Newbie: Fire truck question

I just bought (today!) a 1998 K1500, pretty excited at the capability. The truck used to be owned - 2 owners ago - to the Oakland Fire Department. Visually, it is easy to identify some differences: Unity spotlights, hitches on front bumper, different mirrors, a Whelen branded device under the hood...Perhaps there are more unseen modifications I should be aware of?

Most importantly, the Unity spolights aren't working. I can't measure 12V at the lamps, so I suspect a fuse issue. Since this was third party install, I can't identify how this was hooked up. Any thoughts?

Theres no wires to the spot light? Also got any pics your referring too?

I wanna see pics of this thing, it sounds cool

Stand by folks, I'll try to get pics asap.

I noticed a skid plate under the engine, that's cool indeed!

Ive owned a few ex guvment utility trucks over the years.
Some Fords, some chevys and one thing they all had in common was very little frills and interior but they all had some pretty good factory powertrain and suspension upgrades.
They also had been run through aftermarket companies to add components.
See if you can still read the RPO codes.
That will tell you what GM put on it.
A VIN code search if you can get somebody to acess that for you is another way to go about it.
When a public entity buys vehicles, they dont deal with the average schmuck salesman.
They go to the "Fleet Sales" guy.
Fleet is a veteran salesman and makes more money by far than anyone other than the dealership manager.
Back when I sold cars over twenty years ago, our fleet guy made 400k in commision in one year.
At a friggen Dodge store.
They dont sell em interiors and pinstripes.
They sell them powertrain and reliability.

thinger2 said:

See if you can still read the RPO codes.
That will tell you what GM put on it.

Click to expand...

Got the codes, many of them I could not find on the AC Delco reference sheet. The ones that stuck out were the heavy duty springs, and the skid plate (NZZ).

She is going in for a tranny service tomorrow, but I'll try to take pics of the front bumper.

Axle rear is RPO GT4, 3.73. is that good?

Alain D said:

Axle rear is RPO GT4, 3.73. is that good?

Click to expand...

Pretty typical there.

You are going to want to trace the wire routing to figure how they were installed. Hopefully you can find some odd wires below the corners of the A pillars easily, the trace them to find the power. I’ve only worked on one ex-first responder f550 for reference, but they had paired wires in a sheath for each of the added accessories and sent them all to a common distribution board. It was easy to find everything once I learned what to look for. Good luck.

Another little oddity I found tonight...

I had left the fuse panel door removed (the panel inside the car) for some reason. Then I came home in the dark, parked the car, opened the driver door and noticed some lights flashing, coming from the small slot below the fuse panel. It flashes red about 3 times a second, and about once a second there's a green flash as well. This is on with the key off. Any thoughts on what that may be?