NEW BUS !! David is on the way home .

[al perna]

very nice David , way to create memory's with Dad

[Arcticdude]

Nice gearing! 67 at 1550 is nice! And no sawing on the wheel, either! That's a 1000 mile a day rig, for sure!

[davidbrady]

Introducing SpongeBob!



2004 Prevost H3 Vantare

---

It was quite a trip.

I flew into Kamloops, BC on Sunday the 13th. Met up with the seller on Monday morning to complete the transaction. I then drove the bus to Vancouver to have a complete chassis service done by Prevost in Richmond. Pretty routine, but they noticed tight bearings on the fan hub, so we put in a new hub, they also spotted dried and cracked suspension control arm bushings on the tag and drive, so they installed 14 new bushings. Other than that, it was routine, fluids, filters, and grease, but instead of one day planned for service it stretched into two. I left at 9:00pm on Wednesday heading to the Blaine Washington border crossing. I had every piece of paperwork imaginable. When I arrived I filled out two additional forms, gave them everything I had, they inspected the coach, they were happy with my 3520-21, and HS-7 forms, my letter from Prevost, and my certification from Detroit Diesel. Ultimately the coach was imported as a re-importation of a US vehicle - simple as pie and only two hours at the border.

From there I took a quick drive to Bellingham Wa for an overnight stay at Walmart. In the morning I made a 200 mile drive to pick up Dad at the Portland Or airport. There was no way of driving the bus up to the arrival terminals so I parked at a local Target that had MaxLine tram access to the airport. My Dad got on the tram and met me at Target, and we were off to Marathon Coach in Coburg, Or where we spent the night.

At Richmond, BC the mechanics failed to properly tighten one of my drive axle tophats which soon departed from the coach. On Thursday morning I spoke with the parts manager at Marathon, showed him a pic of my tophat, he reached for a tophat off a nearby shelf and said, "like this one"? I said, "yup", and asked how much. He said, "free of charge"! Yippee! Great folks up there at Marathon in Coburg.

We left Marathon and took a ten minute drive down to Superior Tire in Eugene, Or where I had 8 new tires and 6 Centramatics installed. (I had previously arranged for Centramatic to drop ship my balancers to Superior Tire. After 2 hours, and $5400 later we were on our way. Now we're were ready to make tracks.

First CG stop was on the Sacramento river in Redding Ca after a beautiful day of viewing Oregon and Mt. Shasta. The next morning I took 44 east to Carson City and picked up 395 south at Reno for a scenic tour down the east side of the Sierra Nevadas. We camped a Lee Vining, Ca just at the base of Mono Lake. Snow capped mountains to the west and desert mountains to the west. I wanted my Dad to see Death Valley so at Mount Whitney we descended from 8000 ft to 200 feet below sea level in about 5 miles! Truly spectacular and worth the effort. We then continued on thru the Mojave desert and arrived at a KOA in Needles, Ca for the night.

Now that we were on I-40 we needed to make haste for my Dad's doctor visit. We blasted 700 miles that day and camped in Santa Rosa New Mexico, the next day another great drive with a layover in Sallisaw, Ok. We caught a great country music radio station around Little Rock, Ar and decided to make a few videos! I then noticed that my S60 temperature gauge was swinging wildly, 150 deg F to 230 deg F in a 2 second interval and then back to 150. I new the engine wasn't sourcing and the radiator sinking that quantity of heat power so I called Prevost service in Nashville, Tn to schedule a service. They installed a new temperature sensor and we were on our way home. Arrived in Asheville, NC this past Friday evening at 10:00pm after covering almost 4000 miles! The bus performed flawlessly. My Dad said he'd do it again in a heartbeat!

The next day my wife and kids saw the bus for the first time and loved it!

[mhughes01]

Nice looking Bus, David. Love the polka dots in the paint - makes it very unique.

Who did the conversion?

Do you notice much difference driving it from your LXI? In general, and also the feel and view sitting a bit lower down.

Cheers and congrats,
Mike

[Arcticdude]

What do you mean "there's no way of driving the bus up to the arrival terminals"?? How do the city buses get in and out?? The correct statement would be "I didn't feel like fighting the traffic, so I parked at Target and took the tram into the airport!"

[davidbrady]

(04-26-2014 13:58)mhughes01 Wrote:  Nice looking Bus, David. Love the polka dots in the paint - makes it very unique.

Who did the conversion?

Do you notice much difference driving it from your LXI? In general, and also the feel and view sitting a bit lower down.

Cheers and congrats,
Mike

Hi Mike,

Glad you like it. I first viewed it on February 6th and bought it without my wife seeing it. I took hundreds of pics and a detailed video to share with my wife but the purchase was still chancy - you know that our better halves rule the interiors. It was quite a relief to show it to her in person and to get her approval!

I bought a Vantare conversion. Many of the entertainers and Star Coaches are Vantare conversions which is a testament to their durability. I like the '04 because it's the last of the non-EGR DDC Series-60's. My bus was spec-ed by Vantare with 365 tires on both the steer and tag axles, hub centric wheel mounts, and an 18,000 IFS suspension on the steer axle, which is rare for an '04. The pass-thru basement bays of the H3 were also major selling points for me. Vantare built their own slides and they reinforced the body openings with Prevost's help. I'm very pleased with the box built around each slide opening required to restore chassis strength. I have no question that Vantare's solution is every bit as strong as Prevost's.

As I'm sure you're aware, LXi's use Ridewell suspension which BB has been using since virtually the beginning of the Wanderlodge series. Over the years Ridewell analyzed and refined their suspension to a very high degree, and for many years BB continued their use of the c-channel backbone, inboard mounted air springs, and stick steel axles. Prevost departed from these methods in the 80's and 90's. BB tried to catch up in 2004 with the M450 and my have succeeded had it not been for the 2008 collapse.

My Prevost uses an IFS steer suspension and out board mounted air springs on the tag and drive axles. The chassis does away with the centrally located c-channel backbone in favor of a tubular constructed space frame. I have 8 air springs (2 steer, 4 drive, and 2 tag) and 8 shocks (2 steer, 4 drive, and 2 tag). I have disc brakes on all axles, and I have a transmission retarder. The coach weighs 50,000 lb whereas my LXi weighed 47500 lb.

I can hold the Prevost an inch from the yellow line on the left thru any turn the road throws at me. I can place it anywhere in my lane and hold it there with no effort. It's a 50,000 lb canyon carver. The transmission retarder is integrated with the service brakes (if I have the switch thrown). If I apply more brakes the retarder dials in more retarder. The disc brakes do away with slack adjusters, s-cams, shafts, grease points, brake drums and shoes. I can decelerate from 60 mph to 40 in tenths of seconds.

In four thousand miles I've thrown just about anything I can at the chassis and nothing upsets it. It tracks straight and precisely, it never pitches, and it gobbles up whatever the road has in store.

(04-26-2014 22:18)Arcticdude Wrote:  What do you mean "there's no way of driving the bus up to the arrival terminals"?? How do the city buses get in and out?? The correct statement would be "I didn't feel like fighting the traffic, so I parked at Target and took the tram into the airport!"

Ahhh... The motorhome version of the H3 has a raised roof. In addition, I have a VHF/UHF and Tracvision satellite dish mounted on my roof which puts the bus at around 13.5'. H3 conversions are significantly taller than H3 transit buses!

[mhughes01]

Sounds awesome. Thanks for the details. Nice piece of engineering. I would not miss the "pitching moments" that our Bird sometimes responds to road wallows with.

Hope we get to see some interior shots at some point.

Cheers,
Mike.

[al perna]

So when does the Brady Bunch hit the Road sounds like a Great North West Trip is coming

So tell us about sitting low , must make it feel like a sports car haha

[davidbrady]

Hi Al,

That's the perennial question: with 3 kids and two in elementary school, will we use it? Time will tell... This summer I hope to take the kids to Durango, Co to see the trains and possibly further. We always make a couple trips a year to Harrisburg, Pa to see my family, and I can usually count on a trip or two to Florida. All I know is I went without a bus for three months and I started to get the shakes! Hahahahaha

The LXi is a very good bus. I miss the instrumentation and especially the altimeter. I'll definitely be adding Silverleaf VMSpc to SpongeBob as well as an altimeter. I also miss not being able to hang my head out the driver's window; this makes backing up more challenging. Sitting lower hasn't been an issue so far. If anything it gives a more connected feel to the road. With my family up two stairs I may get lonely down there, but that remains to be seen. Visibility is still very good. The overall height of SpongeBob is also a challenge. To the top of the Girard awnings it measures 12' 4", the TracVision satellite dish adds another foot. In 9 years of LXi ownership we never used the TracVision. I may remove it or I may see about a lower profile unit. If removed, then the bus would be no taller than an LXi. Anyone have any ideas on lower profile in-motion dishes?

The transmission retarder has 6 positions. It'll pull the coach down to a full stop, and it will progressively feed in stopping power as the service brakes are applied. This makes stop and go city driving very easy. On long grades I can't descend as fast as I could with jake brakes. I have to arrow down the transmission to find an equilibrium point where heat generated is the same as heat sunk by the cooling system. The transmission will start logging temperature at 250 deg. I like to keep it well below this temperature. I may install a jake too. It'd be great to have both, each has it's advantages, but I'm very surprised at the effectiveness and usefulness of the retarder. The transmission cooler is massive and is plumbed downstream from the S60 water pump. At around 225 deg F the retarder turns on the S60 cooling fan.

The bus has 2 4KW Xantrex pure sine wave inverters. Everything is wired thru the inverters which means if I'm running everything and I disconnect shore power requiring the inverters to pick up the load, then I need to do manual pruning to remove loads. It's simple and gives me the opportunity to run anything I want on the inverters. A neat feature of these inverters is that they'll sync their 120VAC and 60Hz with the genny or shorepower. For instance, I camped at CG with only a 30A hookup. I wanted to run one CruiseAir and my refrigerator and assorted lights, but I also had some transient loads like the microwave. Ordinarily it'd be easy for these transients to throw the 30A breaker, instead SpongeBob's inverters pull power from the battery bank and push 120VAC power into the loads to augment the 30A shore hookup. When the loads go away the inverters go back to charging the batteries.

[Arcticdude]

Will it auto start the genny when needed or to recharge the batteries? Is the control all done by the inverters or is there a separate piggyback module to do that? Sounds slick!