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What was the last bus available with a semi automatic?

In terms of ‘traditional’ semi-autos probably the last of the Leyland range, Tiger, Olympian and Lynx were all available with a Leyland semi-auto.

 

There are some boxes out there like Comfort Shift which are clutchless manuals, and iShit, sorry iShift, can be used like a manual with no clutch pedal.

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Joining in the shite A-series based minibus fun, this and its sister 317 were a common sight round here and managed to last well into the early 90s. As was usual for Cleveland Transit, it was bodied by Northern Counties, it and 317 were nicknamed 'The ice cream vans' according to my dad who worked for them.

 

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In it's later, not as attractive, post deregulation livery,

 

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Good god that windscreen and front dome arrangement are fucking awful. Thanks for sharing!!

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In terms of ‘traditional’ semi-autos probably the last of the Leyland range, Tiger, Olympian and Lynx were all available with a Leyland semi-auto.

 

There are some boxes out there like Comfort Shift which are clutchless manuals, and iShit, sorry iShift, can be used like a manual with no clutch pedal.

I’m talking about the self changing gears type 4spd set up like in a National. I suppose they were phased out due to driver mistreatment. They were clutchless if I’m right in thinking as it worked on planetary gears with brake bands selecting/deselecting.

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Think the latest thing I've seen with semi autos were probably Tiger based coaches from the early 80s. Certainly don't recall personally seeing anything more recent than that which wasn't either a manual or more conventional auto.

 

Seen Scania coaches with some sort of odd preselector type setup from the early 00s (never really got along with it), but that did have a clutch pedal.

 

It's always good for causing confusion when encountering a vehicle that you're used to seeing with one setup but coming across a bus with the "wrong" gearbox.

 

I remember being far more taken aback by sitting in the driver's seat of an early Dart and reaching down for the Alison T-bar selector and finding a ZF push button selector there. The bus then proceeded to make Voith noises to confuse me even further. Granted, that bus hadn't seen a public road in about a decade, it was a site shuttle/mobile shed.

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Bit of a close up of the business end.

 

attachicon.gif1980000017 (TMS50.1046)-04.jpg

 

I was thinking surely they could've replaced the wheel arch panel with a normal one and made it look half decent?

 

pretty cool to see the gubbins tho, I wonder how it drove...

 

(also with that make it a Chinese Six?  :mrgreen: )

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That does highlight quite well how much a bus was just a box over a chassis back then and how much dead space there is under there in the days before low floor became a thing.

 

Is a shame the days of the chassis being driven from the maker to coachbuilder are long gone...that must have been a fun job, cracking one in the summer!

 

Have driven a Volvo B58 sans body while it was being stripped down (sadly to finally be dismantled, we had hoped it might get a further lease of life, but was not to be, though the engine and box did live on), and can vouch for performance being "lively" with several tonnes of body out of the way, sounded nice with the pesky exhaust out the way. Was however also alarmingly easy to lock the brakes though!

 

That road and rail thing isn't something I've ever seen before...will have to have a look at some point...nice that they've used an RE, at least they went with something that could shift...

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That does highlight quite well how much a bus was just a box over a chassis back then and how much dead space there is under there in the days before low floor became a thing.

 

Is a shame the days of the chassis being driven from the maker to coachbuilder are long gone...that must have been a fun job, cracking one in the summer!

 

Have driven a Volvo B58 sans body while it was being stripped down (sadly to finally be dismantled, we had hoped it might get a further lease of life, but was not to be, though the engine and box did live on), and can vouch for performance being "lively" with several tonnes of body out of the way, sounded nice with the pesky exhaust out the way. Was however also alarmingly easy to lock the brakes though!

 

That road and rail thing isn't something I've ever seen before...will have to have a look at some point...nice that they've used an RE, at least they went with something that could shift...

For RE read LH and for "shift" read "...."

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I drove it from Birmingham (Washwood Heath?) to Coventry and then to Brum city centre September 1982, as a favour. The steering was extremely heavy at low speed with no power steering, but ok on the road. Never having driven a bus before, I have nothing to compare it with, but it seemed lively enough. Picked it up from a social club, nobody about, climbed in, found the ignition switch, pushed the starter button. No key needed. I remember driving through Small Heath wondering what the regular 'ting' noise was. Turned out to be side mirror touching the 'No Parking' signs along the Coventry Road.

I think it was an engineering exercise rather than a serious proposal. The idea had surfaced before here and in other countries. Don't suppose anybody knows what happened to it.

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Celtic Travel near us have some new buses. They look absolutely horrible.

1860x1050-Celtic-Travel-2018-newsintro.j

 

That's more like it. I do like extra wipers.

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The worst buses i've ever seen are run by my local company. Horrid little Wright streetlites, They look bad anyway, but the livery makes them 1000x times worse.

 

They look like 1970's Russian military carriers reimagined to try and look "futuristic".

 

Awful.

 

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As a side note, how the hell is it possible to design something that badly that 2 thirds of the windscreen frontage is take up by the dashboard?, At any point during the design stage (like something that looks like that had one) pipe up and say "Lads..... it doesn't fit?"

 

It's clearly a mash of parts from bigger buses thrown onto a smaller chassis and mashed up to cover it.

 

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Anyone who okayed any part of it should have been instantly fired,

 

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Ah, the Bristol LH, or little horror (the VR was known as Very Rubbish). Driven a fair few in my time, Leyland 400 in the short ones.

On one occasion I had a Marshall bodied one, (NBC had a few none ECW bodied examples) when their cheap design played a blinder. Now on ECW bodied ones the radiator filler was under the cab window, easy to fill with a hose. On these particular ones the filler was inside on the middle of the dash panel, small flap you lifted the poured the watering can of water down or over the inside depending on how well it had been cleaned.

 

So, there I am heading up a very long hill into Chesterfield one morning chatting to my conductor who's sat on the dash, back to the windscreen, looking at the punters, when the little horror boiled (OMGHGF). As the windscreen was suddenly covered in steam, so was my conductors bollocks. The scream he let out, followed by his dance around the platform as he tried to cool his 'boiled in the bag bollocks' nearly made me crash!! The punters didn't stop laughing all the way into Chesterfield!!!!

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I have never seen an EA bus and/or coach before. It's hard to tell from this picture, I mean it looks like a coach and either has air con or no ventilation at all. But on the other hand it's an EA, something synonymous with being a Royal Mail van.

 

This thread is now complete. Very well done indeed.

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Funnily enough, when Cleveland Transit got those attractive* Northern Counties A series things, they also plumped for a couple of Asco EAs,

 

post-5243-0-37063400-1542637031_thumb.jpg

 

The minibuses came just after the formation of Cleveland Transit from the old Teesside Municipal Transport authority, in order to service the new out of town housing estates that sprung up in the early '70s. They must have been a joy to pilot fully laden around the hills of Guisborough and Yarm...

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Veg dribble and masturbate over anything Bristol, but, they were all built down to a price, and it really showed, the LH was a complete lash up, and the LHS was fucking lethal to drive in the wet, no arse end, and a fair bit of oomph, I have had MUA45P in a near drift on a roundabout in Chesterfield, and the bloody thing would do about 80 flat out given enough road, the Turner 5 speed manual had a huge yawning gap in the ratios from 4th-5th, so you basically had to thrash the crap out of it to keep up momentum, and the 401 isn't exactly a quiet lump, steering actually heavier than an RE.

 

On the subject of Irish plasticrap, the Streetshite is costing the manufacturer punters, due to the massive unreliability, and piss poor back up. Drivers hate them, as they are horrid to drive, and feel like they will fall to pieces at any second. ADL and Optare are picking up former Wright customers, if ADL did a WF version of the E200, that would kill off the lamp post completely

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Veg dribble and masturbate over anything Bristol, but, they were all built down to a price, and it really showed, the LH was a complete lash up, and the LHS was fucking lethal to drive in the wet, no arse end, and a fair bit of oomph, I have had MUA45P in a near drift on a roundabout in Chesterfield, and the bloody thing would do about 80 flat out given enough road, the Turner 5 speed manual had a huge yawning gap in the ratios from 4th-5th, so you basically had to thrash the crap out of it to keep up momentum, and the 401 isn't exactly a quiet lump, steering actually heavier than an RE.

 

On the subject of Irish plasticrap, the Streetshite is costing the manufacturer punters, due to the massive unreliability, and piss poor back up. Drivers hate them, as they are horrid to drive, and feel like they will fall to pieces at any second. ADL and Optare are picking up former Wright customers, if ADL did a WF version of the E200, that would kill off the lamp post completely

Some of the late MAN based ALX-300 buses Bluebird had from around 05/6 would spin up the rear wheels on a roundabout if the road was wet at full throttle when dropping from first to second gear. Especially the two which seemed to have a gearbox set to what appeared to be "sport mode" and would rev right to the top of the scale on the rev counter before changing down. They could bloody shift, didn't sound too bad either.

 

I stand corrected on the LH being crap... it's not one I've come across before. The last Bristol I came across with that body was an RE and I'd assumed this was the same. The only RE I've driven could definitely shift.

 

Have never had the opportunity to travel on a VR. Which I found as a major problem given how epic they seem to sound at speed based on what I've seen from a few YouTube videos...

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from domes youtube channel

 

what the hell is this? (looks like some big fuck off lorry cab with a coach body glued to the back)

 

I saw that when I was out there and felt compelled to write about it when I got home.

 

http://hooniverse.com/2016/04/18/icelandic-odyssey-air-conditioning-49-seats-anywhere/

 

Alas, I was too tight to actually pay to ride on it. Next time, perhaps.

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