41',43' LXi Gross Axle Weight Ratings

[davidbrady]

Kurt,

That is an interesting weight distribution to say the least. I did some back of the envelop calcs and I think if you bring your tag axle down to 10,000# you'll gain 4000# on your drive and you'll lose 1000# on your steer for a distribution of: 14K, 19K, 10K: steer, drive, and tag. As you know you can remove weight from the tag by adjusting the tag axle air pressure regulator. You'll also have a better percent weight distribution on the steer axle of approximately 32%; I've been tracking this for a while and it seems most buses carry around 30% on their steer axles. I wonder what your weights are on either side of the drive and tag axle? It could be that one side is much heavier than the other hence the lack of overall weight on your drive - someone may have set it up that way to compensate for side-to-side imbalances. The drive axle is the beefiest of the three so it stands to reason that you should be exploiting the capacity it provides. Your bus will probably ride, handle, and brake better with some weight distribution changes.

(09-16-2013 13:12)pgchin Wrote:  PSS Suggestion to help you: As a trial Balloon to my theory above maybe you and David B can list your tie rod end part numbers and let's see if they are the same or different as David has a 16k axle??????? Tie Rod ends are the "weakest" chain the link so if they upgraded components, they'd surely start there...........

Hi Pete,

I have a Blue Bird part number for my steer axle of: 0014617. In a minute I should be able to dig up some tie-rod part numbers.

BTW, I inadvertently deleted (and re-posted) my posting. This post should appear before Pete's post above! Sorry for the confusion.

---

Pete,

My tie rod ends are: 220TR115 (left) and 220TR116 (right).