Bus Shite

[busmansholiday]

Didn't Neoplan make one of them? As I recall, crap it may have been...but it did look like it had landed from outer space.

Neoplasm made a FWD single decker that really looked like a bag of shite (and allegedly was). I seem to remember one of Barnsley's undertakers having one (they dabbled in private hire at times of slack business) which really summed it up.

[Pillock]

Totally sidetracked by an undertaker doing coach tours on the side.

 

Mind you, a lot of those SAGA-style mystery tours aren't far off.

[cms206]

H622 ACK was for sale recently with two or three others - scrap was mooted for them but I don't know what actually happened.

 

We ran six K-DAO PS-types including two of the Carlisle flood victims ans we genuinely couldn't fault any of them.

 

Except maybe 724. It did about 48mph, the other five (714/5/8/9/32) all did 60 at the very least. We later ran an R-reg Mk4 (R974 XVM) which was okay when we managed to get it to stop overheating.

 

While I always liked PS-types, I did used to regularly drive Q-type Leyland Tigers with Volvo powerplants which I always found superior... I suspect that was personal preference to be honest as even now I much prefer driving a Tiger to the B10M.

 

Even manual Tigers... I shall await the outcry from that statement!

 

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[Guest Hooli]

This deserves to be here

 

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/passengers-desperate-to-know-backstory-of-bus-drivers-who-didnt-wave-to-each-other-20170814133989

[Zelandeth]

i think the Neoplan vehicle  was a bespoke  Integral  and a little larger than a van based  vehicle 

neoplan N907 uniliner

https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishcoachman/6160075182

That's the one. My memory had it looking much more Renault-ish than it really does.

 

H622 ACK would be a Mk3 B10M, so front mounted rad. Mk4s (1992ish onwards) had the side mounted jobbie that was great at hoovering up shite from the roadside...

I'm not sure whether to be proud of remembering that detail or ashamed!

 

The side mounted radiators always seemed a daft idea to me, given their tendency to hoover up every loose scrap of everything at the road side (must have been a particular pain on rural routes in the autumn) and vast increase in apparent noise of passing vehicles for pedestrians.

 

I'm assuming it was either to make service access easier or helped make the whole "power unit" more compact. Any actual knowledge from those who have actually worked on these vehicles rather than just dreamt of actually owning one.

 

 

Volvo did make some good kit in the 80s and 90s didn't they? The B6 variant I've encountered both with a Pointer II and ALX-200 body - both of which were utter rubbish, being the obvious exception that proves the rule.

 

First had one that used to regularly pop up on the then 28 service - I must have been on it a half dozen times, it never actually made it to the end of any one of those journeys! They also always seemed to be so short on power that they couldn't get out of their own way.

 

They were easy to spot by the very flattened shaped exhaust, usually massive hiss of a boost leak as soon as moving off, and usually knocking their nuts off to the extent that it sounded like there was no oil in the engine. ...granted, that could well be because there wasn't.

[Zelandeth]

The (mostly W and X plate) B10BLEs First Aberdeen had (still have a few I imagine) were vehicles that I felt sorry for. Simply because they were plainly suffering such chronic neglect.

 

Despite that it was so obvious from the driver's seat that a day in the shop could make such a massive difference. Usual complains being: replace pretty much every bush and ball joint in the front suspension, sort the sodding fan thermostat, retension the belts which have stretched because the fan has been running flat out for the last five years.

 

The fact that they were as reliable as they were despite the neglect they saw was definitely a testament to Volvo.

 

Now, the B7LAs...those were another story. Overstressed and undercooled were the two words that sprang to mind...though they did sound nice from the back seat.

 

Horrible brakes too. Press pedal, nothing. Press harder, nothing. Stand on the pedal, nothing. Stand 0.000001% harder on the pedal, smack your forehead against the windscreen as all the wheels lock up. At which point you ease off the brakes, and the thing immediately takes off again. I never did master bringing one of them to a halt smoothly.

 

Other bus (coach) that used to hack me off was a B7R Profile that was their trainer for a while. The gearbox was set up wrong. It kicked into neutral when stationary like most ZFs of that era...only this one did it at about 3mph rather than when you'd actually stopped. It meant that no matter what you did, trying to come to a stop if you were facing uphill on a slight gradient was nigh on impossible as the moment the drive dropped out the bus would lurch to a halt.

 

I was well happy when they got the Bluebird AARE (from memory, YX51JVD I think) back on the road so I wound up driving that more. For all it's a horrible thing to be a passenger on, it's a cracking bus to drive. Not sure what power plant it has, but it's well matched to the bus, the gearbox is lovely and smooth (though still does on occasion get confused halfway around roundabouts just to prove it's still a real Alison box), brakes are nice and progressive and the visibility is good. She's limited to 56mph, but you hit that like a brick wall...do wonder what that figure would be without the limiter. I reckon you'd probably run out of revs around 70-ish.

 

That's a bus I'd love to buy to preserve if I had the licence, space and cash. It's such an oddball over here, aside from being a nice drive.

 

Has barely done any miles as First have had it sitting at the back of the depot (awaiting the parts they didn't want to pay to ship over from the US apparently) for virtually the entire of its existence.

[rml2345]

^ That doesn surprise me about First TBH, they don't seem keen on spending money. In saying that the ex Aberdeen B7LAs that have sat in our depot since October have been going through the workshops recently pending their supposedly imminent departure. Pity as I really want a shot.

Since passing my test I've been route training on a BMC Falcon school bus which definitely qualifies as bus shite. Great wee thing to drive though if a bit raucous.

[Zelandeth]

^ That doesn surprise me about First TBH, they don't seem keen on spending money. In saying that the ex Aberdeen B7LAs that have sat in our depot since October have been going through the workshops recently pending their supposedly imminent departure. Pity as I really want a shot.

Since passing my test I've been route training on a BMC Falcon school bus which definitely qualifies as bus shite. Great wee thing to drive though if a bit raucous.

The B7LAs don't drive too bad above 5mph to be honest - it's just trying to stop the damn things smoothly I couldn't master. Nowhere near as cumbersome as you'd expect as due to the geometry of the thing you don't need to worry about the tailswing on the trailer. Basic math I found was that you needed to allow for two feet additional clearance on a turn from the rear axle of the front section when turning sharply if that makes sense.

 

Hearing the engine respond from so far away was probably the thing I found most disconcerting.

 

I know Aberdeen had massive headaches with them in reliability terms, but I don't know how much that's actually the fault of the buses versus the depot insisting on trying to fix a complex vehicle like that on the cheap forever.

 

As for the BMCs... don't ever, ever take one out on a damp day in the winter. The demisting system is beyond a joke, all it does is make a great deal of noise and actually seems to make the windscreen mist up more rather than less. Except for a strip about 3" from the very top. Apparently the only thing worse is the headlights.

[Felly Magic]

I used to look after a large fleet of BMC Condor DP57F low floor POS, they were all badly built, and 'my' motor had a grossly under reading speedometer, at an indicated 56 what it was 'limited' to, it was doing an actual 63 as stated on the digitacho, which repeatedly flashed 'OVERSPEED', the side destination box would actually cut your hand on a sharp edge when you were changing the blinds, one of them had a nasty habit of jamming in 1st due to a faulty throttle pedal, one had the boost socket wired up backwards, so when we tried jumping it after a 2 week holiday, there was a rather loud bang, and I plugged the diagnostic laptop in, 'no signal' from the engine & gearbox ECUs. They were very closely related to the Lance SLF chassis wise, ZF front & rear axles, Voith D.854 4 speed auto, Cummins ISBe6 rated at 225bhp in Euro 3 & 235 bhp at Euro4, Metro have spunked a small fortune on them, making them all Euro5. Stupidly the body sides are 1 piece bonded on, with removable skirts, and the back end was a 1 piece mould, so minor repairs were a pain. Handling in the wet was 'interesting' due to the styeering being grossly over assisted, and no weight at all in front of the front axle. 

[rml2345]

The B7LAs don't drive too bad above 5mph to be honest - it's just trying to stop the damn things smoothly I couldn't master. Nowhere near as cumbersome as you'd expect as due to the geometry of the thing you don't need to worry about the tailswing on the trailer. Basic math I found was that you needed to allow for two feet additional clearance on a turn from the rear axle of the front section when turning sharply if that makes sense.

 

Hearing the engine respond from so far away was probably the thing I found most disconcerting.

 

I know Aberdeen had massive headaches with them in reliability terms, but I don't know how much that's actually the fault of the buses versus the depot insisting on trying to fix a complex vehicle like that on the cheap forever.

 

As for the BMCs... don't ever, ever take one out on a damp day in the winter. The demisting system is beyond a joke, all it does is make a great deal of noise and actually seems to make the windscreen mist up more rather than less. Except for a strip about 3" from the very top. Apparently the only thing worse is the headlights.

IIRC the B7LAs at Aberdeen had a tendency to piss air out the trailer as the day went on so that by lunchtime or thereabouts they could no longer bus. It was probably a combination of the two that led to them being a bit hopeless, Volvos toilet engined buses were never especially popular here.

Thankfully were using the BMC in the summer so no real headlight or demister issues so far. Having the wee Cummins 4 pot slung out the front makes the steering pleasantly weighty and they handle alright. The two I've driven have been rough as arses bodily with plenty of aluminium corrosion but are solid to drive and not too slow. 847% better than a bloody Streetlite.

[Zelandeth]

The Streetlites arrived about a month after I moved out I think.

 

Can't say I'm sorry to have missed them!

 

Last big changeover I really saw was the introduction of the Northern Lights branding.

 

Still don't think Aberdeen is the same without the sound of the Cummins L10 engined Olympians burbling along Union Street.

 

Glad that at least one of them has been preserved. Think there's one of the earlier B plated ones in a shed somewhere too.

[davidfowler2000]

As for the BMCs... don't ever, ever take one out on a damp day in the winter. The demisting system is beyond a joke, all it does is make a great deal of noise and actually seems to make the windscreen mist up more rather than less. Except for a strip about 3" from the very top. Apparently the only thing worse is the headlights.

 

A bit like the first of the megabus Van Hool deckers. Also rather irritatingly the temperature sensor for the lower saloon was located somewhere near the cab which was always cooler than the saloon. So when you put the demisters on on a winters day when it was -5 outside, the computer would think the lower saloon temperature was 26 degrees and bung the air con on full blast. Thankfully they fixed both on the TX range. Thankfully I don't drive those any more as I'd have driven a Plaxton bodied Volvo any day over one of those things. Unless it was an Elite i then I would have picked the Van Hool.

 

Still don't think Aberdeen is the same without the sound of the Cummins L10 engined Olympians burbling along Union Street.

 

I'm sure we could recreate that with my Olympian.

[busmansholiday]

Ha, Ha.

 

I stated off driving Leopards with vacuum brakes. Air braked Leopards (early 60's & 70's ones) were wank. Standing joke used to be they gave you a pile of postcards addressed to Leyland's brake fitters, you just filled in the other side telling them where you wanted the bastard to stop and posted them.

Vacuum was a different world, and when fully loaded with passengers was even more fun. You learnt to anticipate what was going to happen!

 

As for Tigers and B10M, we were the first National Bus Co operator to buy B10Ms. Apparently, we were so pissed off with BL and stikes so we defied everybody and ordered a small number. They were a revaluation, that ultimately BL would not recover from.

We had Tigers with all three options of gearbox, manual, hydrcyclic and epicyclic, the B10Ms were manual.

Better performance, easier to drive and a shit more reliable, we are though talking of the late 70's.

[Inspector Morose]

Leopards were all air but early L1 and PSU leopards (no doubt the ones you’re on about) well, you might as well be treading on a block of wood, the use they were. I had an early psu4 tow truck and between those brakes and the light* steering those earlier leopards posess just driving it on its own was knackering. It used to be a touring coach when new and I shudder to think that some poor sod had to drive these round twisty country lanes for hours on end fully loaded.

Vacuum brakes. Yup they can be shit and were a work of art to set up properly. Our PD2 at work has them and I can vouch that they can be made to work extremely well!

[Roverageous]

I wonder if anyone can help me with this...

 

I have memories of very modern (for the 90s) looking coaches at motorway service stations whenever we went on holiday. They were silver (almost like aluminium finish) and I can only really describe them as looking very modern. This would have been mid 90s.

 

I had it in my head that they were Wallace Arnold coaches, but on googling they all appear to be orange.

 

Can anyone else remember this?

[busmansholiday]

FPB7

Posted Today, 07:21 PM

 

Leopards were all air but early L1 and PSU leopards (no doubt the ones you’re on about)

 

My post was supposed to say Leopards AND vacuum brakes. The first Leopards were actually designated PSUC1 Specials and were built for Sheffield Transport with Weymann Fanfare bodies. PSU (Passenger Singledeck Underfloor) and C was for cub, the 400 engine. Sheffield had 600 engines and this became the L1 and then L2 before they went back to sensible chassis IDs. This was something Volvo inherited. In the old days, before King Long decided having as many numbers as possible was the way forward, an AEC 2D3RA was a second series, double deck with synchro box (2 was monocontrol, 4 crash), righthand drive and air brakes. Oh, they were the days....

[Zelandeth]

I'm sure we could recreate that with my Olympian.

I sure wouldn't complain! Just be aware that I'll quite likely just wind up in a state of almost trance like relaxation in the offside rear corner for the duration of any trip!

 

What power unit is in your big yellow beastie? Have only ever seen them briefly in passing in Aberdeen, so don't actually know half as much about them as I probably should do.

 

Through all of the nonsense I've dealt with growing up, have always found that parking myself in the most mechanically noisy location on a big vehicle like that, especially if sitting at a steady speed like on a motorway, is one of the few times that I can just chill out and almost visibly see my blood pressure dropping!

 

Well... that's the second best seat. The best one is the one up front with the wheel in front of it, but everyone knows that.

 

Really do hope I can find the time to get my cat D licence fully one day...much as to prove to myself I can as anything. Have been told by two examiners that I would pass the test "nae bother" which I took as a compliment.

 

Bloody rusty now though, going on three years since I last drove one.

[Zelandeth]

I wonder if anyone can help me with this...

 

I have memories of very modern (for the 90s) looking coaches at motorway service stations whenever we went on holiday. They were silver (almost like aluminium finish) and I can only really describe them as looking very modern. This would have been mid 90s.

 

I had it in my head that they were Wallace Arnold coaches, but on googling they all appear to be orange.

 

Can anyone else remember this?

Bova Futura?

 

They really did look like they'd landed from another planet compared to most buses in the early 90s.

 

They might have rusted faster than a 70s Lancia, but they were handsome looking things I reckon. In silver they would definitely have looked very modern indeed.

 

The only other candidate that springs to mind would be Berkhof. They had some quite modern looking coaches (using Fiat Tipo tail lights on one model I believe! - seems to be a running theme, some of their earlier ones had Saab 900 front sidelight/indicator clusters).

 

Most of the other mainstream coaches like your Plaxton Premiere, Jankheere Mistrals, Van Booked Alizee were pretty conservative iterative steps from their earlier designs in comparison (totally irrespective of the technical side - I'm purely speaking external appearance - and that's very much down to personal opinion anyway!).

 

Have to admit that it was the day that the chrome and veneer disappeared from coaches that my interest started to wane. Plastic and carpet as finishes just aren't the same!

[busmansholiday]

Neoplan by any chance ? They were always different to mainstream vehicles

[rml2345]

Neoplan kit from the early 80s looked like The Future.

[Zelandeth]

All right, here's one for you lot.

 

Anyone know anyone with a breaking MAN 18.220 or similar?

 

Simple reason: my box of random panel indicators etc is getting thin on the ground, and I know the dash on them has about a thousand nicely modularly fitted lights.

 

Not something that's likely to get busted up in use I'd think, so I doubt there's a huge demand for them spares wise.

 

Time was I'd have known someone who would have told me to go help myself and make a contribution to the coffee fund...sadly those days are gone.

 

I know a "proper" breaker will ask something daft like a tenner each, so that's a non-starter for something that's purely restocking one of my "that'll be handy maybe one day" boxes.

[Felly Magic]

Lucky it didn't catch fire, B6s like to do that

[Zelandeth]

Sounds about the same as every B6* I've been on!

 

Surprised and happy to hear H622ACK is still on the go!

[Felly Magic]

I've driven a few, most struggle to hit 45, and that is with a tail wind, only good thing about them is they have a tighter stering lock than a Dart. Volvo quietly axed the B6LE, and replaced it with a rebadged DAF SB120 called the Volvo Wright 'Merit', and getting spares via Volvo was nigh on impossible, and they always said 'it is a DAF, call DafBus parts'. 

[Rover414]

I've joined the ranks of having my own bus now, bought my old Optare Solo off work earlier this week for not a lot of money. Always had a soft spot for it and couldn't turn down what I was offered.

[Zelandeth]

Lordy...have to admit that I've not much love for the Solo.

 

Having said that though, while I'd not want one in my garage I do think it's very important that some are preserved as they did a lot to get accessible transport to markets where it just wasn't possible before.

 

Probably not too bad to live with either I guess - so long as you're handy with electronic detective work.

 

Now, the Alero, now there was a bag of monkey excrement. Whoever came up with the driveline setup should have been shot.

[Rover414]

I am after some bits to be honest, some engine pipework and interior parts.

[cms206]

 

 

The Cummins ISB6 engined versions were much better, easily capable of 90mph if the limiter broke. Allegedly*.

Your bollocks are clearly far, far larger than mine.

 

We had one. An 09-plate ex Demo M950 with an ISB6 hanging off it's arse. It was absolutely shitting terrifying and within an hour of my first shift in it I had almost put it in a field - considering at the time my shift bus was a 210bhp 6-pot Dart SLF with an on/off throttle pedal and no retarder to speak of, the Solo was the scarier of the two by far.

 

I never worked out why Solos just refuse point blank to actually handle... they work up to about a 780 but anything bigger is pointless.

 

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[cms206]

Our workshop tonight, taken from my office door - many generations of Plaxton.

 

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[Zelandeth]

What's under the skin of the Premiere then? They're starting to get a bit of a rare sight now.