Pick-up mounted Slide in Units

[crew]

Anybody on the West Coast know of a local Mfg of Slide in units that can be mounted on a conventional pickup? We are trying to design one, but I think it might be easier (not cheaper though) to buy a ready-made unit.

[tmehmel]

I am not on west coast, but edarley.com has some models. I saw a larger version on an E one wildland truck with foam. Interesting and not to bad with price.

Tom

[DFCSmash]

We built ours. Got one of those 1000 litre "tank -in- a- cage" deals from a local fertilzer dealer, plumbed it back to a 250gpm hale portable pump mounted at the rear with 2-1/2 hard suction. hooked the outlet side into a "manifold" built from a piece of 3x6 rectangular tubing. The manifold has 2x 1-1/2 otlets and 2x 1" for forestry hose. It also feeds a 1" reel mounted rubber boosterline. There is a drain threaded into the bottom of the manifold. Drain the water, remove the pump, and 4 firefighters can lift the skid out of the back of our F350 4x4. The frame is built from 2x2 square tubing.

I'll see if i can find where we liberated our "plan" from! :D

[chfPFR]

DFCSmash;
We are presently doing a similiar project for our vvfd. Did you get a dually or just the single wheel version.
We too have the same tank as you. Did you insulate at all for winter ops?

[DFCSmash]

DFCSmash;
We are presently doing a similiar project for our vvfd. Did you get a dually or just the single wheel version.
We too have the same tank as you. Did you insulate at all for winter ops?

Our F350 is a single rear wheel model. As for winter ops, nope. The truck is a 3 season unit. In the winter, it is used for our water rescue and snowmobile/ recue-boggan ops.

So we winterize it by taking it out of the pickup and storing it in the hall! :D

[Michael13]

http://www.fire-pump.com/default.asp

We bought ours from CET. I'm sure theres a dealer out there that can help. Ours works great after we fine tuned it and got to know it. Ours is a CET CAFS model. Follow the links.

[firefighter26]

In a previous department we had on built by WFR (I am sure that their website is listed somewhere on firehall.com).

F-350 super duty crew cap, 150gallson, 150gpm pump. 2 lines (X1 1.5inch @ 150feet, X1 1inch hose reel @ 50 feet) with a Scotty "all around the pump" foam system. With the high-expansion foam nozzle at its highest setting (I think 5%) we could make foam as thick as shaving cream as deep as your knees!

Downfall was that it was unit #0001 so there was a lot of problems. To name a few:
- Wiring of the Siren box never being 100% correct or reliable
- No battery switch (and many dead batteries)
- Slide in unit not mounted properly (U-bolds through the sheet metal box, not to the frame).
- Under-powered portable pump (later upgraded, but still only able to operate one 1.5inch line @ 90psi).
- Inproperly engineered drafting system (could only draft if you could back feed the HS line from the onboard tank, which obviously didn't work when you where empty).
- Priming system often did not prime (a ventury system that ran off the exhaust pressure).

We were able to correct a number of the problems fixed by taking it back (larger pump) but most of them where fixed by taking the unit to ANOTHER manufacturer and paying them to correct them (Installing a new primer pump, mounting the slide in unit properly, updating the wiring).

In the end, the unit wasn't much more than a 150gallon tank with an 18horse portable pump mounted on top of it. The plumbing, in my opinion, could have been better (IE, rather than have the pump suck from the tank right next to where the pump was mounted, there was plumbing ran the entire length of the tank and then went through a 90 down into the tank, etc).

This was back in 1999 and I would assume that units built since then would have been a lot better engineered. Overall price was, if I remember correctly, in the 78K range, but that included the truck and chassis as well.

New Department has a few slide in units, but I have yet to 'play' with them since they only get mounted/inserted into the trucks the summer.

[Firetruckguy]

Check out Danko Emergency Products www.danko.net as they have a full line of what your looking for.

[IanFox]

You may want to try Hub Fire Engines in Abbotsford. They have two CAF slide ins but seem willing to build custom equipment for you. WFR also has a BC branch and they also provide slip in units as does TYCO Wildfire. I am unsure as to a BC branch but I am sure they have one. If need be, I can contact our local Edmonton branch for you and obtain a BC location.

Ian Fox