have seen about a dozen of the first of many to come Chev. Duramax ambulances. AMR is buying them by the thousands and dumping their 6.0L Fords because of service problems and no Ford new replacement.
looks like AMR won't be going Ford gasser nationwide.

the drivers and managers that I've talked to love the Duramax. reliable, starts easily and lots of power.
what a shame Ford has lost such a great dependable market and the widespread road advertising.

nothing like a Duramax ambulance running code blasting by at 90 mph up a freeway hill for free advertising.

the King is DEAD due to stupid top management

would have went Ford on my new purchase to replace my 7.3L but too many problems and poor problem resolution by Ford on the 6.0L to take a chance on a questionable 6.4L.
my Dodge/Cummins 5.9L is running great but will be test driving a Duramax next replacement.

 

Gasser were dropped due to so many fires the best I remember. Diesel is better in a crash for sure.

 

That is too bad.

Having your product chosen for emergency services is priceless advertising.

 

We work on a lot of the local ambulances and the Chevys are a lot nicer to drive than the econolines are.

 

But IMHO as a well satisfied 6.4 owner approaching 50K miles, you and the ambulance companies are making a huge mistake! I hope, if I ever need ambulance service, that it doesn't come in the form of a DirtyMax.

 

Ford dropped the ball on this one I guess. Duramax has been running for a while now. Ford has jumped ship 2 times so far. Don't forget International has lost out too. I too wouldn't buy 6.4's mostly cause they are history. Then have to wait for the 6.7 to get produced and bugs worked out might push me into Chev. if I needed new trucks.

 

The 6.4 is not history, navistar is still using it so parts will out there for quite sometime.

 

I work in hospitals all over the Southeast and my job involves me working at or near the Emergency room entrances and ambulance bays.

Nearly every day I see the Ambulances, most of them are the Econoline/F450 type, very few are the F550/International big chassis with air brakes and stuff.

Now I take issue with the powers at Ford and Navistar dropping the ball here! Virtually ALL 6.0 and 6.4 ambulances are sitting for 3-8 hours/day idling. Duh! You can't idle these things like the 7.3 or the big rig tractors and the problem is that the people who make them require them to idle all day so the battery powered critical care equipment is fully charged and that the interior of the ambulance is climate controlled.

Now, I understand that the equipment and the climate control has to be ready at any moment and a life is far more important than whether or not it's a Ford or a Bowtie, but the fact remains, most of them have to run constantly during a shift and this kills the emissions laden new diesels.

THIS IS NOT A SLAM ON THE EMT'S OR THE GOOD FOLKS THAT OPERATE THEM, YOU ARE VALUABLE PEOPLE THAT DO A SERVICE AKIN TO FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM! I take issue with the manufacturers and engineering in modern ambulance design.

Only the large and well funded hospitals have ambulance bays with shore power and at these you will find the ambulances shut off and plugged in. You can bank on the fact that these units do not have the frequent problems that many rural area units have.

 

Unfortunately, I too think Ford has dropped the ball. I work for a relatively small fire department, 100 firefighters. We have three ambulances that cover about 70,000 people and average about 20-25 calls total a day. My fire dept. like to keep an ambulance until it has 100k, ruffly 5-7 years. We just traded in two 2008 Ford F-350 Frazier because they spent more time in the shop than on the road. One of them had head gaskets replaced 3 times. The other had electrical issues, I don't know, but it left me stranded a couple of times. We also had a Chevy Duramax Frazer that was ready for replacement, it had 96,000 miles on it. So what did we get, 3 Dodge Hemi Frazers. What has the world come to!?! I think we regressed back into the stone age. There are only two things about them I like; one, it has tons of room in the cab and two I only have to fill one tank with one fuel. For those of your scratching your heads, Frazers have genterator that run the electrical on the box. A common problem for having a gas and diesel tank was accidentally mixing the two. Everything else about the gas Dodge they can keep. Diesels are smoother on acceleration, which means more comfort for the patient. You can light foot that Hemi all you want, but with the weight it's carrying it shifts hard. I was embarrassed the other day when I had a passenger in the front and her son was in the back. Needless to say I had to apologize for the Hemi performance and explain that our diesel trucks weren't as bad.

Long story short, Frazer isn't carrying the Ford chassis anymore because of all the problems. When we ordered the Dodges they tried to sell us the Cummins diesel and our shop said no. The reasoning was if the Hemi acted up they would replace the whole engine, they were tired of the Ford diesel.

A little back ground on Frazer, personal bias, but I feel with my 11 years experience that they are the best quality ambulance boxes made. And the fact that they will not put one of their boxes on a Ford chassis says a lot! I remember the good old 7.3L Turbo and I miss it a LOT! Back then we traded trucks in at 300K and it wasn't because the motor gave out. It was because everything else gave out, interior included.

If Ford wanted to make a strong come back in the EMS world they would build a special EMS chassis with the 7.3L Turbo. I have a feeling that they wouldn't be able to keep up with demand.

stepping down from my soapbox,
John

 

Guess what?

This is going to be true of all the new emissions laden diesels for at least 5 years going forward.

It will be that long before we accumulate enough mileage / hours / examples and for Ford to go and correct them and have fixes in new units.

This is going to be true of all diesels -- Cummins, GM-Duramax, Ford-PS, etc.

If anything, there is a case to be made that both Cummins and Duramax are going to be slower in getting fixes in because they do less market share and volume compared to Ford.

Nobody knows what the level of EGR that is being done on the 2010 emissions is going to do to the emissions gear like EGR valves, Coolers, Diesel Particulate Filters, Catalysts, Fuel Injectors, glow plugs, or for that matter, Engine Oil and filter requirements.


The good news for customers is, with GM back selling Duramax, there is a choice of diesel chassis in the 450 category again.

The bad news is, with that few units / market share out there... it will be a while before they figure it out... and the new customers are ... unpaid testers.


Having said that, I am rather amazed that Ford has not implemented an "hour meter" and oil monitoring system prior to the 6.7 coming up that flashed "maintain me now" for customers and logged it if they didn't do their job.

Idling is OK for the mechanical injection 7.3s, but it is a killer on the EGR and the emissions systems.

There may be no choice but for most ambulances to abandon the 450 and go to a 550 and install a real, auxiliary diesel engine to power accessories.

 

"There may be no choice but for most ambulances to abandon the 450 and go to a 550 and install a real, auxiliary diesel engine to power accessories."

I agree that there are better opinion for the larger chassis, but there isn't enough weight in the box to smooth out the ride of the heavy duty 550. Prior to our Ford fumble we had Frieghtliner ambulances. Granted they where great as far a diesel performance. They were rougher than a $2 fluffy dancer (keeping it PG-13). Back injuries, hip fractures or other major trauma is magnified by a rough ride and there's a fine line between driving carefully and getting to the hospital in a timely manner. Anyone in the EMS field knows that we are close to pushing the 13,000# GVWR and it rides pretty nice for its size. The huge Frieghtliners that we previously had were stiff and did not give going over bumps.

I know this is a truck forum and not a patient care forum, but an ambulance is a patient care truck. The best treatment you can provide is Comfort and Confidence. I've had better luck with those two things than any drug I've ever pushed, so the right truck is very important to me.

 

If you require an ambulance for you or your loved ones, trust me, you wont give a damn about the make...

 

heres a little info. Ford has stoped putting diesels in econoline as of the next modle year. The new engines dont fit in the limited space. This is speculation but the repairs times so far as labor is concerned will be a large savings in and of itself.

why amr does not use a truck is because they have issues with low paid help not being able to park one with out hitting stuff. This was what I was told by a manager at one of the repair centers.

The f550 is the same setup as the f250-f450. The chasis does not change till f650.

 

Not to take sides but look at what Ford has put into the Econoline vans over the years, basically nothing. They never tried to advance them keep the engines up to date with the F-series or anything. A good example is back in 05' when Ford switch over the the 3V gassers in the F-series, they kept the 2Vs in the E series to this day though they did throw the 5R110 in the E-series around 06'. Redesigned the van for the 3V motors for gods sake.

It always made more sense to me to have a large gasoline engine like the 6.8l or 8.1l engine to power the ambulances and run an auxilary generator, especially more rural less often used ambulance services. It wasn't so critical with the 7.3ls because they didn't have all the emmissions equipment the new diesels have so they could idle long periods. I realize the gassers get worse fuel economy than the diesels but with the 6.4l its not as far off as it used to be.

 

Getting the product mix correct is next to impossible. Where to spend development dollars when at the time they did not know if they would be in business in five years is just about as impossible. Work vans are not vehicles that gets one emotionally fired up in most cases. Perhaps 2v was just as functional at 3 valve.

Ford had made progress overall even if the trucks have suffered it seems to me. They are putting a lot of new stuff on the road locally.