[Archived]

Ditto what Jon said..

Mark is blunt and to the point, he comes from owning a huge truck fleet for many years and knows a little somethig about equipment and safety. His comments were justified in my opinion, I probably would have changed the wording a little, but so be it. There are a bunch of us here from the trucking industry, me included, so there is a huge wealth of knowledge about equipment and safety.

Dale – We met at Jeff’s and I was around your bus for two days while Jeff was trying to get you back on the road. I’ll not make any comments except this one.

If your bus was put up on the lift today would it pass the following:

1. DOT inspection for safety

2. Brakes, brake lines, air leaks, shocks, king pins, steering linkage, wheel seals, air bags, tire age etc.

In other words, if inspected at Prevost, would they then lower your bus and tell you you’re good to go nothing needed?

If the answer is yes, bravo, well done.If not, remember, you’re held to a much higher standard than most of us because you are a professional driver transporting the public in a commercial vehicle. If the answer is no, shut it down and take the time to zero out the problems, your customers will then be much better off.

We just don’t want to see anyone in trouble or worse, an accident invovling a non safe bus.

[joel]

This is amazing! haha… Some guy I have never met tells me to “Park the damn bus until you get it fixed so it is safe to be on the road.” and everyone here is now going on the assumption that my bus is falling apart! Let me ask ya’ll and see what you say – what’s wrong with my brakes? The answer is NOTHING! I had a chamber go out! A chamber that was already serviced back in January! Then the guy misrouted a hose and it rubbed a hole in it! Why does that make my bus at fault? I have complained about the shop I use not getting to work that I want done. Most of that is stuff inside the bus! The list that I had for them to go over was mostly stuff inside the bus. Other than that, I wanted them to check over the bus as a preventative measure prior to my long trip. Nothing on the list made my bus dangerous in any way!!! I just told ya’ll that a guy who drives for a big leasing company here in Nashville went with me on this trip and continually bragged about how my bus was better than any bus in their fleet of much newer XLIIs! So why does everyone keep insisting that my bus is unsafe?!? Because ya’ll are some closed society that will always defend each other apparently. Mark was an ass and made incorrect assumptions, but instead of saying that, ya’ll say “he is blunt and could have worded things better”. No! He is wrong! And watching ya’ll defend him and continue to pile on my bus as if it is some rolling piece of scrap just proves to me that I have no place here. To answer the final question… Yes, my bus passes inspection fine! Do ya’ll really think I would take off to the farthest corners of this country in a bus that wasn’t ready for it? It could be financially, as well as physically, ruinous for me! That’s why it’s so hilarious to watch ya’ll jump on the side of Mark, who knows NOTHING about me, my bus, or anything else. It doesn’t matter one iota that he has owned a trucking company! Does that somehow make him magically be able to inspect my bus for thousands of miles away? No, of course not! So WHY has every one of you jumped to the conclusion that my bus is unsafe, just because this &@$? person made some rude and uninformed comment? And then no matter how many times I set the record straight, ya’ll continue to go as if his statement is somehow correct.

Tom, I enjoyed meeting you and Nancy. I have a lot of respect for you.. But just because you saw my bus a year ago at Jeff’s doesn’t make you anymore informed about the condition than Mark is. I’ve spent a year going over that bus. I’ve probably out 75-80k miles on it since you’ve seen it. I wasn’t at Jeff’s for anything major mechanical then. It was conversion stuff, like the windshield. It was a great bus then, and even better now.

Jon, I’ve never met you. Always wanted to. You know an awful lot about Prevost buses. You’ve been helpful with advice in my time here (mostly with conversion problems and not major mechanical issues).

And I’ve made a lot of other friends here to. Some I’ve met, others I haven’t yet. The issue now is, no matter how ya’ll try to say it is just being helpful, you are all joining in with a guy who is saying my bus is unsafe junk. Imagine how frustrating it is for me to repeatedly say that he has no idea what he his talking about, but then come back and read again how he’s just blunt but right! I hope this thread is instruction. Not because of the importance of repairs (since my bus is in great shape mechanically!), but in the way people get treated on this forum of they aren’t part of the right clicque. Yes, some of ya’ll have been helpful, but this thread has been ridiculous! I’m sure ya’ll will read this and say “what’s wrong with that guy?” since obviously it’s not in the realm of possibility to admit that Mark was wrong in his comments. But whether ya’ll admit it or not, he was.

And with that, I’m done.

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1999 XLV X-6872,  liberty #440

[Archived]

Starting to sound like it. And my first meet up with another PREVO owner with his nose so high Glad it didn’t rain. Dale ask a ? about a older prevost. Does this mean no one without open check book should own a older prevost or be banished? I’m sure any shop /most of them would be able to read brake shoes from the inside. Including Dale. Why not tell them how? Disappointed or enlightened . Bob Now delete this discussion as they would…

[Tim]

Dale,

Please don’t call another member an ass. I reread this thread along with another one you started. The brakes were clearly mentioned, with a new brake chamber needed on one incident, a hole in the hose on another, and a need for a shop to change linings or shoes.

If others responding to this thread have brakes on their mind it appears reasonable.

For the benefit of new owners who are not aware of why some who have posted to this thread I am going to examine two of the issues you posted about. The first was what you stated was an emergency brake not releasing as it should. Air is introduced to the brake chamber to compress the spring inside the chamber and release the brake. The air is applied to a diaphragm that likely had a hole or a tear in it. By your own post you drove with that condition.

First, if you were losing air to that extent you could not have ever passed a DOT pre-trip brake test in which the allowable leak rate for an emergency brake is 3 PSI per miniute. If you were unable to develop the pressure to fully release the brake the leak rate is significantly greater than the allowed rate and the bus should be pulled from service. Yet in your post you indicated you drove it. As a professional the higher standard Tom mentions applies to you. And you should set the example for the new owners who have not yet had the opportunity to learn this information.

Then in your second issue you mention when you applied your service brakes you heard air escaping. Again, the DOT pre-trip brake test is very clear in that the same leak rate of 3 PSI or less applies to service brakes and a failure to meet that standard requires the bus to be pulled from service. But you said you drove it. Again as a professional you are sending a signal to new owners that it is OK to drive with serious defects.

In both instances a few minutes under the coach would have eliminated the air leaks. The brake with the defective diaphragm could have been caged and the air line to that emergency brake could have been capped or plugged. You would have lost the use of one emergency brake, but the service brakes would not have been compromised.

In the second instance the service brake line could have been plugged or capped and again you would not have lost pressure when you applied the brakes. Admittedly both actions would have to be viewed as emergency repairs until you could get to service, but by doing either repair you would not have risked an unintended application of emergency brakes and possible loss of control of the coach.

Issues with the conversion portion of the coach did not appear to get those posting as excited as the prospect of more serious safety issues as a result of dangerous and unaddressed brake problems.

I am sorry if it apears some are ganging up on you but you are a professional and should set the example for all of us non-commercial drivers. I think in the context of that those that posted (almost all of which do have commercial trucking backgrounds) are expressing legitimate concern. All I ask is that we dial down the heat level on this thread because it is very instructive, especially to new owners of coaches that might have similar problems.