ludi wrote:What's the end goal? Camper, or mobile workshop?
Camper at the moment, but damn mobile workshop sounds freakin' awesome.
I'll give you guys a bit of back story to the vehicle:
It started out life as an import by the Victorian Government, as they were never imported, complianced and sold here in Australia, except the Suburban in the mid 90s by Holden which lived a very short life.
The Victorian Government for what ever reason had decided to use these as their rural ambulances.
They were shipped in from the USA, converted to RHD, complianced to meet Australian Design Rules and sent to Jakab in Tamworth NSW to have the rear body made up for them and installed, then they went to Mader International in Victoria to be fitted out with all the electrics to turn it into an ambulance.
This one which is a 2001 model (complianced as 2001 here in Australia, probably your 1998 model) is one of the last ones imported, they were replaced with the locally delivered F350 by Ford Australia (built for us by Ford Brazil) later in 2001.
They ended up being replaced by the F350 because Ford Australia started selling the super duty series here in Australia. Which the RHD models being built in Brazil sent over to us rather than converting the American ones to RHD and bothering with all the crap to meet ADRs, so we ran with the 1999 F250/350 Ford Brazil was building from 2001 all the way up to 2006 until Ford Brazil stopped making them.
In 2006, Ford Australia decided not to continue with the F series trucks, so all rural ambulances became Mercedes Sprinters like the metro ambulance variants. Paramedics complain about the lack of power and torque in those German pieces of **** and they have just as many reliability problems as the American trucks.
Ambulance Victoria wasn't happy with the issues they were facing with the GMC Sierra, they were killing engines constantly, but I put this down to the barbarians who were driving the vehicles and GM's dodgy turbo they decided to use.
Replacement parts were hard to get a hold of because there was no local supply for them, as the trucks are imports, so there was no local dealership support, a few retailers like Bursons were importing parts though.
Each Ambulance cost about $170,000 when it was finished.
This particular ambulance had served its time in the Regional Ambulance Victoria fleet, then was decommissioned and sold onto First Intervention, a paramedic training company, so it was refitted out and changed colour scheme with all new stickers, and they had it for 6 or so years, where it was only used by students for practise, maybe 5 times a year, so its been sitting inside a garage for half of its life.
My story:
I got her for a good price, $14,000 which included road worthy certificate and registration to October, they originally wanted $19,000, but they agreed to $14,000 and they would be paying for any work it needed to get the certificate.
Which worked out fantastic for me, because the mechanic made them replace the Windscreen, both front seat belts, shocks, tie rod ends and some bushes, which ended up costing them $2500 LOL.
My workmate ended up driving it home for me, which was a 50km journey, which it drove rather nicely.
Since then I've only done some minor work to it, here is a photo of it sitting in my driveway:
I removed the two front red strobes and today I took out the siren:
The siren was behind the two blanking plates on the front two holes on the bumper:
It was only held in by 3 self drilling screws:
Next to come I'm going to stick some spot lights on the front of it and wire them up.
So far that is the story of my next project car.
On the Falcon, we've developed a slow coolant leak somewhere, so I have to check it out soon.