Very cool restoration. Will this 1010 be at the upcoming event outside of College Station? I hope to drive my ambulance there, and would love to talk you out of a spare litter if you have an extra. I am not restoring mine to military specs, but a camper/support vehicle.
I seriously doubt we'll be finished with the resto before the event at Brent's. I can help you out with the spare litter, I need to double check the dates to be sure it doesn't conflict with the GRB Gunshow. If it doesn't, I'll be over there thurs or fri just to touch base with everyone. Then I will be covering the store the rest of the weekend, so that Ric (my business partner) can come over and re-enact with his VW Thing/Kubelwagon.
If you decide to restore yours to military medical config, let me know. I can help ya out with a lot of the other medical supplies as well.
Would REALLY like to see some picts of the patient compartment of y'all's Wheeled Coach unit. Don't/won't claim to be the final word on ambulances, but the configuration you describe doesn't sound right. Civilian ambulances, like the Wheeled Coach were normally outfitted with 1 Ferno 2 man stretcher with a locking mechanism on the left wall and on the floor. Then there was the bench seat on the right side which had small aluminum cup indentations at 4 points. These would hold the wheels for a secondary Ferno folding stretcher.
In the Ceiling, there were 8 locking latches. Hooks could be attached to these latches to hold patients on either spine boards or stokes baskets. This would be done during mass casualty incidents. In the Mid to late 1990's most ambulance manufacturers quit adding this feature.
I've honestly never heard of an ambulance specifically made with a free swinging patient transport.