Take The Video Tour Of Our Garage Below I’ve added a video of a quick tour of the garage. The wash bay is the new home to our bulk oil tanks. They are replacing the originals due to age and size of them taking up room in the adjacent service bay. Watch the video for more miscellaneous tour tidbits.
New Bulk Oil Tanks
The tour starts with the wash bay that is thank you dear employer …..indoors. We received our new bulk oil tanks today. They will be placed at the end wall of the wash bay. This will free up space in the main service bay next door. The original tanks are very old while the new manufactured ones are taller and will save a lot of space.
There is one split tank with 750 litres capacity in each side. The split tank will contain automatic transmission oil and 5w30 automotive engine oil. The other stand alone tank will have 15w40 diesel engine oil. It’s a semi synthetic Hypuron from Castrol.
Castrol set up a program with us where we receive a rebate of 15 cents for every litre we purchase. That money goes to training and equipment. This allowed us to purchase hoses, reels, digital dispensers and pumps. We have to purchase oil anyways so this works out very well for us.
The Lube Bay
The bulk oil has been piped into the lube bay to hose reels with digital dispensers that can be programmed. This is a nice addition not having to stand there and watch over the oil being pumped into the engine. You just set the capacity with the digital settings and carry on with something else. When a bus comes in for a service it goes up in the air and checked out head to toe.
Auto Grease Systems
All of our buses have automatic greasers made by Groenveld. They have a reservoir of grease which is a special EP grade (very light) so it can move through the auto grease system freely. There is a series of plastic lines, manifolds, solenoids, greasing timer and pump built in to give the system a quick shot of grease according to the timer setting. I will do a post on the auto grease system in the near future.
A Minor Turn Signal Switch Failure
Yes I’m even going to talk about the signal switch repair you saw in the video. It was a very minor problem that just required two new screws to fasten the assembly to the steering column. Every little job counts because in this instance…..without turn signals the bus is out of service.
Faulty Alternator Causes Dead Batteries
The Leece Neville alternator I talked about in the video caused a draw off of the bus batteries over the weekend. Monday morning the batteries were dead caused by a 5 amp draw from the alternator. Usually what causes the draw is faulty diodes that allow a trickle of voltage to be drawn from the battery pack. All of our buses have three 800 CCA (cold cranking amp) batteries which can take a small draw and still start but not 5 amps over 2 days.
Multiplexing – Problem Bus
The bus I did a previous post on is still down because of the escape hatch and side emergency window alarms not working. The alarms are tied into the multiplexing system so the modules are involved. We have been using the Servicelink program which is handy for checking circuits along with physically looking for faulty wiring.
That’s some of the things that happened today at the school bus garage. I hope you enjoyed the tour. Tomorrow will bring new and unexpected problems. Thanks for checking out this post…..please comment and share.
