Fire Engine Complete overhaul from paint to LED's

[fireman616wfd]

Im fire chief of a small volunteer fd here in Mississippi and we received a "new to us Engine" for free from a naval air station (1998 E-One). My county had not purchased a fire truck since 1990 and I went to them and begged for money and they gave me $25,000. The Engine was completely stripped down.... I mean nothing besides two working grille strobes. I got help from a local detail shop who had their distributor donate paint and them donate the labor to paint. We had to buy new everything from hose to scene lights to outlet caps. I will list the emergency equipment we placed on the truck. We replaced every single light and converted it to LED. Also moved the turn signals up on the body to a more modern look and placed another 600 head in the existing turn signal housing.
I done the entire install with help from some members of department. We are Thrilled with how it turned out.[Broken External Image]:http://[URL=http://s75.photobucket....s/i295/fireman616wfd/IMG_5225_zpsyj80jtj4.jpg

EQUIPMENT LIST...

Front:
-Whelen Freedom Bar with Whelen Dual Pioneer Plus built into bar
-x4 Whelen 600 series super leds
- pair of 600 led turn signals and led marker lights
- Federal Signal Eq2B (200 Watt)
- Federal Signal Q2B Pedestal Mount (no brake!)

Sides:
-x4 Whelen 600 super LEDs on each side
- Whelen Dual Pioneer Plus scene lights on poles
- LED marker lighting upgrade

Rear:
-Whelen L31 beacons (hooked into marker lights for a steady on until activated into emergency mode, acts as marker light)
- x4 Whelen 600 series super LEDs
- Wheldon Updated LED Turn/Brake and Reverse Lights



BEFORE:







AFTER:










VIDEO CLIP:

 

[801]

Wow, very nice job. Glad you were able to get the all the donations.

 

[fireman616wfd]

Wow, very nice job. Glad you were able to get the all the donations.

Thanks, worked my butt off on it. The rear chevron and dots was a job! Ha

The only donation we got was the paint + paint job. Everything else I had to pinch pennies and work to get good deals on all the lighting and fire equipment. There is also a portable dump tank mounted up top on a roller tray and got all new equipment from hand tools to hose and nozzles and have everything Pac-Lok in there nice & neat.

 

[CACBAND]

Very nice. I know the challenges of small rural depts. all too well, you deserve some major credit for the work put into this rebuild.

 

[firebuff17]

Nice Job Chief!
That is a nice transformation. Truck looks good.
That's great that the paint and labor were donated.
Hope she performs and lasts many years for you.

 

[proudfirefighter]

Wow! Amazing what a little bit of paint, and some new lights will do to make a truck look new.
Truck looks fantastic, and it's even nicer that you were able to do all that yourself for cheap (Albeit, I'd rather have you not have to pinch pennies to be able to afford it.. if only people funded your department better!)

 

[JohnMarcson]

That looks great. Looks like there was a Q siren that got removed previously. It's hard not to replace that lol. It's easy to forget what it's like to have to scrape money around for your equipment. This is a great example of what can be done with investing time and effort. Very nice, thanks for the before and after pics.

 

[fireman616wfd]

That looks great. Looks like there was a Q siren that got removed previously. It's hard not to replace that lol. It's easy to forget what it's like to have to scrape money around for your equipment. This is a great example of what can be done with investing time and effort. Very nice, thanks for the before and after pics.

Thanks John! Yea there was a Q there, had to put it back on.
The hard part was with it being county purchased is everything pretty much had to be new because of purchase orders so that made it harder. Wasn't where I could get on here and buy nice used product. Took many many days and many pieces of paper with numbers on it to beable to draw all this in under the amount given from wheel simulators, emergency equipment, fire equipment and LED compartment and marker lighting. Now I'm doing the same thing to a tanker truck, brush truck and my new Sheriff Dept patrol vehicle...

 

[bigcat]

"There is also a portable dump tank mounted up top on a roller tray"

Is there a pic of that? Was that custom made?

 

[pdk9]

The only thing I dislike here is the video! Stop rotating your phone chief! Lol

Looks like a great way to stretch your limited budget. The only thing that I'm not crazy about with the lighting setup is having round rear brake/reverse lights on top of the rectangle 600s and having an eq2b running with a q2b (I hate having the electronic and mechanical version running at the same time).

Did it have relatively low mileage and engine hours?

 

[fireman616wfd]

"There is also a portable dump tank mounted up top on a roller tray"

Is there a pic of that? Was that custom made?

Yea a friend who owns a metal shop just had 5 pieces of round metal tubes and got a bunch of rollers and slid down onto the pipe and just bolted them in the rear hose bed.. Works pretty good besides it takes up a lot of room with the tank there, loading it up there isn't the best and if the tarp hangs out of the pool frame it can get caught under the roller.

 

[acala91]

Looks great man, nice work. It's a shame that the 600s don't have the ability to sync.

Down the road, I think you should add either a HLF or a flasher to the front facing Pioneer. Either one would be very effective and give you long range front warning.

One question though, why did you choose to go with an eQ as well as a Q2 opposed to a cheaper electronic siren?

 

[fireman616wfd]

The only thing I dislike here is the video! Stop rotating your phone chief! Lol

Looks like a great way to stretch your limited budget. The only thing that I'm not crazy about with the lighting setup is having round rear brake/reverse lights on top of the rectangle 600s and having an eq2b running with a q2b (I hate having the electronic and mechanical version running at the same time).

Did it have relatively low mileage and engine hours?

The phone thing... I know, I know! Haha I'm going to do another video at dusk and upload it.

The round Weldon lights were not my favorite but that was what was on it already and the existing screw holes and wore holes were already there. You don't know how close I came to putting the quad stack 600 series bracket there but the measurements were SO close on fitting it scared me a little.
* see post below for reasoning of a Q2B & EQ2B haha*

And it only had 18,300 miles when we received it.

 

[fireman616wfd]

Looks great man, nice work. It's a shame that the 600s don't have the ability to sync.

Down the road, I think you should add either a HLF or a flasher to the front facing Pioneer. Either one would be very effective and give you long range front warning.

One question though, why did you choose to go with an eQ as well as a Q2 opposed to a cheaper electronic siren?

Thanks.. I didn't show it in the video but I will but I opted out of a HLF Because one I'm not a huge fan of them especially at night and two I did order the pioneer to flash and its hook on a seperate activation switch and park kill and does a fabulous job. So with that & the two white in the freedom I thought a HLF would be a white overkill.

I wish I could have synced all the 600's also especially in the rear but that was going to be a task after inspecting that I honestly didn't want to tackle with the truck already being "built"... However the 600's in the front are synced on a flasher.
*see next comment for Q2B and EQ2B explanation*

 

[fireman616wfd]

Ok here it is... The explanation on why I went with both the Q2B & EQ2B.

- im a full time firefighter in a city about an hour from here (nearest full time dept) and we run Q2B's and electronic sirens, I'm the guy that says "it's not a fire truck without a Q". We have 9 volunteer FDs in our county and no one has a Q2B or EQ2B. After planning the truck out and having a group of men with various ages ranging from 21 to 68 who drive I thought all they will turn on is the electronic siren and take off being rural and never even thing about hitting the pedal for the Q. We purchased a nice used Rescue Ambulance and it came with a EQ2B and boy everyone around here just thought that was awesome. So I spec'ed a EQ2B to go on the engine so when they leave on a call and flip their siren on it will Atleast be some form of a Q (I want the people to know when a fire truck is leaving the station) so now they have to run a Q. There were holes in the bumper where a Q was already there and I found that one of the people I was purchasing the lighting from had a used one and gave it to me for $300 for the purchase of the other lights and to help us out. Now the Q2B gets blown leaving the station and at stop signs or when we go to our neighboring "city that has red lights lol". We just got a newer tanker and brush truck that I am working on and couldn't swing the money for a EQ2B so I found a guy with new Carson Dual tone sirens with mechanical at a super deal and purchased that for those trucks so now all trucks have that form of a "Q" sound. Since we done our engine and rescue with a EQ2B there are 3 other departments that have purchased them for their engines, one got a real Q2B and others have a couple of Carsons with mechanical... So it was a small win that everyone is Atleast jumping on board and the trucks here are sounding more like fire trucks rather than the police and ambulance units and people know "there goes the fire dept."

By me using the EQ2Bs in the rural area we Atleast have a steady Q tone going.

Hope that helped!! Lol

 

[kitn1mcc]

Nice looking rig

 

[npfire9]

Chief if I was you, I would be very proud of that truck! A ton of work went in to that truck, make sure your members are proud of the work they put in on the truck. I can understand the work you and the boys put in on this rig. We have rebuilt our 74 chevy grass rig in house. Make sure you post your other builds.

 

[JPolston]

Beautiful. Love the swap to red Congrats to you and your dept.

 

[slash9dotnet]

Wow, that's an amazing transformation - You guys did an awesome job! And E-One, definitely a good truck to have!

 

[RescueWV]

Looks excellent. It's great to see what can be done with a little hard work and ingenuity.

 

[fireman616wfd]

Thanks guys... Im working on a Tanker now that was donated to us (used military fuel truck) that we are doing some upgrade work with the transition from fuel to water weight and paint, compartments, lights, etc... Its a 2002 International with a 5,000 gallon tank. We also sold a old pumper that we used that money to fix the tanker up with and purchased a 2007 Ford F-250 crew cab lariat to replace our 1984 Military Brush Truck.

With that said... We only receive $4,800 dollars a year to operate on. Thats cost of fuel, common station bills such as light and heat, radios, turnouts, tshirts.... thats it. Wish I could show what all has been done in my 4 years as far as trucks and station upgrades with equipment but it would take its own thread haha.

 

[fireeqpsrv]

Great Job!

 

[5309]

Wow great job..

 

[amccullers]

I will echo what everyone else is saying. It is amazing what new paint an lights will do to a truck. Great job

 

[acala91]

With that said... We only receive $4,800 dollars a year to operate on. Thats cost of fuel, common station bills such as light and heat, radios, turnouts, tshirts.... thats it. Wish I could show what all has been done in my 4 years as far as trucks and station upgrades with equipment but it would take its own thread haha.

Well let's see it!

 

[Mrlunchbox]

Looks great Chief! You should be proud!