Diesel swap

[Steeldriver17]

Started here with a 1999 ford e series mini mod ambulance with a 7.3 powerstroke engine. Ford made ambulances in 2 different wheelbases-138" and 158". The mini mod has the 138" wheelbase...same as our chinooks.

Posted an ad on marketplace offering the box up for free to anybody that could get it off for me. This guy replied - he was 15 minutes from me and had a skid steer and a tractor. Made easy work of getting the box off.

Got it off and drove it home.

[Steeldriver17]

In order to jack up the chinook, I had to figure out a way to jack it up from outside the footprint. I had to do this in order to pull the cab and chassis out from underneath the camper.

My solution was to use two 10' pieces of 1.5" x 1.5" thick walled tube. I cut four small holes in the fiberglass skirting so the tube would sit flush to the underside of the floor. I'll patch these holes later when I do body work. I am planning on getting rid of most of the outdoor storage as well as fiberglass the window openings so I can install arctic tern awning style windows from tern overland.

I cut up a bunch of 4x4s into 1 foot pieces and used these in a criss cross pattern on top of some cut up tree trunks to progressively get the camper higher and higher. I only had 2 floor Jack's so I just jacked up each corner 1 block height at a time.

[Steeldriver17]

Once I finally had the camper high enough to clear the cab and chassis, I hooked up a tow strap from my jeep to the sway bar on the chinook and started pulling.

I went unbelievably slow with this process. I was so worried about knocking the chinook off the blocking. It actually fell off the blocks once, but the cab and chassis was still under it so it didn't go far. You can see that in the pictures 2 posts down. A little bit of cracked fiberglass, some cursing, and an elevated heartbeat were the only outcomes of this. Having the camper fall all the way to the ground would have been disastrous, so extra caution was taken while pulling this out.

A little side note: 5 years ago, my twin brother died under a car that fell off the jack stands and crushed him. I did this whole process by myself with nobody around. I was very aware of the potential danger and used an abundance of caution. Ive been a union ironworker for 13 years and do stuff like this at work all the time. Even with all that, i still had a slip up. Please be careful when working with jacks.

I got the cab and chassis pulled out but ran out of daylight. I left it up in the air for the night and woke up to almost 4 inches of snow the next day.

[Steeldriver17]

Next step was to transfer the body mounts from the chinook chassis to the ambulance chassis. Lucky for me, all the holes in the 2 frames were identical so this process was as simple as cut some bolts and rebolt them onto the new chassis.

Once that was done I just slowly backed the ambulance chassis under the camper. After that, the process of lowering was the same as raising. Jack up one corner, remove one block, lower it down and repeat on all four corners. Repeat that process for about 3 hours and you have touchdown.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite get everything lined up perfectly. The camper needs to be shifted about 1/2" to the passenger side in order to mount the camper to the body mounts. That's where I currently am with the project.

[Steeldriver17]

May as well include my fuck up as well

[BobW9]

This is beyond cool! I've often thought the past few years if I had the money I'd like to put my beloved Concourse on top of a new chassis. New engine, new everything needed for a good ride... and no more rust.

[sm350bl]

Sweet! looking forward to updates.

[Chinnin-about]

Beyond cool, and beyond ambitious. The ultimate dream Chinook.

[68camaro]

Agreed beyond cool and what a project, please keep us updated to how all the creature comforts fit and if you are able to get camper part working like original.

[chin_k]

Very cool, but will appreciate it even more if you put some description related to some of the pictures. Thank you very, very much for sharing.