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Already thought of that one. Rear axle wouldn't take it. It really was the weak link in the design of the transmission. Main failure points were the intermediate shafts inside the drop section, a real pain in the arse when they fail as it meant splitting the axle to replace.

 

DAF DKFL1160 without a turbo would be a good one. A sort of development of the old 680 and without the turbo, power would be well within limits of the rest of the transmission. A RELH was converted to DAF power once but it was a turbo and wasn't that successful due to the relatively short gearing of the RE.

 

Volvo would be not bad I suppose. Pretty bombproof and lesser power versions were available. Can't think of any other horizontal engines that are available at the moment.

 

Of newer vertical engines, a modern B series would be okay but the drive prop to the gearbox would be more like the pole used by vaulters in the olympics unless the engine was placed under a lump in the floor just behind the rear axle.

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Found it!

 

7890185414_1660c6ab1e_h.jpgPride of the Clyde RX07RKV by haley111, on Flickr

 

I looked it up on the MOT website and it's currently SORN. Do PCVs get MOTs or another type of acceptance test? I was intrigued to see if it would also give the mileage.

 

OMG! part 2: saw the Optare twice again now, this is when I was out 'nightclubbing' yesterday evening:

 

post-5328-0-00901800-1452451873_thumb.jpg

 

And for bonus points... can anybody write a paragraph about this?

 

Website-Big%20Bus.jpg

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Yup, the CVE omni was such a good idea. Shame it was mindbogglingly useless as a bus though.

An unprecedented amount of hallucinogenic material must have been consumed before they set about designing the Omni. Similar amounts produced the Quest 80 and Optare Alero, both of which have appeared before.

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It appears to be a front-engined low-floor bus. That actually makes far more sense than trying to put the engine in the back of the passenger compartment.

That it is.

 

Fairly solid idea, but unfortunately these were mechanically shit. I found a lady on Facebook who drove for the local transit agency, which had Orion IIs, and she recounted how her steering went out at 65mph on the highway and the bus ended up flipping over.

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What about the Talbot Pullman? Again seemed like a good idea but I've heard conflicting reports of how useless or otherwise it was.

 

Apparantly they were an UTTER UTTER CUNT OF A BASTARD to get the brakes balanced to the point they only got done within spec for MoT. That was on top of how thunderously shit they were.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well ADL are right out with us ATM, 5 brand new E200's being returned as the body flex has destroyed windscreens, and now the front and rears are trying to part company with the roof, and our Scania E400's have rear end chassis issues. 

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Well ADL are right out with us ATM, 5 brand new E200's being returned as the body flex has destroyed windscreens, and now the front and rears are trying to part company with the roof, and our Scania E400's have rear end chassis issues. 

 

Similarly I have seen two broken down brand new E400s in Reading recently (both borked gearboxes though so perhaps a ZF issue)

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DISCUSSION TIME!!

 

Who makes the best buses?

 

Rearrange this order:

 

MAN

Mercedes

Volvo

Scania

Dennis

Optare

VDL/DAF

 

(these being the main sellers of chassis/integrals)

 

From my diminishing experience of modern stuff, they're all much of a muchness. The main issue these days seems to be aftersales support.

 

From my time at Stagecoach, the Volvo coaches always proved the most reliable and nicest to drive but took major hissy fits whenever they did go wrong. Volvo aftersales for Stagecoach were excellent too.

 

The DAF powered Van Hools on megabus were very maintenance intensive and seemed to provide an almost never ending stream of little niggles. It also didn't take much of a problem to put one off the road. The ones I drove were Aberdeen based who have never had a good reputation for maintenance in the industry. Van Hool always got their work done at DAF and unless it was Cleckheaton or whatever place in Wales it was we used, it usually got a half arsed job.

 

We didn't have any Scania coaches but the service buses were...ok. Reliable, nice to drive but very hard riding and prone to silly problems. The N230 / Enviro 400 would jettison prop shafts if they weren't greased every other day.

 

ADL/Dennis had excellent aftersales but you were never off the phone to them for daft problems. The Euro 6 models seem to be particularly bad but mainly in the exhaust after treatment system. Oh and heaven forbid you have to get Cummins out to them. Cummins in Glasgow only seem to work office hours and the...ehem...Quickserve vans weren't exactly quick at getting out to you.

 

Optare. Shite. Shite. Shite. Shite. Shite. Shite. Crap. Mince. Shite. Horrible. Shite. Woeful.

 

MANs were hit and miss. Some models were utter dogs but drove nice. Annoyingly, the more reliable ones were utterly horrible to drive. They almost all drove with at least one red warning light on the dashboard but they just kept going. It seemed to be the lack of SCR exhaust after treatment on MANs (relying soley on exhaust gas recirculation up to 50% on some engines) that helped keep them going.

 

The only Mercedes I drove at Stagey were the 709d minibus. They. Simply. Never. Died.

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Cummins fitted a recon engine to one of our McPointers in November, Cummins rebuilt ISBe4, last saturday it Shat it's self quite spectacularly, and typically they are arguing the toss, even though the engine is under warranty

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  • 1 month later...

DISCUSSION TIME!!

 

Who makes the best buses?

 

Rearrange this order:

 

MAN

Mercedes

Volvo

Scania

Dennis

Optare

VDL/DAF

 

(these being the main sellers of chassis/integrals)

Funny thing - we got the Optare Solo in the US, rebadged as a NABI. Turns out that the result is the same no matter which badge you slap on it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Funny thing - we got the Optare Solo in the US, rebadged as a NABI. Turns out that the result is the same no matter which badge you slap on it.

 

I couldn't believe my eyes a LA airport a couple of years ago when I saw a couple of Solos being used as ground transport.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Definitely a thread for me to keep an eye on, used to drive buses for a living, but since I got out of the industry I now only do so for beer money and fun. Spent several days last month driving an Olympian around Cheshire, which was rather pleasant.

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  • 1 month later...

No phots sadly but I have just cycled from London to Istanbul (full write up later) so whilst Tinder reinstalls on my phone I thought I'd write a bit about buses.

 

Everything is made by MAN or Merc abroad. Nope, not even any Volvo or Scania. They seem to go on forever, especially in the Balkans. The old engines in them sound absolutely phenomenal. IVECOs were fairly popular, but to a far lesser extent. I even saw some Belarussian made MAZs in Serbia along with Ikarbus and Solaris. In Turkey there were plenty of little Isuzu midibuses that hammered it around everywhere. Even saw Trolleybuses, they were the business.

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