dsskdad said:
Now aging myself a bit. The same service in had an old Miller Meteor 1972 Cadillac that was still licensed basic. Yes I took it on a call, but it was only a long-distance transfer. It had three huge beacons on the top, 3 sidelights on each side that sequenced front-to-rear, 2 sets of front tunnel lights-one was standard wig-wags, the other red and white Mars lights with the figure 8 pattern. For sound-how about a Federal Director through the two large rooftop speakers. Then just for fun, crank up the Q that was on the roof. That will rattle your fillings. Too bad it sucked so much power that when you wound it up all the lights in the back would go out and the beacons would dim and slow to a crawl until you let the Q coast.
You're not aging yourself any more than I am! We had a '72 Superior hightop Cadillac that had been owned by a private company in Lubbock, TX, where I worked with a small standby ambulance service. The co. retired the Caddy when the motor went. It had come equipped with three big four lamp beacons up on the hightop; red tunnels front, rear and sides, along with the ditch lights. Over the cab was a small "hump" that contained a lighted "ambulance" sign. On top of the hump they had a pair of CP25 speakers powered by a Director, with a Q in the middle. And it had a switch that flashed all four headlights, or only the brights at night if you turned on the headlights. When the motor went they stripped the car. We got it for $250 cash. One of our members (now long deceased) headed up the pharmacy at a small private hospital. He loaned us the $300 for a replacement engine. Part of what we did was to cover the local car races on the weekend. One of the drivers had his own shop; so he did the engine swap for us at no charge. So when we put the ambulance back together, we put a Q where the original had been; used two TS100 speakers powered by a Unity SiTron siren; put a pair of red Model 17 beacons of the front corners of the hightop and a blue Dietz 211 beacon towards the center rear. I guarantee, it looked just as nice, if not better, than it had originally. And we had no problems with the power drain of running the Q with everything else turned on. The big Caddy had a 159-amp Leece-Neville alternator and twin DieHard batteries. Had no problem at all in moving traffice with that beast!!!
You would've also liked our '71 Olds. It was the short-wheel-based Seville model. Came from the small town of Spur, TX. We got it for $100 from a guy who had bought it at auction and had parked it, just to rob the new Michelin tires to put on his pickup. He let it sit up, and it cracked the block right at the top where the seam is located. Just a very minor leak that we corrected by using two tubes of "Weld-It" in the radiator. I never set much stock in those miracle remedies, but that stuff worked and never leaked again for the three or four years we ran the car. We had to put tires on it and then the emergency equipment. We went with a pair of red Federal 17 beacons on the front corners and a Q in the middle. Between the Q and the beacons we put two blue lollipop lights and a pair of small red sealed-beam lights behind the grille. And we had a highpowered alternator to handle the Q, along with a PA200 with grille mounted speaker. That was the fastest running ambulance you ever saw! We got called out in December '78 for a school bus wreck that had occured earlier in the day east of Snyder, TX. Snyder is about 110 mi. SE of Lubbock on US84. By the time they called us, the victims who survived had already been taken into Snyder and some other nearby hospitals. We had to come after a 17 yr. old kid who had both arms and legs broken in the crash. To shorten the story a bit, we made that 110 mi. run from Lubbock to Snyder in 45 minutes...but the speedometer never went past 85. As we were exiting the ER with our patient, a DPS trooper whom we had passed on the way, walked up and demanded to know what we had under the hood of the Olds. I told him that it was a 455 and asked why he wanted to know. He asked if I remembered passing him on the way and I said yes. He said, "Do you know how fast you were going when you passed me?" I replied that I had set the cruise at 85 and had not exceded that speed. He chuckled and said that when I "flew" past him he put on the radar and I was doing 120 and just cruising! I almost fell over! Turns out that the new tires we had put on the car were a bit over sized and that did something to the speedometer, which we corrected right away. That's one ambulance I wish was still around! :yes: