Itinerant Air-Cooled

The BD hot start relay....I have replace 3 relays in the year that I have had the thing...thankfully it wasn't causing problems during a recent glitch or it REALLY would have muddied the waters.

Autozone coil

Both sets of Bosch plugs "Made in India" had burrs on the threads.

Kragen starters (I tried 3 different ones from a store here in CO. I ended up mixing and matching to get a good solenoid and a good motor.)

Non-Bosch rev limiting rotor: Started turning to dust after a couple thousand miles

Bus Depot made in India Side Markers & Lights. Horrible fit and they fade within a few months.

spiffy wrote:The BD hot start relay....I have replace 3 relays in the year that I have had the thing...thankfully it wasn't causing problems during a recent glitch or it REALLY would have muddied the waters.

Do you have a brand name on the relay? See if there is an amperage rating on it.
For lifetime reliability, an old Ford starter relay is tops.
Second on my list is a Bosch fog light relay.
Bottom of the list, no-name cheap plastic box relay with no markings

Amskeptic wrote:

spiffy wrote:The BD hot start relay....I have replace 3 relays in the year that I have had the thing...thankfully it wasn't causing problems during a recent glitch or it REALLY would have muddied the waters.

Do you have a brand name on the relay? See if there is an amperage rating on it.
For lifetime reliability, an old Ford starter relay is tops.
Second on my list is a Bosch fog light relay.
Bottom of the list, no-name cheap plastic box relay with no markings

Its a Bosch relay.....

I will check the amperage when I get home tonight.

spiffy wrote:

Amskeptic wrote:

spiffy wrote:The BD hot start relay....I have replace 3 relays in the year that I have had the thing...thankfully it wasn't causing problems during a recent glitch or it REALLY would have muddied the waters.

Do you have a brand name on the relay? See if there is an amperage rating on it.
For lifetime reliability, an old Ford starter relay is tops.
Second on my list is a Bosch fog light relay.
Bottom of the list, no-name cheap plastic box relay with no markings

Its a Bosch relay.....

I will check the amperage when I get home tonight.

I will bet you that Bosch has different ratings and BD may not be sending the heavy-duty stuff we prefer.
Colin

Amskeptic wrote:Bottom of the list, no-name cheap plastic box relay with no markings

That may be my fuel pump relay problem. I have a box of Bosch VW relays that regalsr gave me. I should try switching those out.

I put these in the suspension forum not realizing there was one in each forum.

Autozone coil
Both sets of Bosch plugs "Made in India" had burrs on the threads.
Kragen starters (I tried 3 different ones from a store here in CO. I ended up mixing and matching to get a good solenoid and a good motor.)
Non-Bosch rev limiting rotor: Started turning to dust after a couple thousand miles

What the hell is happening with Bosch lately? They used to be the solid gold standard....

As corporations look 'round at others, they watch the "new standards" take hold. Like lemmings going over the Whogivesadamn Cliff, they happily appropriate the cheap bastards' tricks and then innocently declare, "it is a competitive marketplace, we had to drop our quality control and pensions or we wouldn't survive."

Meanwhile the Corporate America Party is well-pleased, the Dow has recovered to its pre-2001 level. Yet, the music is too loud for them to hear the growing discontent amongst the lower 40% where the most-recent stats show that fundamentals are deteriorating. Oops. Off to the Free Speech forum.
Colin

The white electrical ign sw part from BD & BH are junk. I found a good nos german one & a good used one in a bone yard. The used one is better than the replacements I bought!
Best regards,
John

Brazilian aftermarket taillight housings.

bulb housings are worthless. bulbs just don't seat properly and the housing doesn't seal to the body as well as it could.

Bus Depot "OEM Quality" Spark Plug Wires. Could feel the charge when I rub my arm over the wire.
I had suspected it was misfiring. Tested it a couple of times and got a little shock every time. Replaced with the cut yourself Accel wires from Kragen.

The BD hot start relay....I have replace 3 relays in the year that I have had the thing

If you've burned up three Bosch relays in a year I have to wonder if you had another issue. The Bosch relay we sell is the one that Bosch themselves specifically recommend for this application. Every once in a while I hear of one failing, but three in a year is highly unusual.

Bus Depot made in India Side Markers & Lights. Horrible fit and they fade within a few months.

Gotta agree with you there. I wouldn't say "horrible" but they're no Hella's either. Unfortunately Hella discontinued the originals a number of years ago, so the Indian ones are the only ones still manufactured. Side marker lights aren't even found on many Buses built for sale outside of the U.S. (they were a D.O.T. requirement in the U.S. long before they were required elsewhere), so there isn't enough global demand to interest anyone else in tooling up for them.

busdepot wrote:

Bus Depot made in India Side Markers & Lights. Horrible fit and they fade within a few months.

Gotta agree with you there. I wouldn't say "horrible" but they're no Hella's either. Indian ones are the only ones still manufactured.
there isn't enough global demand to interest anyone else in tooling up for them.

Ron,
Sometimes it takes a little Republican Hard-Sell. These cars deserve and demand quality. The manufacturers must be advised that the interest-in and the prices-of these cars is on the rise. I guarantee you that an argument can be made to the Indian manufacturer to only double the cost of making these side reflectors so they don't fade, and they can easily get away with tripling the price. They make more money per example. We get something that is not so laughably contemptible. They get a reputation for trying to meet quality standards, we get parts that do not fade flat like Ford headlamp covers. You become a vendor who is known for communicating back up into the production chain, we push your efforts far and wide as we continually search for Those Who Give A Damn.
Colin

Easier said than done. What many Bus owners sometimes fails to realize is that in the automotive world we're a fly on an elephant's ass. A lens manufacturer can sell 20,000 Honda lenses to every one Bus lens.

We're not talking two or three times the price here. A product like this is so uninteresting to the manufacturer that we're more likely talking ten times the price. Not because the per-piece price is ten times higher, but because in order to make it worth their while to do special production, a supplier would want an order for thousands and thousands of lenses. Plus we're talking four variations here - black housing with red lens, black housing with orange lens, silver housing with red lens, silver housing with orange lens. At a high price, people would want the exact replacement. All those lenses are nothing for a Honda or Toyota lens that fits hundreds of thousands of vehicles now on the road, but for the Bus market it's maybe a 10-15 year supply. If I bought a 10-15 year supply of every part like this, and then waited a decade to recoup my investment, I'd be bankrupt next month. And if I tried to raise the price to recoup that investment in a year, the lens could be $70 instead of $7. Nobody would pay that. The Indian made lenses do fit in my experience, and I've found them to to go a lot longer than 3 months before they start to fade badly. I've had them on my Buses for a year or two before I started thinking they needed replacement. You might be an exception, but most Bus owners simply wouldn't pay ten times the price for a "ten year supply" of lenses, versus paying $7 every year or two until they sold their Bus. (Besides, even the Hellas didn't tend to last 10 years before starting to age.) I'm giving roundabouts here, not exact numbers, but you get the idea.

If the part fit European spec Buses I could go in on it with a European retailer and by splitting it we could make it work. I do that all the time. For example, I now have plastic '72-79 ignition timing scales again, for $19, after 2 years of unavailability. But that's a globally demanded part that is critical to the reliability of your engine, and was totally unavailable for two years; something had to be done. By comparison, side marker lenses are a U.S. only part which is available cheap already, even if you may have to replace it every couple of years.

You have to pick your battles.

Colorado doesn't do safety inspections. I'm considering just filling the holes and doing away with them altogether.

Then I think of the STUPID idiots driving around in the snow and think maybe I should paint the whole darn bus in reflective paint...