Worst Ambulance and Fire Truck Thread:

Jarred J. said:
what was the siren ive never heard of a 70amp siren and your figures are probably in watts... most car batteries are only 70- 90 amp hours...
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Electronic sirens are measured in wattage output, Jarred, but not motor-driven sirens like the Q pictured on the Care-O-Van ambulance shown above. A Q can draw up to 125 amps starting and drops back to 45-75 amps running. This also applies to the Federal C class through the 60 class, as they all used similar motors. The large B&M sirens hit about 60 amps to start and 45 amps running.
 
Skip Goulet said:
Electronic sirens are measured in wattage output, Jarred, but not motor-driven sirens like the Q pictured on the Care-O-Van ambulance shown above. A Q can draw up to 125 amps starting and drops back to 45-75 amps running. This also applies to the Federal C class through the 60 class, as they all used similar motors. The large B&M sirens hit about 60 amps to start and 45 amps running.
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Yep, and I LOVE watching the rotators stop spinning when the Q is tripped...heheheheheh
 
JazzDad said:
View attachment 61427
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Here's a couple of Navy crash trucks. Newer style MB-1, and the MB-5, which they started putting on the carriers after the Enterprise and Forrestal fires. Both made by OshKosh. I went to school for the MB-5, which we had on the Nimitz. High priority on this beast, the Captain would not go to flight quarters without in being up. I was woke up several times to get the beast running. Only light was a Model 14 off centered on the roof, and a Federal Intercepter siren.


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[Broken External Image]:[URL]http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee295/rubesgirl/MB5_zps8d293bfb.png[/URL]
 
Phillyrube said:
Yep, and I LOVE watching the rotators stop spinning when the Q is tripped...heheheheheh
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OH.....do I remembers those days! The reason the Qs stopped the beacons was because the old ambulances had generators, not alternators. When I worked for Rix Funeral Home in Odessa, we had a 1959 Pontiac station wagon ambulance that had a roof-mounted Q with a pair of Carpenter lights next to it and a 17 beacon behind it. When you stepped on the Q, the beacon stopped and the Carpenter lights dimmed for a second. Long before I ever saw that car, I happened to be riding with my dad one day,and we were stopped at a busy intersection. I heard a siren come up behind us and turned to see a white '58 Chevy wagon ambulance approaching. When it got to the intersection the underhood siren was wound up. The beacon had stopped completely, but the two red lights on the fenders were blinking. I didn't understand auto electrics back then, so I just thought that something was wrong with their beacon.


Worst thing I ever got into was in 1976, when he had just bought a nice '65 Pontiac Consort from a private ambulance co. When they had it in service it had a VisiBar with the twin red beacons and a CP25 speaker powered by a Director. But when we got the car the roof was bare. We put a pair of 175 beacons of the front corners with a Q in the center. Between the Q and front beacons was a pair of red DoRay lollipops, and it had a blue Dietz 211WW beacon behind the Q. On our first run, which was from a racetrack about 20mi. SE of Lubbock, we headed to Methodist Hospital with a patient. Being a Sunday afternoon there wasn't much traffic, so I was only using the Q lightly. We also had an Interceptor with an underhood speaker. We made it into town just fine, but as we reached the last major intersection, still about a mile from the hospital, the Q wouldn't roll over. So we completed the run with the electronic siren. As we rolled into the ER drive where the ER was all glassed in, I noticed that the beacons were dim and barely spinning. So I let the car run and when we came out everything worked fine. But we had a second run from the same track and the same thing happened. Monday morning it went to a starter/alternator shop. The guy called me at work and said that it just needed a higher-amped alternator. Someone had put a 35 amp. alternator on it. The Pontiac Consorts came from Superior with a 55 amp alternator that worked just fine. So he put a 65 amp alternator on it and we never had problems out of it again. It makes me wonder, though, how some of the ambulances I saw as a kid that were really decked out with Qs and all sorts of lights made it without the car stalling in the middle of the road! :eek:
 
dash lights.jpg


If you look closely, you'll see the LED dash lights on the left unit.
 
New rig from Baltimore Hatzalah.


It's kinda weird, cause their other rigs are really nice!

Baltimore.jpg

Baltimore 1.JPG
 
LLS said:
New rig from Baltimore Hatzalah.

It's kinda weird, cause their other rigs are really nice!
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I think it's just weird because you don't see cabover ambulances, but overall not a bad looking truck. Also, on a side note, I have never seen a Hatzolah rig outside of NYC, but I know they have them all over.
 
JennyCop said:
A PA-20A with dual CP25s speakers, a Twinsonic with dual TS-24 speakers, a North American electronic siren, and a Q2B.
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If the PA20A is a series 2E, it will provide the high-pitched tones (actually a 'whee whee' sound), while the North American will provide the low-pitched tones (a true 'woo woo' sound). The Q siren comes up the middle and deafens everyone if there is enough juice to get it spinning at full speed.
 
Wailer said:
If the PA20A is a series 2E, it will provide the high-pitched tones (actually a 'whee whee' sound), while the North American will provide the low-pitched tones (a true 'woo woo' sound). The Q siren comes up the middle and deafens everyone if there is enough juice to get it spinning at full speed.
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If the Q doesn't roll at full speed it would almost sound like an old Sterling. An old ambulance in Odessa many years ago was a '55 Ford sedan-delivery...the last of their 6-volt vehicles. It had an 8-volt Jeep battery to handle the lights and siren. The Q siren was a 12-volt model, so when the let loose on it, it only got to about half-speed and then taper out. So what you heard was a decent growl out of the siren...still sufficient to clear traffic in those days, but nothing like it should've been. I never could figure out why they used that 12-volt Q on that ambulance since the funeral home had some good 6-volt sirens sitting loose that they could've used and gotten better soundpower that way.
 
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Tristar said:
Any idea where this was, and what this truck was used for?
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'meat wagon'???
 
rwo978 said:
'meat wagon'???
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By the looks of it it'd be ground beef by the time they get to the morgue, with a garnish of rust and mold. :ugh:
 
dmathieu said:
Man, I'd have to be really hurting to get into that thing!
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But that ambo is big enough to carry a lot of life support equipment.
 
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