Oscar Mike - SOLD 01/2021
1978 Dodge M886 Army Ambulance
Whenever I tell someone I own an old Army ambulance, they say one of two things. #1, that's cool or very concerningly ask "Why?"
Here's the back story. Every Thanksgiving me and my brother, Ronnie, take advantage of the long weekend an make it a tradition that we leave Thanksgiving night and go on a true 4 day back packing adventure. We hike the Linville Gorge or parts of the Appalachian Trail, doesn't matter where, as long as we do it together.
Thanksgiving 2016 we were backpacking a leg of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. This was going to be our best trip ever as the weather was going to be in the low 60's and down to the high 40s at night. We had never hiked this stretch of the AT and was unfamiliar with the notorious weather patterns they had a history of. Long story short, day 3 we woke up and unzipped our tents to snow! We had packed for 60s and 40s not the teens. We hiked all day and it snowed and when it didn't snow it rained and sleeted. We were bitterly cold and wet and just plain miserable. We had planned to hike 8 miles a day and when we reached our 8th mile we found out our campsite was on a ridge and the winds were blowing about 40mph and the temp had fallen into the single digits. We set up camp and tried to get warm but we couldn't. We were frozen to the core and couldn't recover. We made the decision to get up and break down our camp and hike the remaining 6 miles out in the pitch black and freezing weather. If we would have stayed in our tents that night, I honestly think we would have fell victims of hypothermia and not made it home. So, that's the night Oscar Mike was born.
condition the day I bought it
We removed all the medical equipment and stripped it down to the skeleton. Once clean, we used 1" foam panels to insulate the walls, sealed the foam w
once insulated, all new wires were ran in the walls. they are fed from an 1100 watt inergy solar kit we installed with 3x 100 watt panels on the roof
Once we had power in the back, we painted the inside and built a set of bench seats. I made the table in the middle with an engraved and painted check
we had 3" memory foam covered for the seat cushions/mattress. Installed a port-a-potty for those late night emergencies, put a high lift jack on the f
updated 4/2020. for more storage i built a lower drawer to store the 17" cast iron skillet and cast frying pan. on top of that is a set of heavy duty
