Trying to move an old bus with air brakes

Trying to move an old bus with air brakes

My friend Ed has an old School bus that he uses mostly as a mobile storage shed. However it has not been very mobile for the last couple of years due to a problem with its Holley carburetor.

Last fall we pulled the carburetor and over the winter he rebuilt it. I put it back in place yester day. We expected the bus to start right up and he was going to use it to move and store some furniture. Well as many adventures in repairing old autos go, things did not go quite according to plan.

The carburetor was easy to install and hook back up. The fuel line was no where to be found so we made a run to the hardware store for some copper line and a fitting. Ed showed me how to use his flaring tool to make the proper flare to fit the inlet of the Holley.

We rigged a temporary fuel supply with a rubber hose and a gas can. He hit the starter switch and nothing happened. The battery voltage just went down. I moved my Jeep in position and hooked up the jumper cables. Still, the starter would not turn the engine.

So we added the battery form his tractor to the mix. There was very little voltage sag when all three batteries were in parallel but still no rotation of the starter.

We tried turning the engine over with a socket on the crank but the nut just turned without turning the engine. We then decided to try to rock the bus with it in gear.

The trouble was, the bus has air brakes. You can’t move it without having air pressure. The compressor is driven by the engine, so with out the engine running there is no air to release the brakes.

We finally figured out how to rig and air line and a small compressor to air up the air tanks. This procedure however involved lying under the bus while holding the air chuck on the filler valve.

We finally got the brakes to release, but the bus was pretty stuck in the dirt. It took quite a bit of tugging with my Jeep and pushing with his tractor to get it to move. However, we did finally get it to move. I pulled it up the hill with the Jeep.

The idea was to let it roll down the hill and pop the clutch to get the engine to turn over. Well all the time spent towing and working the brakes had used up all the air. So we had to run cords and hose up the hill and refill the air tanks for the run down.

We finally go the bus to roll free, but we were still not able to get the engine to rotate. We knew by then that we would need to pull the spark plugs and lubricate the cylinders to get it to go. We were once again out of air and energy. We used the tractor to get the bus out of the driveway and called it quits for the day.
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