Los Angeles County Fire Museum

12/12/20 The restoration of the Emergency! Ambulance continues. Because of COVID we have resorted to working on some of the smaller parts in our personal garages. These photos are of the driver doors of the ambulance being taken apart to be media blasted, primered, painted then put back together. These photos are a small selection of the photos that have been taken to document how the ambulance was originally so we can, clean, paint or plate every nut and bolt to put it back... together just like it was when it was new. We want to make sure the screws are correctly chrome plated, that the bolts have the correct finish on them, we will put the correct flooring, correct headliner, door panels, gauges, wiring, windows, engine, transmission, shocks, control arms, springs, etc,etc,etc It will be beautiful! See more

12/11/20 Today I was taking the doors apart from the Emergency! Ambulance. Stuffed in the driver door arm rest was a note with an address on it. Most likely from a call nearly 50 years ago.

The REAL Squad 51 and a few reproductions are in this issue https://issuu.com/mikepoul//motorhead_december_2020_web_mp

12/7/20 Ambulance update. Today we continued to disassemble the back of the ambulance. We are taking the benches to the Upohlstery expert at Eddie and Sons in Bellflower. He is expensive but you get what you pay for and he does incredible work. During the disassembly we found a comb, a tongue depressor and a book of matches from Woodland Hills country club under the benches in the back.... We don’t have any clues on who owned them. Maybe Make-up dropped the comb, Maybe Johnny Gage dropped the tongue depressor, Maybe Jack Webb or Robert Cinadar dropped the matches, We will never know. I think I will put them back under the benches where we found them when we put it back together. We built a cart to roll the Suburban body on since the frame is now separated from the body. Once we get everything off the body it will go to the sand blaster. See more

I had the pleasure of catching up with Arleen Lewis, she is the widow of retired Battalion Chief Jim Lewis. She was kind enough to donate Chief Lewis’s helmets and retirement photos to our fire museum. So many names we recognize, so many icons that have passed. Thank you Arleen.

10/21/20 Captain Paul Oyler (Ret.) Taking Engine 51 from the museum’s restoration shop to the show room of the museum.

The LA County Fire Museum welcomes the Vernon Fire Department personnel to the Los Angeles County Fire Department!

Engine 51 starting up and running after a huge amount of necessary maintenance.

10/21/20 After major maintenance including but not limited to, A new water pump, new belts, Oil/filter change,... new hoses, new Oil lines, new remote oil cooler, new antenna, Replace headliner, Install back window, Install drip rail over compartment door, Install all new compartment door seals, new Coolant filter, new Fuel filter, new injector pun hoses, Remote oil cooler hoses, new transmission fluid, new power steering hoses, new heater hoses, Remove, Powder coat and re install the the under cab radiator air scoop, Drain/flush fuel tank. And more... Thanks to our team that came in one or two at a time because of Covid. Thanks especially to, Ted Schaper Rick Klemundt, Paul Schneider For getting this rig up and running! She was moved today by museum board members Paul Oyler and Ernie Ramirez from the shop into the museum. She will now get a complete detail as we prepare for reopening, whenever that may be. Joe See more

10/19/20 EMERGENCY! Ambulance is now a convertible. She is also on her way to the frame straightening shop.

10/18/20 EMERGENCY, ambulance update We had to weld nuts to every screw that holds the top on the ambulance at the back so we could get an impact gun on the screws. The goal is to get the top off and get the ambulance to the frame shop tomorrow or Tuesday... The bolts on the floor are all the ones I welded nuts to. ... We are gently taking it apart and documenting everything. See more

Moving stuff around. May even wash these dirty birds.

10/16/20 EMERGENCY! ambulance update. We are having trouble getting the screws out of the fiberglass pop top because of corrosion. He have tried drilling out the screw heads with some success. We also found that if we grind the paint off of the screw we can weld a nut to the head of the screw and then use an impact to successfully remove the screws.... Once we get the all the screws off we will unwire the lights and send the top to the paint shop. Next week the ambulance will be going to the shop to go on a frame machine to assure that the frame is perfectly straight (remember this ambulance was in a wreck on camera) More photos soon. See more

10/14/20 EMERGENCY! Ambulance update, First off thank you all for the kind words of support as we jump into this frame off restoration to save this piece of EMS history. We are creating a stand alone page at LACountyFireMuseum.com where you will be able to follow the restoration as it unfolds. You will be able to help fund this project if you wish at that time. More details on this soon.... Today we were able to put her on good tires and wheel dollies so we can move her around easier. We picked up the rebuilt transmission today from our friends at Community Transmission in Bellflower (shameless plug) and it looks great! We started taking the back of the ambulance apart so we can get the fiberglass shell off the top as the top will be the first piece to go to the paint shop. This is going to be harder than we expected as every screw going through the top needs to be drilled out. We also found a ton of rat poop, leaves and acorns between the head liner and the top. It must have been a great rat/squirrel house for many years. On a cool note we found a piece of hard board that fit perfectly in the big side windows under the seats. We are assuming this was used to block out the light from the window to help control the lighting for filming Johnny and Roy in the back of the ambulance. We are taking an incredible amount of photos that will be available on our website soon. Take care, THE SHOP See more

10/14/20 Today we got an incredible donation to our restoration shop by Dan Doke. We all call him, Uncle Dan He donated a 25hp air compressor and giant upright secondary air tank. This compressor is huge and if we have enough power in our building it should be driving our new sandblast cabinet soon.

We need a little help folks. We need a screen shot of the top of the cab of Engine 51 so we know what radio antennae to install. Thanks everyone.