The Firetruck, Modernized.

I am a single father, and a firefighter/medic. I noticed that every time I took my son to the station with me all he wanted to do was play on the trucks. So I decided it was time he had his own.

I found the plans for the firetruck bed and though.... this would be cool, but it's a bit too simple for my tastes.

I took the original plans and made the bed two foot longer, and incorporated a pump panel on the side.

The pump panel is full of old pump dials and switches taken off of a salvaged truck Each one of them works (well... they show a reading at least) and light up when you throw one of the switches. The second switch on the pump panel controls the red lights on the top of the bed.

Inside of the bed I set up a 20 inch monitor hooked to a pc hidden in the upper storage, the PC has no keyboard or mouse, it is controlled remotely from my phone or computer via VNC, or remote desktop. It streams any and all of his favorite shows and movies from our network and allows him to interact with his mother via Skype.
We built a dash and installed a steering wheel.... (because how else would you drive the truck?) and a CB.
The CB was gutted and a county scanner was installed, so whenever he turns the CB on he can here the county dispatch
There is a pressure regulator valve on the dash (which he pretends raises and lowers the bucket) the valve has a switch underneath that turns on his flashing bubble light up top (which was also taken from an old firetruck) and starts a siren sound that I took out of an old firetruck toy that he had broken.
The ignition switch was taken off of a little tykes car that he had outgrown.

I posted this bed to reddit and the response was overwhelming! Check out some of the articles people have written about it!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/diy-firetruck-bed_n_2716538.ht…

http://now.msn.com/fire-truck-bed-photos-dad-makes-son-cool-bedroom