Yesterday, I went to the Chicago Auto Show(from Milwaukee). I rode on a brand new MCI J4500(charter) that only had 16000 miles.
While I have been on many J4500's before, the very pleasant surprise for me was that this one actually has the ALLISON B500.
Several operators around here have a bunch of ASTRONIC trannys in their J4500's and PREVOST H3-45's plus that VOLVO "crunch and jerk" model as well which started showing up back in the early to mid '00's. Nice to ride on a nice smooth shifting bus again. The driver said they were going back to ALLISON and obviously, many others are since MCI doesn't even offer ASTRONIC anymore if you check out their brochure.
I had a sneaky feeling that the ASTRONIC wouldn't stay popular back then. Some drivers like them but most prefer ALLISON.
As for the show itself, there were 3 buses in there. 2 BLUEBIRD ALL AMERICAN blood mobiles and 1963 GM NEW LOOK transit used by GOOSE ISLAND BEER company for their mobile "taps". I didn't take the camera but the bus served on the west coast someplace.
You can find it on TWITTER.
I drive new J4500s with the Volvo and Allison B500 5th generation (I think). Really nice and smooth, and preferred over other transmissions.
JC
Thank GAWD, Allison got the transmission fixed so it could turn slow.
The fleets had pretty much no economic choice, the fuel economy has moved lower and lower in the RPM band, via the multiple emissions hits, leaving the old Allison high and dry...
Busnuts will have to be very careful in the future that they don't unwittingly buy the wrong Allison for their coach...!
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Quote from: CrabbyMilton on February 18, 2018, 11:10:00 AM... Several operators around here have a bunch of ASTRONIC trannys in their J4500's and PREVOST H3-45's ...
I had never heard of an ASTRONIC transmission. But that made me think of the old "National Lampoon Vacation" where the kids are visiting cousins in Iowa. One says "What do you do here??? No video games??? You don't have Pac-Man, you don't have Space Invaders, you don't have Asteroids???" The farm boy says, "Well, my dad has those - says they bedevil him somethin' awful."
Allison has had slow turning World transmissions for many years already. In fact, my ancient V730 will upshift at 1600 dropping to 1100 on partial throttle-and that's with an 8V-71!
Freightliner offered the ZF transmission for awhile, until we found out they were basically not repairable. When Eaton came out with the UltraShift and Mercedes with their 12 spd version, cost differences saw the ZF disappear from the option list. Smoothness wise and performance wise, you can't beat the Allison. Good Luck, TomC
The new Petes and Kw's are using the Allison TC 10 with 10 speeds and 2 reverse gears (no clutch),testing is going on with the TC10 for buses there are a couple of MCI J4500's here running the TC10 Allison.
It is a different world now with the B500 you could never run a high rear gear with the B500,4:56:1 down to 4:20:1 was about the best or the B500 had a lubrication problem and died a early death the B500 was a bus only transmission.
Times have changed now the new generation of Allison controls the engine it tells the engine what it wants
Same old story that you'd think they would make sure a product is right before they release it to avoid p--ing off customers. Makes one wonder what the test engineering people do all day in many companies but that's just me.
I did notice that the engine(CUMMINS ISX) was running much slower and the tranny shifted much earlier so they probably did improve the programming. An engine can have gobs of torque but what good does that do without proper gearing?
I wonder when that new TC-10 will show up as an RPO on buses.