The closest thing I have to compare working on buses made shortly after World War II, like the guy behind Bus Grease Monkey does on a regular basis, is Army motorpool work, where pretty much everything I worked on was at least my age or newer and the worst thing I ever had to deal with was the time some genetic malfunction of a human being thought it would be funny to leave an opened MRE bag that had been used as an impromptu field toilet in one of the cargo boxes of an LMTV that had been sitting outside in the Texas heat. Yeah, that happened, but in the grand scope of things, mechanically I got off scot-free: the occasional battery replacement, one coolant hose repair and keeping up with the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance on trucks and HMMWVs was nothing to me. If anything, it was a welcomed vacation from the buzz of the hangar.
But what this guy sees…this is the stuff of nightmares. Keep in mind, these aren’t new buses…we’re talking Senicruisers and other GM buses, Eagle bus, Flxibles, and so on and so forth. They tend to sit for a while, then get resuscitated back to life, then wind up sitting somewhere else for a bit, ad nauseum until someone sends them to the scrapper. Scott roams the country helping bus owners with everything from minor repairs to full-on engine rebuilds, and believe that he’s seen some things during his time as a roving mechanic. Years of use and abuse take their toll on every vehicle, but a ton of what you’ll see in this video are nightmare scenarios: think cracked wheels and absolutely destroyed wheel bearings are just the start of the fun. Click on the video to see what else you’ll find…we bet that you’ll really enjoy the air tanks that apparently weren’t drained since…oh, probably the Lyndon B. Johnson era.
From 1968-1972 I worked summers on our townships garbage trucks. At days end we dump the load, hose the body out, refuel , check the oil (1qt a day) and then drain the air tank. It was next to the fuel tank, you could do it standing up. Why in the “F” would GMC put it under the coach expecting the driver to drain it daily?