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Over the road a/c question
I am currently shopping for a 1990s bus and my question is if I should hold out for an “over the road system” bus? I live in Southern California where it is quite warm, the bus I test drove the other day, had 3 Cruisairs. Although only two were working properly, it seemed like they were having a hard time keeping up. It was about 105° that day. Those of you with more experience I hope you can give me some guidance on whether or not the over the road system is a necessity for me in warm southern California. I intend to use the bus more for traveling then parked. It seems as though this option is rare. Is that true? Or is it that the people with that system just don’t have theirs for sale because they are so good. I appreciate anyone’s guidance here
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5 Replies
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Most “Liberty” conversions(95+%) have the “Prevost” OTR ac/heat system. There are others but they aren’t common(5-10%).
If you drive a lot of miles, the “Prevost” OTR system is the cats meow.CruiseAirs are “No Bueno” while driving down hot roads, and are about 4x more expensive to replace than a roof ac.
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Everyone except Liberty owners will tell you that they keep perfectly cool in the Sahara, Gobi, Mohave or Death Valley with the A/C systems provided by their converter. Some will even tell you their conversions OTR system blows so cold they need to wear snowball suits.
The bottom line is OTR systems as installed by Prevost range from 80,000 BTU to 105,000 BTU depending on vintage. A typical roof or Cruiseair is about 13,000 per unit so if you run everything on a coach not equipped with Prevost OTR you still do not have the cooling power.
The deciding factor is you. If your definition of too warm is the same as someone from Minnesota consider OTR. If you are OK with temps acceptable to folks from Phoenix maybe you do not need OTR.
CC has a system their owners call OTR, and it tends to eat compressors, but the greatest complaint is if something under the coach needs service, like the air dryer, Norgren valves, etc. the position of the condensing coil makes access a huge difficulty. But it is reported to keep the coach cool.
Now that I have pissed off the majority of members here is the flip side of the story.
You can stay comfortable in every coach, including those without OTR. But if it does not have OTR make sure you understand two things. First, do not try to cool a hot heat soaked coach. Do whatever is needed to keep the coach cool and only really rely in the A/Cs to maintain your coach temps. Do not expect Cruiseairs to work when high temps are being radiated off a hot highway because the condensers will not get enough cool air. Only get a coach with roof airs.
Finally, if you do not get true OTR, plan on running the generator and set the temps and get every A/C running. It likely will use no more fuel than an OTR equipped coach, it helps the life of inverters, and gives the generator the exercise it needs for long life.
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Thanks Don
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+1 on Don’s comments. You will not be happy with 3 cruise-airs in the desert southwest. You MIGHT be ok with 3-4 roof airs; don’t know. By the way, a fourth cruise air won’t help.
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Everyone usually recommends what they have and I am no different. However, I have a bus with OTA (Bus A/C) because I did not want to settle for one without. We came close to buying three buses before we bought this one and no or non-working OTA figured into each decision at least somewhat.
We started out with cruise airs and mine were useless over the road. We now have four roof airs and the forward one is no more than 3 feet behind the driver’s seat. OTA is much, much cooler than all those ACs.
I was on an entertainer coach a while back. It was parked at a venue on a 100 degree day in direct sun with five roof airs running off the generator and at least 12 people on board.
During load-in and soundcheck, some one had turned off the generator and the bus was heat soaked. You could feel the five airs working, but it was going to take a while. After a couple of complaints, my friend cranked the engine, flipped it on high idle and turned on the OTA. No more complaints.
We love our OTA!
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