medicshawn, i dont blame ya for wantin to come home safe and alive cause i feel the same way. as for the traffic most of it depends on the day and peoples mood. sometimes we are just creeping by them when were doin 95 MPH and other times we do the safer driving (weather conditions) and people creep past us. as for the good ol' whirly bird, its an hour and a half away, in good weather, so unless we are doin a mountain rescue, it doesnt get used by us a lot.

 

My old '90 F150 had that on the equipment sticker in the door jamb. It said "Not equipped for ambulance use" or something to that effect. I don't remeber seeing anything about the fuel system, but I would imagine the fuel tank would have to be moved to accomodate an ambulance package. Those rigs do wiegh a lot so the frame would have to be able to handle it. Maybe the frames are modified for ambulance packages too?

 

jrs_dodge_diesel

You could be right about the tank having to be moved. I have the 'body builders book' that Ford puts out for body upfitters, but I've never looked into the ambulance section as we don't build or mount ambulance bodies in my shop. I could research it a little if I have some time. I don't know about the frames either, but they're pretty much standard for all other applications. Who knows why they do some of the things they do! One year, I remember they changed the width of the frame rails by only an inch or so. It was a pain in the butt to change a whole body mounting design for a lousy inch! But, Dodge and Chevy have done similar things as well, so none of them are immune from exhibiting brain cramp syndrome from time to time!

chaikwa.

 

I was under the impression that the difficulty in using the PTO was the major drawback of using a dodge as wrecker. From what i have read, it is not simple to setup the PTO (vs the ford and chevy) b/c of the 50/100 pin plug problem dodge uses for the cummins ecm. The conversion of a dodge to a tow-truck is very expensive compared to the others.

 

The whole point I was making is, the hill the Ford ambulances are running up isn't much of a hill...and you can mash the throttle to the floor and only do 55 mph. If that's all your truck will do on a wee bitty hill, that's a problem...because there are TONS of steeper, longer hills and mountains around here where you have a nice straight run. If it doesn't run good on a little hill it's gonna crawl up a big hill. I'm not much for speeding out of control, but when you can see the top of the hill from the bottom there's no sense in only being able to do 30 mph when normal traffic will do 50 mph up it! Yes, the weight is an issue, but if that's the case then maybe they should look into an ambulance w/ a more powerful engine...say, 400 hp and 900 ft/lbs torque.

 

i totally agree with ya welder27. yeah we got a little off subject but looks to be back in order. our quick sesponse chevy 454 fire truck will totally out run our powerjoke going up over the mountain we cover. both equiped the same but the 'joke wont keep up with the gasser. that aint right!