Rebuilding the Cannonball Run Ambulance

there are photos of it dead in the desert underneath the brontosaurus and you're like when there's an ambulance under the brontosaurus I am somewhat obsessed with the Cannonball Run so is a certain person that runs an amazing app called VIN wiki and equally amazing YouTube channel car stories so about four years ago I met Edie at the Cannonball Run reunion and Darien Connecticut knew it was had no idea if he knew who I was I was just the idiot that owned the ambulance from the Cannonball Run the ambulance is a 1978 Dodge sportsman b200 and they couldn't have picked a worse vehicle and a worse year and the reason why I say that is in 1978 the Dodge van had a major overhaul and they had a bigger turn signal a recessed door handle a larger rear taillight and a completely different dashboard though it looks the same from 71 to roughly 77 78 was across over year and brockett's how Needham decided to use a 78 not only that it's a sliding door with barn doors on the back and a sportsman with a sunroof which is the hardest thing on God's green earth I can find you as many 69 Dodge Charger Daytona Zoar superbirds that you would like but I beg of you to go find me a 78 dodge B 206 window slider with burn doors after being obsessed with the Blues Brothers and all these years of chasing down the Dukes of Hazzard stuff it was a natural progression because the Dodge is a Mopar product to work her way through the Cannonball Run I saw the Cannonball Run movie in 1981 at the Westlake Drive in with my mom and dad on the big screen Matt the drive-in movie theater and I was like this can't be real like this is this is the greatest movie I mean ever you know let's get all these cars and the Lamborghini with the Hawaiian Tropic stuff and they put one in the pool and like what a great idea an aimless across the country like oh my god I had no idea was a real thing obviously and I really had no idea through the early 2000s that it was a real thing like I had no idea that the Cannonball Run actually happened and with the evolution of the internet and everything and Brock hates his book it happened and I'm like going man this is cool and then to find out that Brock and how drove the ambulance and Pam was the patient lie Aurora's a doctor like they gave all the competitors in 79 a notepad and said if anything happens you know write it down and then they took all that and turned it into a movie and they already had success with Hal and had Helen Brock had success with Smokey and the Bandit what could go wrong right so to find out that the ambulance was the same ambulance that they drove and then they filmed with I was like man I gotta go find this thing I had already found the first generally why on God's green earth can't I go find they ain't me that's from the movie Cannonball Run I didn't even know where to start didn't know where to begin I'd found out that they drove the ambulance the ambulance was built in 79 they ordered it the orange and the white spinnaker white and sunrise orange you can order a van that ugly that year they ordered it they shipped it to Bill Mitchell shop in Connecticut he did all the suspension work and turned it into a race car basically they put a dick Landy 502 big-block and a quicker transmission in and two in it so it had an overdrive transmission completely untested but Hal and Brock came up with it at a bar on the Sunset Strip and said Hal told Brock you gotta do it one more time and they came up with the greatest vehicle in the history of Road Rally because who is gonna stop an ambulance so they all show up at the Good Wife shopping center and on April Fool's Day they're gonna take off and drive across country and everyone and John Harrison will tell you and a lot of the competitors from 79 they were afraid of the ambulance because it was such a great idea and it sounds like a Winston Cup car and it is just rowdy and they've got a doctor a real doctor and a patient that's like she's tied into just dripping all over herself and what can go wrong so it came time to go and the Amite spose around back and click click and it goes about 50 feet and dies and won't start and it was completely untested and it had all the great stuff but not enough know how to make this thing go go go so how neat him of course always walked around with hundred dollar bills and every time you see me as a big gold chain and never mind my Rolex kind of thing you know and he had hundred-dollar bills and he said I'm gonna peel off hundred-dollar bills and so someone here can get this damn thing running because how I had a pretty filthy mouth and there was two good old boys that broke into an auto parts store and daring Connecticut and got just enough parts to make the carburetor right to get the Holley 850 going and they were gone and that thing was on Rails and the original ambulance got pulled over in New Jersey by Mark fennec and they had let him go because they the story that they tell in the movie is basically the same story that was told by Lyle Reuter they said they had to get the Senators wife to UCLA because she had cysts on the walls of her lungs and that's what happened so they drove it all the way across the United States got Effingham in Illinois it started pissing transmission fluid and all of this untested stuff finally came back to bite him in the tail the longest story short is there are pictures of brock and hal covered in transmission fluid because on one of those vans you can kick the cover over and it exposes the engine below between your legs and there is the dipstick hole right there and they were pouring transmission fluid in it as they drove across the country to get it to where it eventually died it died at the wheel in in the Palm Desert and it is the same place in pee-wee's big adventure where the dinosaurs are and not only did it die and caught fire and then died and there are photos of it dead in the desert underneath the brontosaurus and you're like when there's an ambulance under the brontosaurus not only is there a name that's but it's on fire and you know Pam and Lyle or jumping out of this thing this is on fire it eventually went out and it didn't destroy the whole thing but how Needham had to get to the Portofino in and he's got a stack of hundreds and he walks this as a truck stop and said who owns the lowboy out here and his two good old boys said that's us House said what's it gonna take to get us into the Portofino win and we don't want a DNF did not finish so he peeled off just enough hundred-dollar bills just like he did on the other coast and there was a gap between the brontosaurus and the flatbed trailer the lowboy and they had to get it on to there and if there are photos of it on there and photos of it off of there but there is a healthy gap how Needham was the world's greatest stunt man and this this thing would still run that it wouldn't run well and that 3 or 4-foot gap off the ledge the brontosaurus is sitting on and where the truck is backed up the flatbed how need him jumped the ambulance onto the flatbed stopped it they chained it down Hal Brock Pam Lyle the two truck drivers drove into the Portofino in and towed the Amos to this day I have no idea how they got it off the trailer at the Portofino end but they did so I was obsessed with this goofy ambulance I thought it was the greatest thing on God's green earth they had the greatest road rally vehicle why would you stop this thing they had just enough stories lights and sirens they filmed the movie with the same ambulance and then how Needham told me a long time ago he said if you ever want to lose a lot of money buy a NASCAR team which I agree with how Needham owned Harry Gant's number 33 skull band at NASCAR whatever it was Monte Carlo back then and the reason why they called it the skull band it was with he co-owned it with Burt Reynolds - the Bandit how had a side project with the Budweiser rocket car and they were setting land speed records but it was a NOLA only a three-wheeled car so they did not officiate or include any of the land speed records because it didn't have four wheels but you would see the Budweiser rocket car go down the salt flats and it's now in the Talladega Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum but then a few minutes later you would see the transcon medevac right behind it and how you did as a support vehicle for his efforts as the land speed record so if there are videos of him out there there's the aim of right behind it it kind of fell into disrepair obviously things lose interest and how donated the ambulance when he owned his NASCAR team to the NASCAR women's wives auxilary and they auctioned it off for a tax write-off from mr. Needham and they auctioned it to a flower shop in North Carolina so they had a big-block dick Landy 502 X ambulance delivering flowers in North Carolina and for me I was like I've got all this information I can go find this thing and to this day I have no idea what happened to it after the flower shop because these are disposable vehicles if Bob and Billy Bob need a sixer they're gonna go crush the ambulance or crush the van and go get enough scrap money it could still be in someone's backyard if you know where the ambulance is contact edy and then he'll contact me and then in it'll be another show further down the line anyhow after a few years of looking I had realized that I was not going to be able to find the original ambulance I had wasted a lot of time looking for this thing I wasn't as easy as the General Lee so I had become friends with Brock Yates just by asking him all these questions about his ambulance and he was always like well why would you want to build that thing and why would you want to do this and he thought I was crazy but I had found the correct van and so it was time to rebuild the transcon medevac unfortunately I built it exactly how they did I put the big-block 502 in it I put the Holley 850 in it I put the overdrive we use the gear vendors transmission overdrive transmission it has four-wheel disc brakes Hellwig sway bars built shox it will fly like the wind it has radar jammers on it lessons plate flips that's got a drone cabe and drone in it it is as bad if not badder than the original one during the build rocks health started deteriorating and he would always answer my phone call and I would be like gosh I really don't want to bother him like he's the same Brock Yates that did Diamond P sports and Car and Driver magazine and announced the Daytona 500 and he's answering Travis Bell's phone calls I'm like well I mean where am I not even close so I had no idea what the rearview mirrors were on the thing if you look at pictures of it it's got these little bit of dinky mirrors that you can't see anything out of them but I was very anal about it making exactly all the way down to the correct gurney the front air dam everything Mears Pratt was always nice to me I still have his phone number in my phone and ice my final phone call to him I said mr. Yates and here's what good split disc jockey big loud booming force I said rearview mirrors transcon medevac how's the Vienna I said yeah uh you know the rearview mirrors that's you son oh yeah 1974 Opel Manta 400 or Opel Manta gt's Engelmann mirrors and I just like I've been looking for these things for years like these I looked at little 550 Spyder mirrors off the Porsche I looked at all these different things and all I had to do is make one phone call to him and he knew right away that they were Opel Manta 400 meters and they are they are he was absolutely right so I chased down a set of those they're on the ambulance now as the ambulance was complete and it started behaving itself because this is highly untouched it there's no reason why there should be a big-block 502 in the front compartment of a 1978 Dodge van the Cannonball Run reunion came around and darien connecticut and we were invited to attend there was an evening where all of the original canon dollars were going to tell their stories their own car stories and there's a night you couldn't you would never miss if you were a fan of the Cannonball Run so I drove out there a truck and trailer and they aim with the amulets of the trailer unloaded it of course it was pissed off the whole weekend but it made it to every place it was supposed to go and that evening was the first night that I had met Pam Yates and Pam Yates always told me that Brock signature looked like like a doctor like it was very busy and very quick and I had already met how neat him too and I had how need him signed the glovebox door and I had Brock it's a few years prior signed the glovebox door inside the ambulance and I was only short Pam and Lyle and Pam standing right there in front of me and she's looking at this thing that she had ridden in backwards you know facing the wrong direction in 78 it was all over the 79 and it was on fire and and she's got saline solution dripping down her arm and her husband's gonna get him all arrested and but it came a moment when we were to walk in for them all to tell their stories and I was didn't really know how to approach her and it was mrs. Yates but I was just trying to and she's such an approachable nice lady and I said I need you to sign my glovebox door mrs. law you know said bye to a couple people and their I mean it's it could no it's one of those moments personal where moments whether it's dark out nameless is under the light and the lights coming in through the windshield and she opens the door and I hand her the sharpie marker and she looks down at her husband's signature and puts her hand on her signature honor on his signature and she said this is the prettiest signature he's ever had on this thing and of course I'm ready to cry and she's having a moment with it and she didn't write Pam Yates she wrote lady Pamela on it and that's what she's forever known for so it's another one of those reasons why I believe vehicles have a soul because some of these invoking invoke emotion you can blindfold me and put me in that vehicle and I can smell it and know what I'm in and she had that moment where all of the nightmare that I've had with this thing with 14 years and a hundred and ten thousand dollars came down to that moment in a park a lot in the Darien Connecticut library where this lady had enough time to have some moments with her own husband ever since we did the players run and everything else in the General Lee it's time to go put some miles on this thing and I really now know why Hal and Brock both warned me about building it exactly as it appeared because it didn't make it 50 feet at Darrien Darrien Connecticut and then it burnt down almost burnt down in the Palm Desert the same things in which they ran into we have run into we attempted to make the c2c Express in 2019 I'll be forever known as the guy who left ed Moline without a ride in New York City but it's it's just God dang that thing so we improved everything we could we modernized it we got rid of all the nightmare Holley 850 we put fuel injection on it we were throwing belts we put a serpentine belt conversion on it it was pissing gas because I had to gas it holds 70 gallons of fuel we did we replumbed it we did everything to erase this DNF that I promised how Needham and I promised Brock Yates and I promised Pam Yates that I would erase the DNF that appears in Wikipedia and all the record books and and Brock hates his book and now it has a DNS because it did not start the c2c Express and now it did not finish the 79 cannonball so fingers crossed we are going to get it across the line and EDI will finally finish what they started in 1979 we'd like to thank glass parentsí for sponsoring the venn wiki YouTube channel this month we're also excited to give you access to their prosumer glass treatment kit at a discount all ven wiki subscribers will be able to get $10 off the regular price so it's just $39.99 using the link below every kit also comes with a special offer for discounted professional installation if you choose it's a great product for an awesome company and we really appreciate glass Perrin see we hope you do too

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 204,734

Rating: 4.9371357 out of 5

Keywords: Cannonball Run, Brock Yates, Hal Needham, Ed Bolian, Travis Bell, Star Cars, Celebrity Machines, Dodge Sportsman, Van, Ambulance, TransCon MediVac, rare, search, breakdown, movie, VINwiki, Car Stories, C2C Express, project car, rebuild, replica, car and driver, 1979, brontosaurus

Id: usfahgUOTZ0

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020