The Belafonte - aka "Poor man's EarthRoamer" Ambulance Build

[CLynn85]

GREAT rig, and great idea......

I have a body I wanna make into the trailer. Also, I have a FC80 Freightliner CC mothballed but too big to convert for now anyway.

My FC80
Attachment 117063

Your body has the pullout drawer on the side, those are sweet, great camping accessory (until it ends up being 5ft off the ground I guess). The FC80 is a beast, can't wait to see what you make of it.

[CLynn85]

Well I was holding off on posting an update until after the weekend. I finally got everything else out of the way so I could put in some good hours on it today and tomorrow and I wake up to this:

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So I guess I'll just post what I got done last weekend and this week.

Last weekend we decided it was time to go ahead and paint the interior so we stripped out all the cabinet doors, counter, and the panels that we had built for priming/painting. The goal was to prime Saturday, paint Sunday, and stain the wood Sunday as well. Mother nature once again had other plans because rain started to roll in and we were racing the weather to finish the paint Sunday. As a result it didn't really start to dry and cure well until mid-week. Hopefully that won't have affected the longevity and overall adhesion of the finish.

Old nasty white/red.

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While we had everything stripped out we also decided to go ahead and replace all the red trim with black. A trip to the fabric store yielded a couple yards of black marine vinyl, so we set up a table in the basement for our sweatshop.

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And then we started re-assembling the interior. It's changed quite a bit since we bought it already. I also disassembled the A/C and Heat covers up front and sprayed those in Satin Black to complete the transformation.

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The area behind the counter will get covered with a sheet of aluminum to finish off the kitchenette area, and the wood surfaces still haven't been treated, they're just mocked-up in there for now.

[CLynn85]

Still not a whole lot of progress, but it's finally starting to look more like a camper!

This week we managed to make some progress on the bed, relocate some more of the electrical, and continue de-ambulification of the interior.

First off, we freed up some floor space but removing unnecessary garbage and relocating the inverter/charger.

Before:

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After:

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Found out that this box is useless since we no longer have a siren so it went away

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KKK certified????

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My biggest surprise was when I removed part of the cabinet that is to be the base of the sofa/bed, and removed the long stainless hinge.

With Hinge

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Without

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WTF?!??!

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[CLynn85]

So that brings us to today. Blacked out the cabinet doors, almost done with those, the one that remains empty on the rear will in the future house a swiveling flat screen. Also got some carpet down, the dog approves, as he HATES hardwood/slick surfaces. Paint looks decent, should do for the time being. If the weather would just hold out long enough that I could varnish the wood surfaces and start final assembly of the kitchenette and install the fridge we'd be doing good!

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[Haggis]

Lookin' good Carl...are you bringing it to the Float trip here in a few weeks for us to ogle over?

[AeroNautiCal]

KKK certified????

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I almost sprayed Earl Grey all over my laptop, then nearly choked to death laughing!

Those scribblings remind me of the scrawled message 'I MUST NOT KILL AGAIN!' that my friend wrote on his wall before wallpapering the room, he said that it was for future decorators to find when they stripped off the wallpaper!

[CLynn85]

Lookin' good Carl...are you bringing it to the Float trip here in a few weeks for us to ogle over?

That's the plan, even if we just throw an air mattress in the back, it should be there in some form or another.

[jronwood]

Thanks on the reply.

It is soo good you have ALL the mechanicals still in place. There is thousands of dollars in that stuff, not to mention all the "pre plumbed" wiring you have in that frame of that thing. Mine was "robbed" by the maintaince dept for the Pitts EMS service incase they needed parts for another. Mine was a "light roll", slid about 2' once it was over. Everything still works (doors and such). I dunno how many year it will take before it get some attention.

Yours looks awesome!

Jronwood

[Ozrockrat]

We had them make a sofa for us. Fairly reasonable (I think about $800 delivered to Phoenix) but the best part was they made it to our length to maximize the space available and it is comfortable. I did have to hack the base to fit it where the oxygen bottles used to be.

http://www.discountvantruck.com/

Also keep in mind the likes of Maaco for the paint work. They did a full color change on ours for $1680 out the door. Not a show quality job but very passable.

Anyway keep up the good work with the build report. Here another photo to keep you focused

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[Mark Harley]

This is realy turning out great!