It was a diesel.

 

I bet it has the rubberized flooring instead of the carpet. Wish mine had that.

 

Nice! All the civil authority X's around here are sporting the 5.4

 

2WD ?

 

I bet there is little need for 4 wheel drive in Costa Mesa. Looks like you couldn't get off road if you wanted to, unless parks and golf courses count.

 

I can see needing 4WD at our beaches here. A stuck X would not be fun.

 

Good point. How can you tell it's 2wd? Zoom up on hubs? Sat higher than 2wd's I've seen.

 

It's still a FD truck, you might need to extricate yourself, or a citizen, from a situation.

Perzactly.

You can't see the front drive diff in the pics nor the hubs.

 

Some are actually rocking the V10 too

That man looks very happy behind the wheel too

 

He was laughing with me because I asked him if I could take a photo and told him I had an Ex also.

 

First picture shows the side of the rear of the radius arm for the 2WD front suspension. . It does however sit pretty high for a RWD EX, it's also missing some of it's lower XLT door cladding, maybe the FD or city shops has done some modding.
Maybe the beaches are covered by a different authority, like that Baywatch gang () so the Batt Chief doesn't need to worry about any sand wheeling. Either way it looks like Chief 8 has a nice looking ride!
In my area all the Fire Depts do buy 4X4 Chief, Command, Utility and Crew light duty vehicles as well as many 4X4 medium duty trucks, but we also see snow and a lot of hills. We used to also always buy only diesels when possible, however recently I've been seeing a lot more gas rigs due mainly to the enormous repair costs of the modern diesels once out of warranty and the lower purchase prices. Sign of the times, budgets are continuously shrinking as the cost of apparatus steadily increases. The last Engine that had a part in ordering was in '02 and it was $436,000, the 2 newest Ladder Towers in my county have been around a million. It's not easy for a Volunteer outfit to keep up with those realities, as a result there have been several mergers over the last decade including my old Company.

 

Only for mutual aid, since Costa Mesa doesn't reach the beach.

I can vouch for that! BTDT, got the t-shirt AND the trophy.

Stewart

 

i like that too, if using the truck for work. otherwise i like carpet. my buddies excursion had rubber flooring in it, it was nice especially in the cargo area!

 

I really like that rear camera in the light. Pretty sharp truck

 

Good eye there, Tom. I look first at the hubs (although I have the H-D caps and I have not taken them to a machine shop yet) some have the decals on the center caps, then the front diff, which is almost always visible on a 4WD.