that's being driven put put any info you might have down in the comments for us now beyond what we've talked about already there's some other things you that you would have considerations for when you're looking for a truck the different box configurations you're talking how many windows does it have the door configuration i believe they all have the side door and the rear doors but some have additional windows here i've seen some with windows over here you're going to be looking at which brand do you want for whatever reason the majority of ambulances that i see are ford and ford ambulances are the best we all know that less so um gm or chevy and then the lease mount that i see are dodge based so then you're going to want to look at what is the what is the engine what's the power plant that you want now we all know that the 73 power stroke is the best engine diesel engine that was ever produced and i'm kidding okay i just know that the 73 power stroke is a very reliable high mileage engine that the knowledge base on it is so extensive but the same thing can be said for the cummins diesel and there's 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 you're going to want to make sure that you're looking at a 7 3 power stroke engine i had someone contact me just recently and they had focused in i i think they might have even put a down payment on a rig they were very excited because it had the 7-3 but then they said it was a 1992 and i replied back to them and said you're looking at a 7-3 but it's what's called the idi 73 it was an engine produced by international it's not the 734 power stroke engine the power stroke was available from and correct me if i'm wrong but 1995 to 2003 that was the seven three power stroke turbo diesel produced by four that's that's the good seven three the seven three idi i don't know a lot about them but i know that you're gonna wanna you're gonna to get one with the power stroke and not the idi the idi was less powerful so just be sure that you're focused on 1995 to 2003 only for the 7.3 so back to the box configurations uh outside cabinets versus inside cabinets for me outside cabinets were super important because of the mechanical work i do so i wanted to be able to carry a lot of tools so i can work on all my projects and satisfy my tinkering bug for someone else that might not be the case so that but that's going to be up to you and what your what your needs are and your priorities so that's going to lend itself to your choice on the box configuration now one thing that just came up recently i met up with the viewer and their rig 2002 ford just like mine but their box was i don't know it looked to be about six inches taller than mine i walked up into her truck and i could stand straight up from the top of the cab of the truck up to the top of the box you could see that hers the box was taller so there are boxes that give you enough headroom for us i'm a six foot tall so there's boxes that give you enough headroom for a six foot tall person to stand straight up in mine is not one of those unfortunately from what i hear they're less common but obviously they're out there because i was just in one a few days ago there's different lengths also mine is what's called uh the model is a commando 166 and i think that denotes the length there's shorter ones and really where you see this is the back tire of the of the truck how much is there behind the back tire how much box is there behind the back tire from the front tire to the back tire that wheelbase is always the same but how much box is there beyond the back tire i've seen some that are shorter they've only got a little bit of box behind the back tire mine's got a whole bunch of box behind the back tires that's an indicator of box length okay we're going to wrap this up today thank you all so much i hope the video has given you some info and again please share your your vehicle search stories or information below in the comments and let everybody know um if you had a good experience a bad experience how you did it where you found it and you've got 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

Channel: The Campulance Man

Views: 58,777

Rating: 4.9295073 out of 5

Keywords: van life, rv life, nomad, living in a van, rv living, full time, tiny house, full time rving, rv living full time, travel, rv travel, campervan, overland, minimalism, rv camping, camper, living in an rv, van, winter, living, lifestyle, camper van, KTM, stress reduction, fulltime, truck camper, vanlife, tiny camper, nomadic fanatic, boondocking, budget, free camping, cheaprvliving, ultimate MX hauler, cheap rv living, ambulance conversion, ambulance rv, adventure ktm, kawasaki

Id: QybogZxcTsg

Length: 31min 11sec (1871 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020