@@LJ07EBP It was worn out brake bands on certain gears that were slipping, at least on the one in my experience. I had one instance but with a Voith were the torque converter kept causing the thing to almost stall and recover at the last second but every so often would actually stall.
The Mercedes was banging into second gear, making terrible noises as you hear, smell of burning oil noticed by passengers, then it just went out of gear and crawled to the nearest bus stop.
That Mercedes bus towards the end must have had a braindead driver because anyone with a brainstem would have known something was wrong as it finished climbing the hill, given it was on full thrash in a low gear. Honestly, incompetent people in a job irritate me. Great collection of videos by the way, love the bus ones.
Thanks! I knew there was a problem with that breadvan, but when the driver pulled into the stop and I said the gearbox was knackered he said it had been doing it all day like that. Never mind, it was only a silly breadvan lol! But there was a smell of burning for a while before it all blew up. I had the camera ready lol!
@SPTSuperSprinter156 :Can I just point out that, as a bus driver, reporting gearbox problems is often a completely fruitless exercise. Because of the expense of gearboxes many bus companies don't actually replace a gearbox until if fails on the road. So drivers become resigned to driving them as they are.
"Yuh knackered are yuh?" He's thinking, bo**ocks, I've got to walk the rest of the way! The bus drivers must dread seeing you at the bus stop, camera in hand! Lol. A sure sign that the bus will start playing up!
Two things I noticed in this video are low transmission fluid levels, and over heated fluid. One other possibility for a couple buses is bad worn out clutches. With city buses constant start-stop, this is beyond severe duty and maintenance tech's should be checking these transmissions but instead big fleet operators usually waste money by letting unit fail before repair. Sad way to run a business when it is so easy to repair these transmissions before failure.
Was on a Dart going down a hill and the warning buzzer came on, what low air???? Thats a bit worryinbg given the natural incline, inertia, and the fact we needed air for te brakes to work lol!
@SPTSuperSprinter156 Incompetent gearboxes irritate me! I'm not suprised driver of said bread-van acted the way he did and banged his foot to the floor. He'd probaby had enough for one day! When you get lumbered with a shit bus for a day with a known fault, and bugger all gets done about it time and time again, then you kinda want the thing to blow up so that something gets done about it! I had to drive a bus today which kept dropping cogs- therefore I'm having a rant :-D
Buggered up gearboxes seems fairly common in those old double-deckers. When I was in school we used to have manual transmission double deckers which were alright, then swapped for automatic ones. They were TERRIBLE! They'd quite often shift up to 2nd or 3rd gear and then immediately slam back into the previous gear, jolting the entire bus and its passengers and thrashing the engine. Not only that but they smelled, leaked and looked horrible inside and out.
The gearbox of M232VSX (Volvo Olympian w/ZF) must be terriably went wrong.. at least i can hear the terrible "ding..ding..ding.." warning sound of Volvo is sounding...
Some slippy leylands for starters with some dodgy ZF gearboxes to follow and the grand blowout of a Merc 814 Breadvan. I've got a dodgy ZF on a B10B N523WVR with lots of overrevving in 1st. I've manged to burn a clutch out and scrapped the vechicle soon afterwards.
i was on a coach coming back from france last year and we came off the eurotunnel at dover and as we wre going up the ramp back onto the motorway. It was having great difficulty getting up it with smoke pouring out the engine. We stopped and every time it reved up a load of smoke came out of the engine.
ZF gearboxes are great when they are working fine, but sucks totally when they fail. Feels as if being pushed by an asshole. I've taken before a Leyland Olympian 3 axle which got a stucked gear. The gear was stucked at gear 2. The driver had no choice but to lessen the trottle, then try again, but failed. Then he has no choice but to drive on, the engine was revving at almost max when it suddenly changed, a loud thud and hard kick felt.
Warning at 2:00 sounds like a volvo when there's a problem with the battery And as for them old Allison AT545s on Breadvans... they're all as bad as each other! Screaming, and slipping, especially from 1st-2nd-3rd
You can hear the dashboard warnings going in the Lothian Oly..Driver should have stood the bus and awaited a recovery team...Idiot they were for driving it.
If this is a video to show the people how the bus worked they should not put words up they people should take it in and listen to the bus looking at words
The Excels and Darts get the smell of burning rubber in them when being thrashed and/or going uphill. Will have to get a video! Some of them do have some serious gear problems!
