I'm coming down to Missoula for Barcamp in April. I expect a ride on this thing.
A firetruck ride might convince me to make the trip over for Barcamp...
When is Barcamp this year? I'll bring it :)
I Bought A Firetruck
181–190 of 284 posts
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#182It turns out there are no actual aircraft carriers for sale on eBay. I am disappoint.
They just don't come up for sale too often... http://www.kungfo0.org/theweb/ebay/carrier.html Never know what you may find on ebay... http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-050902a.html
I didn't make that up! I saw one a couple years ago that was for sale. I contacted the seller and asked if it came with a trailer. I just couldn't resist. He never wrote back but it WAS for sale on eBay!
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That must have cost more than the actual vehicle? The "sustainable" part of my mind is competing with the "cool project" part. I'm not sure which is going to win out yet. I wonder how competitive it would have been to send it by rail?
He does say it was more to ship than to purchase.
I've been trying to forget about that part of this - the cost of shipping SUCKED.
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
A firetruck ride might convince me to make the trip over for Barcamp...
When is Barcamp this year? I'll bring it :)
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#185I've always thought that an old firetruck would make a much better RV conversion platform than an old bus. The reasoning is that a firetruck (especially a pumper truck) has a suspension that is designed to carry much more weight than a bus so you would not be as constrained in what you could build on top of it. Jay Leno did an excellent column about how amazing fire trucks are in terms of durability. The OP said that…
Some friends of mine turned a 1963 firetruck into a 2:1 scale VW bus: http://walterthebus.org . The suspension was a key reason they went with a firetruck. A bus foundation would not have supported the 330 gallon water tank used in the onboard misting system.
Nice:
Accessories 330 gallon water tank for the onboard misting system Onan 4000 watt generator Air Conditioner for the sleeping/VIP room 10,000 plus led lights Safari style front window frames
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#186I wonder if the author realizes what a waste it is to drive a big car (let alone a fire truck) to the grocery store. We all love nature. We go out of our way to live in a place where it is more spectacular. And yet we do our best to shit on it with the damn gas guzzlers. Because, you know, it's fun!
The grocery store is perhaps a mile away, and he perhaps goes twice a week? So that's 100 miles/year, two orders of magnitude away from the national average. It's also substantially less co2 production than a flight from SFO to Hawaii.
If your point is that it's possible to do things that produce more egregious emissions, that's obviously the case. But that doesn't really justify anything. Billions of people, each making what they consider to be minor environmental indiscretions, adds up -- if we can speak in general terms about the math for the time being.
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
My bus/RV conversion weighs about 18 tons. It has 6 ton front axle and in the rear it has an 11 ton and an additional 6 or 8 ton axle. While a fire truck has a ridiculously strong suspension, if you used that for an RV, you would get a punishing amount of vibration and shaking. I guess you could ballast it, but you'll waste a lot of fuel hauling ballast around, in addition to being dangerously underpowered in some si…
I remember a mythbusters episode where they stuck a half a ton of clay on a regular car, and it didn't affect fuel economy. So there's that.
Rewatched and they did test with the full weight and as you said no (noticeable) change with the added weight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxEkT2H8pI#t=322s
I know that Mythbusters isn't generally hard science but you know.
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#188Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? First it was stretch limos, then Hummers, then Hummer stretch limos. I wonder if we're gonna see stretch limo fire trucks… Edit (since I'm being downvoted): The story is cool, I just find the fact that he's driving it daily to work completely retarded. What the hell I consider driving a car to work to be…
> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Not at all. It’s just that in the USA, things are on a different scale, and it makes sense to have larger vehicles. For example, a couple of years ago on eBay I bought a second-hand carrier battle group. Now, if you’re not from the USA, I can already hear you objecting that “it’s impractical” to drive…
I thought I was bad driving my farming combine to work and back. I feel so much better now.
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small. It's more the rule than the exception. European car makers have a specific car category named "City cars", big enough to host 4 to 5 people but as small as possible to be easy to park etc. Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is why he don't understand. American cities are modern a…
It kind of depends where you live in the US. I live in a rural PA town where they have built highways over dirt roads and the main state route into town is a two lane country street that carries 18 wheelers every hour of the day and has a never ending backup. Parking on main street, for example, is nigh impossible. Parts of it aren't wide enough for many cars to go past one another while the streetside parking is in…
Okay, I give up. It's either Kutztown or Lock Haven. I've been to Lock Haven, it's not an amusing place to navigate (especially the campus).
Re: I Bought A Firetruck
#190You inspired me, i will follow my dreams and nothing will stop me.
Thank you so much.