The FAILED Cannonball Ambulance Attempt

could you imagine your friend say it's cool i'm just going to sleep in this truck car you're pulling behind me when your phone rings and it says ed bullion calling you answer and it doesn't matter if you're at a funeral or a wedding it's time to take his call because something is going to happen so ed knew that i was making the aimless slightly more dependable and we're talking about the ambulance from the movie cannonball run who that that still to this day has countless dnfs and sometimes won't make its way out of the driveway but it was really time and ed knew over the course of the winter that i was hiring the right people to put this thing in the right direction and doing a little bit of work myself because this is a 502 cubic inch big black chrysler it's time to fuel inject this thing fix the radiator and the heat problems and anything else and everything that we had this of course everybody when they're working on something just tapes a laundry list of this needs fix fix fix fix fix the laundry list on the ambulance could hit the floor it was just ridiculous but it says hey what are you doing on april fool's day and i go well this sounds like what are we doing on april fool's day so october november of 20 we started repairing it to the point of where it became a little bit more dependable we sent it to a company in indianapolis called rpm performance and we had them just dial it in they realized that it definitely was built by a drag racer so the engine was built to go and be done not built to go from new york to los angeles so they pulled the motor out and they rebuilt the engine and taylor hall came on and and gave us some help with comp cams and we would take any help we can get because the bills were racking up quickly on this thing again if you've ever wanted to meet an idiot that had a hundred and sixty thousand dollar ambulance just pause my picture now so anyhow longer story short i felt like we were there and there are so many aspects of doing a run across the country and we're not trying to set this thing on fire or break arnie and doug's record or anything we're trying to right the world's wrongs and we're trying to erase the dnf that has plagued the transcon medevac since 1979. i have a big diesel truck and a trailer all of that has to get there with all of your friends you have to have hotel arrangements and everything so there's a lot of planning just to make an attempt and it doesn't even mean that you're gonna be successful so we put out four or five thousand dollars in the mighty diesel truck we went to kauffman and bought a new trailer we did all this stuff and it's like are we ready and i go i don't know as ready as we're ever going to be so let's give it a try we have a seat open and of course the natural selection would be matt davis and matt davis captain chaos is uh you know you can't drive the ambulance without matt but matt now has a new job and he is an incredible person and uh he has an incredible father and they you know matt takes care of his dad makes it the stars didn't align but ed said can i invite john fakara and the former indianapolis colts punter his name is pat mcafee and pat mcafee had a phrase that says you can't do a plus when you surround yourself with d plus people and granted that's passing but when you have ed bullion and john fakara and my dominance behind the wheel you definitely have some a plus people i mean by may be a b-minus but nonetheless so these are my heroes and we're all going to go and have some fun and and i called my buddy mark spence who never says no a lot of people like mark because he tends to drink daddy light on finn wiki and tell amazing stories we chase down tim daley who is a cannonball veteran and for some reason too he always knows how to sleep on people's couches and and grew up on chicken nuggets like i don't know so we have these generations of people that are going to go to darien connecticut because they have one thing in mind is to finally erase the dnf and april fool's day is a big day in in the history of the cannonball run and ed had this grand scheme that we were going to triumphally pull into california on april fool's day and erase this dnf so we had to start two days early and we're doing all this math and i have been to darien and where the 79 cannonball took place but i have never stood the hollow ground of the red ball garage which is this dirty parking garage in the middle of new york city but that's where it all happened so we take off we got a hotel room up in stanford and went and did our photo shoot and darien and everything but when you're doing the cannonball run you're doing it from the red bull garage and there is no other replacement than the starting line of the red ball and ending at the portofino and i don't care who's done it before or where they left before if they didn't read leave from the red ball you might as well just turn around and start over again when we're restoring this and getting this all ready for this triumphant victory across the finish line finally we had updated everything and it was in its best position that it's ever been in and my neighbor rick berkert he's a 77 year old vietnam vet and he's hilarious and i would call him in the middle of the night and say hey let's go do some laps around 465. and 465 around indianapolis is 53 miles so we would do two at night put another hundred miles on it come home see what starts leaking and it wouldn't leak and then we're like okay let's go and do something else or let's do a high speed runner let's try this or and we were just giving it the beans and it would take everything we got it rpm performance did it mike knew built the engine we are ready to go make the call to ed let's book the rooms and get fakara on a plane here we go pick up spence on the way and of course tim daley somehow found his way there because he does that and we all end up there and so i am standing at the hollow ground life is good so ed calls his friend ash lives right across the street to confirm that we were there and videotape us as we leave which is exactly what you're supposed to do when you're setting that record and or leaving for a cannonball run trip we set all of the gopros all of the timers with all of the gps and hit go and take as many pictures as possible so it is time to finally since 1979 leave the red ball garage in the transcon medevac and erase this dnf and there is nothing more glorious than seeing john fakara take the wheel of a 78 dodge sportsman and zig and zag through traffic with lights and sirens going and everything and ed announcing in the back of the seat that we're going to go up here to the garden and we're going to hang a right and a good time leaving new york is anytime around 12 minutes and i have only done this one other time and that was with dustin and mischief when we left with the players run and and datto and all them but we left from the aircraft carrier and went through times square we are now leaving hollard ground the red bull garage so we take off i'm hitting lights and signs for cars moving people out of the way and everything and it is just glorious to watch this thing at night with the lights bouncing off the building with and it sounds like a winston cup car ed says it sounds like an offshore boat racing because he can't hear a dang thing in the backseat and we get out of town in seven minutes and we are moving through the lincoln tunnel with lights and sirens and everything and focara is telling us where to turn them on and turn them off because of the police stations and the people and i am with these two guys that have done this before and i'm some idiot that built an ambulance and just invited them along for the ride and it was awesome then we really realized how terrible of a vehicle this is to ride in because though ed was sitting less than four feet behind me at his loudest voice i couldn't hear a word he was saying because it is the loudest thing on earth and focara realized that in 78 you have your high beams on your foot and to click people and just to kind of give them a healthy hey howdy and get them out of the way you're clicking your foot while you're driving at high speed and doing all these things and and there's just a lot of ergonomics that didn't really work and if ed wanted to look out the window there's these two big shields in the back two windows that you can't see out the back of let alone he is now in the loudest seat on earth we realized there were a lot of problems but we were out of town and we're on our way and we left new jersey behind us and we hit pennsylvania and we are on rails and watching john picari steer this thing through and call i'm i'm over there just reading off the gps because this thing is a little bit of uh i don't know it's got sway bars and the correct shocks and everything on it but it's still a brick with two sails on the roof of it when we were coming into turns i would let him know which way they were going whether they were sharp whether or whatever and it was just like a rally team and it was short-lived but we had the best time of our life during that we learned so much but there was one point when the federal signal aerodynamic light bars have this chrome grill in the front of them and back then it would house the speaker for the for the police siren and at speed they tend to catch wind and one of them decided to leave and take out two antennas on the front and i turned around and looked at ed and he was white as a ghost and said what was that it made a sound on the top of the van that sounded like someone had dropped a small vehicle on top of it but we said let's go let's keep going we we could tell there was a wind difference you can tell there was a problem upstairs but it was like apollo whatever when they uh blew off the oxygen tank i mean you they knew there was a problem and we did too but we were just three hours into this thing we've got a long way to go on the ambulance you have a lot of gauges that tell you everything and they all are just full of information and the first left one is the fuel pressure and we had moved the vehicle to fuel injection and that changed this thing's life you always want to have 60 to 80 pounds of fuel pressure for this system to work and as we're flying and going up through the hills i felt it buck one time and in all the testing and around all the four around 465 and everything and i was waiting because i didn't know if it was a wind thing from the top blowing off or if something was or just anything above it and then so i start watching gauges and focara's got it in the wind and i felt it buck again and when it bucked the fuel pressure would just and just drop and we have got a long way to go to be fighting this stuff so it came time for a driver change and it had bucked a few more times but we think well if we fill it all the way up that maybe we can put the pressure back into it and we're money we're going to lose a whole bunch of time but we're going to erase this dnf and i pulled out now i've got ed sitting next to me i've got focara taking a break and i pulled out onto the highway and we went about 10 miles and it bucked again and then we watch the pressure go from 80 to 60 to 40 to 27 to eight and it won't run at eight the big problem was the the current fuel injection company had let us down a little bit of a bad road on what it can and cannot do with the fuel pump we always wanted to put holly on the ambulance because holly was on the ambulance in 1979 holly was on the ambulance through the movie and we did not want to change that we wanted to have them get us across the line but they couldn't come on the ambulance when we needed their help so we relied on someone else bad us and we realized that at that point we were in trouble there was another fuel pump but it was in in indiana we didn't think we would ever have that problem we called mark spence and tim daley who was driving my truck and trailer and they were 40 minutes behind us and it's tough to make this decision maybe we should throw in the towel but we weren't there yet so we put the ambulance and it would start and it would run and you could smack the fuel pump and but it would just it would only do 15 psi it wasn't the best so we went ahead and put it up on the truck and trailer and the problem is then you now have ed at six foot seven myself at six four fakara tim daley and mark spence in a 2003 dodge ram extra car a crew cab truck where is everybody gonna go the craziest thing ever said to me in my life is john fakara said hey um i'm gonna take a nap and i'm like yeah that's fine because he'd just driven and and just give it at all and got us out of new york and did an excellent time and we were on rails and life is good and i'm like cool but he's going to take a nap on the gurney in the ambulance and now the ambulance is on the trailer behind me and so tim daley looks at me and said well i'm going to sleep in the ambulance too so now i'm driving down the road and i'm in ohio and i've got ed sit next to me half dozen off mark spence behind me two of my friends riding in the amulets on the trailer behind us and i am sitting there going okay if we get to my house i can just dump this fuel pump on here and we'll be good and then i'm starting to get tired and i just everybody else is asleep i took the gps to the closest holiday and we can find and i pulled in and pretty much woke everybody up and i said this is where it ends i just i had to go back and open the door and wake them up out of the ambulance but i mean could you imagine your friend say it's cool i'm just going to sleep in this truck car you're pulling behind me and they did john cars slept and to this day he will say he slept like a baby on the dan gertie in the back of the ambulance and while i towed him down the highway so we went and cut got a room we learned a lot i mean we learned in that short period of time and how glorious it was coming out and we're going to do this we're going to write the world's wrongs we realize that we weren't quite there yet premier financial services has been a sponsor of the vinwicki youtube channel for the last four years and we love them for that but we also love their simple lease it's one of the most powerful tools in the world of exotic car financing it allows you to minimize your payment minimize your down payment have the flexibility to move in and out of cars and take all of the advantages that are available to a leasing structure so check them out at the link in the description below we appreciate their continued support of venwiki and since you heard about them last year on the channel they were actually acquired by first financial bank usa and what does that mean for you it means they're now larger than any of the other exotic car banks you may have heard of they can move faster buy more deals and give you even better customer service 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Channel: VINwiki

Views: 68,339

Rating: 4.9468522 out of 5

Keywords: vinwiki, car stories, travis bell, cannonball run, ambulance, vehicle history, brock yates, ed bolian, john ficarra, dan gurney, 1979, movie, anniversary, april fools

Id: h007Hv0kUf4

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021