On more than one occasion I’ve seen an old American LaFrance fire truck and thought, man that could make a great ramp truck. I’ve even had the chance to buy a few old fire trucks for dirt cheap prices on a few occasions. Thankfully, I have not had the space, or spousal understanding, to allow the purchase of any of them so they aren’t piled up with all my other unfinished crap. But once the new property is all sorted out and the shop and house builds are done, maybe just maybe there needs to be a fire truck in my future. After all, seeing the boys at Grind Hard Plumbing Co. having fun with their new one is kind of inspiring.
So here is the plan.
This is a 1965 American LaFrance 900 Series Pumper fire truck that is in working order, but with the right removal of parts there would be much more room for activities and toys, including parking a full tilt 4×4 truck on the top of this sucker. The 608 cubic inch inline 6 is backed by a low gear plus 4 manual transmission and it is way heavy duty. Not fast, but heavy duty. An engine and trans swap just might be in order as well.
Watch and enjoy.
Cool old truck I hope that make something of it.
He did mis-speak, repeating an internet falsehood about the American LaFrance V12 engine being a Rolls Royce. The ALF V12 was patterned after the Lycoming V12 that was designed and built for Auburn passenger cars in the early 30’s. After Auburns demise, ALF bought the tooling and patterns and began producing them for the fire trucks.
It was a hot motor in its day. V-12 Auburns set many speed records. For example, in 1933 a stock Auburn V12 Speedster set a 500 mile speed record at Indianapolis of 115 miles per hour which was higher than the winning racecar in the previous Indianapolis 500!