Sorry for the two week lag in getting this post published as Christine and I have been up at our little sanctuary on Saturna Island.

We were up there getting in some much needed and long anticipated Gramma and Grampa time with our Grand Daughters Brynn and Blair and their parents Lia and Brian who drove up from their place in the Los Angeles area. 

A truly GRAND time was had by all, including Cotton their “blonde” Golden retriever and our ten days together zipped by in a blink as we explored most of Saturna and spent a day on neighboring Mayne Island. 

Ending many nights with S’mores on the deck with our propane fire pit certainly helped! 

Christine and I drove back down to our place here in Klamath Falls just in time for me to take Christine over to the Medford airport on Thursday to catch her flights over to the Fort Lauderdale area to now get even more Gramma time with our Grandson Liam and his parents Ashley and Tim.

Meanwhile, I am back at work on Lance, currently modifying the externally accessed aluminium cabinets to convert some of their volumes into internally accessible storage.  Lots of cutting, grinding and welding as I teach myself how to TIG weld aluminium but I’ll leave all of that for another post and go back to catching up on all the work that had to happen first to fully remove all the existing ambulance cabinetry, equipment and electrical.

After a bit of deliberation and reviewing other ambulance to RV conversions in blogs, discussion forums and YouTube, we decided that it was going to be best for us to completely gut the ambulance “module” or box that was made by Horton Emergency Vehicles and take it down to its bare all aluminium (AL) frame.  I covered part of this in the previous two posts HERE and HERE which shows most of the deconstruction and removal of the extensive interior cabinetry.

In this week’s post I’ll do my best to take you through the removal of the eXtremely extensive electrical system and wiring that Lance has/had.  I will be reusing many of the electrical components and wires to power and control the new electrical systems I’ll be installing for things like heating, cooking, water, showers, pumps, etc. but for now it all needs to come out before the new construction can begin.

Here is a“Before” shot of what the interior looked like when we purchased Lance.

a few months later with almost all the cabinets and equipment removed it looked like this. 

and a few weeks ago after even more hours of removing literally miles of wires it looked like this with the interior down to nothing but all aluminium framing and exterior “skin”.  For those wondering, Horton sprayed the interior with sound insulation which is why it is all Black rather than the shiny silver of aluminium.

You can skip to the end if that’s enough of a summary for you but for those interested in a bit more of the process or removing all the wiring, here are a few of the steps along the way.

Modern ambulances are very complex units being close to a hospital on wheels and so they have a full compliment of equipment from oxygen supply, defibrillators, vacuum pumps, heated and refrigerated compartments for medications, communications via radio, audio and video with the land based hospital, dispatch and the driver in the cab to name but a few.  This cabinet was the last to come out as it held the “brains” controlling all the electrical equipment.

Most of the medical systems are fully digitally controlled via LCD touch screens like this one of three that are located in the box and one in the cab.

The touch screens connect to five of these digital/analog switching boards to turn pumps, lights, sirens, inverters and such on and off.

As well as boards such as this one for used for switching some of the higher amperage circuits.

Several of which have high amp circuit breakers such as these and I removed a total of 16 of them.

I will likely reuse several of these control boards (they are all identical units) for controlling some of the lights and systems in the new build so these are now all safely stored away.

 

These are some of the wires that were feeding into that master cabinet with just the control boards to be removed now before the cabinet can be taken out.

As you might notice I was taking copious notes both in my notebooks and Excel spread sheets as well as hundreds of photos so I can refer back to these during the build.

Fortunately, Horton provided a HUGE help in keeping track of all this as every single wire has text labeling about every 6 inches and they supplied me with their spreadsheet of what each number corresponds to. 

Which is a VERY good thing when these are only about a third of the wires that were inside the front half of the Horton box.

A few more in the back.

Oh, and did I mention that all these wires need to make their way up into the cab of the truck?

Some of these like you see here are for truck related items such as lights for brakes, turn signals, air suspension and brakes as well as power from the alternator and batteries.

But the majority of the wires and circuits went up into the Black center console that had the master control touch LCD screen, siren controls, VHF and cell radios, etc. 

So I removed the drivers seat and the center console to get at all of these wires

and control boards like this one so I could sort through and remove most of them. 

I now have many crates filled with the wires, looms, switches, control panels, LCD screens, connectors and more.

In all my spare time I am going through the piles of wires and coiling each one and sorting by colour and purpose to make it a bit easier when it comes time to start reusing these for the new wiring I’ll be installing in the coming months.

So far I have 786 lines in the spreadsheet I’ve been keeping for each wire and circuit I’ve removed which has been a job all in itself to provide wire colour, purpose, from/to, plug type, etc.  The labels printed on each wire will continue to be very useful in the new build and will just have different purposes now so the spreadsheet will allow me to type in the name of the circuit in the new electrical system and be my cross reference to know that what used to be Horton #539 Intravenous Warmer Tray is now Lance #539 Heated Floor thermostat.  So all this work up front will pay me back many times over as I start wiring all the new systems as well as reconnecting all the vehicle systems such as brake and turn signals, marker and back up lights, ground lights, engine gauges, diagnostics and more.

Hasn’t this been an electrifying experience for you going through all this?!!  The good news though is that this brings me close to the end of the “constructive deconstruction” phase and next week I will start to show you the beginning of the transition into building the all new Lance.  Yesterday I finished the last of the modifications to the externally accessed aluminium cabinets and I’ll pick up there in the next blog post.

Thanks again for joining us on this latest adventure and be sure to leave any and all comments and questions in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

Oh!  Just one more thing before I wrap this up and publish. 

Ten years ago today (Aug 4th, 2014) I somehow managed to catch Christine in a rare moment of poor judgement and got her to say “I Do” at the little courthouse in Deland Florida.  Lucky ME!!!

So even though we’re on opposite coasts today, Happy Anniversary to my best friend and partner in all the truly awemazing adventures we’ve had in the past ten years! 

Can’t wait for our next chance to kiss and celebrate when you get back from Florida my Love.