Menards Ambulance.

Unscrew the battery compartment and remove the small piece of plastic covering the batteries during shipping.

dd40ax posted:

Unscrew the battery compartment and remove the small piece of plastic covering the batteries during shipping.

Will do. Thanks!

This is true, just pull the clear plastic tab out and it will work..Bob

I had to unscrew the battery compartment cover to get the plastic tab out.

Be careful,  when the cover comes off  the batteries spring out and land on the floor.

Hard to get them back in correctly

I had to remove the hard plastic tab to remove the protective plastic strip.  And yes, it's a pain in the *&^ to get the batteries back in.  But works great once I got it up and running and looks fantastic with the lights on.  I got 3 of them.  I may trade one of them for a different menards vehicle that's also 1/48 if anybody's interested.

gave mine to my grandson!!

he likes how it lights up.

Mine the lights work for a few min. then go off. Turn it off and after about a hour I can turn it on same thig. Like it just wish it would stay on.

Thom,

Try taking the batteries out and cleaning them and the contacts with a Q tip and denatured alcohol. Sometimes it works.

My ambulance does the same thing, turn on switch, lights flash for about 15 sec, then go off.  The headlights do still stay on.

DOC posted:

Mine the lights work for a few min. then go off. Turn it off and after about a hour I can turn it on same thig. Like it just wish it would stay on.

The lights on the first Menards ambulance I received behaved the same way. I returned it for a replacement. The replacement ambulance lights did not work at all. Found that the batteries were dead. I installed new batteries, and the lights worked properly.

When I added the ambulance to my layout, I removed the batteries and wired the lights directly to a 4.5 volt power source.

Not a very good wiring guru, can you post specific wiring conversion instructions to AC power (with pix) if possible

Here's a picture of the wiring connections.

The two black wires are from a 4.5 volt wall-wart power supply. I twisted the ends of the black supply wires with the red and black ambulance wires as shown, then used liquid electrical tape to insulate the connections.

Here's a video clip of the finished product.

Perfect.  Just completed the same surgery and change to my ambulance.  Works great.  Your pix was a great help.  Wish Menards would incorporate more lighted vehicles like this around their buildings like they did on the Seed and Feed building.

rlplionel posted:

Here's a picture of the wiring connections.

Thanks a bunch for the wiring suggestion, photo, and video clip.

I did the same thing to the Menards Seed and Feed Truck! So I can put it anywhere on the future layout!

After rewiring ambulance, is your headlights still working ?  I rewired mine, just like you did to a 4.5 power adapter, And after a few minutes, the both headlights on the ambulance started flickering and finally went out.  The other flashing lights on the ambulance are still working.  May have burned out my headlights.

Sorry to read about your ambulance headlights. I have maybe one hour in total with the lights directly wired. All of the lights, including the headlights, are still working at this time.

Thanks for this thread.  On mine, the headlights work but the upper lights don't flash.  I think that I'll try hard wiring.  I don't have a Menards' in NH, so returning it will cost me more than it's worth.  It seems big next to an MTH Fire Truck, but it's OK.

The ambulance needs an ambulance.  Wait until Rescue 51 in LA County hear about this!

4.5 volts may be just a tab too much direct power over a period of time.  Seems like I did notice after conversion to AC that the headlights seems a bit brighter than they were with battery power.  Rest of the flashing red and blue leds are still working fine.  Can't really complain as this was a free ambulance with the purchase of the Morton Salt building.