Ambulance – General Future Plans

Hello! I know that I have previously made a lot of posts about my plans for the ambulance, but now that I have actual concrete plans that are actually going to happen, I figured I should make a new, updated short-term post about all the things I am going to do to it in the next couple months, and what the next steps are when the weather finally gets warmer again. 

The last thing that we were doing to the outside of the van was removing all of the decals on the outside. We have to do this before we paint it or weld one of the cabinets shut, so we were really working towards this. Then, summer happened, I got sick a few times, and it was hard to come by the motivation to work on the ambulance. 

Then, when we finally had the time and motivation to work on the ambulance, the weather had started to get colder. This is very unfortunate since we use a heat gun to get the stickers off, and the cold weather really hinders the ability of the heat gun. Therefore, we can’t really do anything during the colder months to take the stickers off which really sucks. 

The next step that we want to do after that is to weld one of the cabinets shut so we can take out the inside of the cabinet and make room for the fixed bed that I want to have in there. But we can’t really weld anything shut until we take the stickers off, and we can’t do that until it gets warmer. 

After that, we have to paint the outside, but then again, that is also after we get all of the stickers off. Another thing is to take the inside bench out which I am pretty sad about, but we also have to do this to make room for my bed, so it is very necessary. When we take out the cabinet and the bench on the inside, we can design and install the bed which I think will be such a huge step and a very big milestone for me in general. Then, I will also be able to travel in it more even though it is not fully built out yet. 

It is really discouraging that we have to wait another couple of months to get any real progress done, but now I know what I have to do and how to do it. I will be prepared when the warmer months happen, even though I will be in school for about 8 hours a day I’m still going to try to work on it as much as possible and make cool timelapses so you can watch those videos in the future. 

I really enjoy making the timelapse videos and I am excited to review the ones I have already made soon, especially so I can make them into videos that people can finally watch. I am also very excited to have videos up on the Internet that follow my progress that I can actually revisit later and see how far I have come in tangible differences and also in knowledge. 

I am also going to make a post soon that is all about my designs for the inside and what I want it to look like. I am going to measure the entire inside of the ambulance and make all kinds of diagrams to really help myself and you all to visualize what I want to do with the inside. I am not entirely sure what I want to do with the inside myself, but this will definitely help. Since the next steps won’t be happening for a while, it wasn’t very motivating to design the inside, but I want to continue to work on everything I can before I actually have to do it so I am very prepared. 

One plan that I have in the next couple months that I can actually accomplish in the winter is to replace all of the batteries that are for the house part of the ambulance, since there are 2 batteries that are just for the back. I just recently realized I could even do this, and it would allow me to learn more about the inside and really take account of what works and what does not, including the lights, the rear AC and heating, the speakers, and the other general things that are back there. 

This should be pretty easy, at least I think so right now, since I would just have to see if those batteries are dead, which they probably are, and then get two replacements and then I can start making lists and diagrams of what works back there and what does not. There is a whole lot of stuff back there that I haven’t even gotten into in a very long time since we disconnected those batteries pretty soon after I got the ambulance. This part is really exciting to me. 

The last plan that I have that I will probably be doing very soon is replacing the radio. There is no bluetooth option in the radio I have currently and I would just really like to either make it so I can listen to bluetooth on a radio receiver or replace the whole radio so I can just connect my phone right to that. This probably shouldn’t take too long, but that’s what we think every time we start a new car project, right?

Anyways, long story short, I have lots of plans that I think I can accomplish relatively soon, and even though there are a lot of things I can’t do in winter, there are still a couple things I can work on before it gets warmer. I am really excited to be making some real progress on this project, especially since it has been so long since I have. 

Thank you all so much for reading my post, and I will be back again soon with another one! I appreciate all of you for sticking with me through this tumultuous journey!