Itinerant Air Cooled Greetings MCI Central II

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Amskeptic
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Itinerant Air Cooled Greetings MCI Central II

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:31 pm

These older buses used multiple plate clutches that keyed in to the flywheel slots for the pressure plate disks . . . :
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. . . and stacked alternated friction lining clutch plates to the splines on the transaxle input shaft which did this goofy angled bevel gear to allow the engine to be a Diagonal Transverse:
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It was just a few days ago that I learned that these buses used constant mesh gearboxes. I thought they were classic sliding gear boxes all these years. You do have to double-clutch these if you want a quiet shift. Just like our synchromesh boxes, there are sliding sleeves that lock the shaft to the gear you want. All that is missing are the brass synchronizers that prevent the slider from touching the gear until it has matched the speed of the shaft:
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There was major unsprung weight with a live rear axle bounding up and down with dual rear wheels and air brake diaphragms and that poor little propeller shaft had to work at some serious angles:
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Here is an early front axle with air brake diaphragms and locator link pads and air bellows supports. The steering box is a worm and peg (think:effort) where the power assist is applied to the one and only tie rod with a monster hydraulic ram the better which to drive the unsprung weight to thoroughly uncontrollable levels. The earlier-still buses had leaf springs to absorb all of this crashing around inertia:
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Driving them was no picnic. You had no servo assistance on the clutch pedals in the early days, that is 100 lbs of force at the pedal as you creep through non-interstate traffic with limited visibility:
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Things got a little better in the later buses:
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to be continued
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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