Ambulance: Week One

Hello! I am so excited to be making this post. This is the first of a long series of updates on how my vambulance is going! That’s what I’m calling it now, until I have a better name. If you have a better name, please leave it in the comments down below!

Before I move on to what we have done to the van this past weekend, I wanted to talk about some problems that we have encountered so far in this process.

The first problem that we faced was a pretty big one. On the day we were supposed to pick up the vambulance, we had to insure it first. We couldn’t drive it home without insuring it, both because it had to be insured and it had to be insured in order to get a moving permit.

Long story short, it took us about three hours to finally get insurance on it. There was problem after problem with the weight, the VIN, or just people saying they would call us back and not calling us back. Finally, we got insured with GEICO! I was so happy to finally get it done after those long hours.

The second, and most problematic problem of them all, was that we found out that we were not allowed to keep the vambulance in our neighborhood. We found out by getting a violation from the HOA, so we had to do something, and quickly.

We started looking for storage units, but there were almost none that would fit the vambulance, and even if they did fit it, then they did not allow any room for working on it. The ones that would barely fit it were also much more expensive than we were hoping for.

So, my mom decided to look for different options, and we ended up storing the vambulance at a property of someone that we know. It is so much of a better option than a storage unit, and it turned out so perfect.

I’m so glad this problem wasn’t a much bigger problem than it had to be.

The last problem that I wanted to mention, which is actually part of the update, is painting the vambulance. In order to paint it, we have to take all of the red and white decals off. These decals are really old, and therefore brittle. This makes them really hard to get off.

This Saturday, my dad and I were using special rubber wheel attachments on drills that are made for removing decals, which worked relatively well. However, it had actually gotten warm enough for us to use a heat gun on it, and that worked much, much better.

We used the heat gun on several areas, and it worked wonders compared to the drill. We made a lot of progress. Pictures of progress are attached, if you are interested.

We also replaced the license plate lights on Saturday, which was illuminating (haha no pun intended) and also very frustrating. We eventually got it done though.

I also ordered extendable side view mirrors, but only one of them arrived in time for us to install it this weekend. The other one is supposed to arrive on Friday, so we will install it next weekend. These make it much easier to see into the other lanes when you are driving, so this was a necessary installation.

However, we found out that we need to remove the door panel to get to the right stuff, so we are going to work on that again next week.

The next thing we wanted to do this weekend was paint the catalytic converter bright yellow. This would make it really unlikely that anyone would steal it. My dad really wanted to do this because the catalytic converter on our RV got stolen while it was in the storage yard.

The paint we used on it is very heat resistant, but you have to cure it first. This means that we had to paint it, idle the ambulance, turn it off, wait, idle the ambulance, etc. This went for probably about 4 rounds. Hopefully the paint has completely cured now. I really hope it has because I do not want to get under there again.

After a long second day of decal removing and catalytic converter painting, my mom brought us some sushi! It was the first meal we ever had in the vambulance, and it was great. We talked a lot after that about placements of certain things such as the bed and the toilet, and that felt pretty productive.

Here is a list of things we wanted to get done this past weekend:

• Install one side view mirror
• Remove more decals
• Replace license plate light
• Remove all inside light lenses to bring home to clean
• Paint catalytic converter

Here is a summary of what we actually did this past weekend:

• Remove more decals
• Replace license plate light
• Paint catalytic converter

I do have big, ambitious plans for next week, so hopefully we will get a lot done, including the stuff we did not get to this weekend.

On Sunday, I had woken up super sore, and I was even more sore after working on the ambulance for a few hours. We were very happy to go home, but I am also very excited to work on it again next week and get even more done! Every little bit of progress that we make is another bit closer we get to actually finishing and being able to go on trips in it.

I hope that we will make a lot of progress next week. We plan on getting more decals off, installing the new side view mirrors, and whatever else we can think of!

Thank you all so much for reading my blog post and supporting my journey! It means a lot to me that a lot of you are still here to see me grow and progress through life. I’ll see you guys in the next one!

P.S. If you guys cared about listening to me ramble about what I have in the works, this is the section for you! I plan on filming almost everything we do to the ambulance, maybe streaming it, and writing blog posts about it. There will be a lot of content in the future about the ambulance, so be sure to check back in to see more. Also, if you wanted to be notified any time I went live on my Twitch channel, here is the link for that:

My Twitch!

I don’t have that many followers on there yet, but I hope to gain a lot when I start streaming frequently again.