It can be scary under the bus…

Want a free watch? Out in the prairie east of Colorado Springs there’s a junkyard bordered on several sides by old Mack transits. Underneath one of them I lost a waterproof self winding watch… it should still work.

My boss gave the old buses to the salvage yard to use as a windbreak, with the proviso that if we needed any parts off them, we could come back and take them.

And so one cold Fall afternoon I jacked one up to take off a bellow that we needed for our single operable Mack C45.

You had to approach from the outside, because patrolling inside the yard was a nasty Pit Bull guard dog. The chain that restrained him was wimpy.

I lifted the bus with a bottle jack perched on a piece of wood, and crawled under. As I unbolted the bellow, the dog noticed me, and began jerking at his chain, in an effort to join me under the bus. A bit nervous (REAL men can’t admit terror), I accidentally kicked the tottering jack. The bus fell, enclosing me in the tiny dark space underneath it.

This solved the dog problem, but the sun was setting, it was getting cold, and I was trapped under a bus. It took a bit of tunneling, but I made it out. Arriving back at the garage, I noticed the watch was missing.. apparently torn off my wrist during the tunneling operation.

You’d a thunk I’d learn, but less than a year later, in Green Cove Springs FL a rear suspension beam on a 4104 broke, and the axle headed for the shoulder, while the bus went straight. My buddy John and I returned to the bus, new part in hand, to fix it.

We plopped a bottle jack on a couple of pieces of wood (see a pattern here?), jacked that jewel up, and John headed out to get some coffee. While he was gone, I crawled underneath to start repairs, and managed to… kick the jack over. When he returned with coffee, John found me trapped beneath the bus.

At least this time I did ONE thing right… someone knew where I was (or at least where to find the body). After an appropriate interval for verbal abuse, John freed me.

If you’re going under a bus (or part of a bus) be sure it’s secure. There isn’t enough time here (nor do I have sufficient brain cells) to go over all the methods of being certain a bus is going to stay up. If you’re ever going to work under one, even changing a tire… you want to have the right equipment, and think things through.

In addition to well maintained and properly placed jack-stands and lifts, a basic understanding of air suspension is important.

A few years ago an experienced bus guy died after wedging himself between the tag tire and body to work on something. The leveling valve assumed the coach’s body was bit high, bled out a little air. The gap between tire and body closed to the point where he was trapped and suffocated.

My buddy Mark used a bottle jack under the front compartment of a Scenicruiser. The goofy leveling valve thought the bus was a bit high, and exhausted air from the bellows. Mark had his head under the body when the jack punched a hole through the sheet metal, and the coach settled on his noggin.

No permanent injuries, but for years his nickname was Cowpie. Leveling valves are NOT your friends, and not every part of a coach is a “lifting point”.

If you’re going to work under a bus, imagine it as a giant vulture waiting to pounce. Think through everything that can go wrong, and try to avoid it. Remember that gravity, jacks and leveling valves are co-conspirators.

“The third time is the charm”, so after surviving two bussy assassination attempts, I’m VERY careful whenever I go under a coach. One thing I did right… was to be aware that there were open spots in the buses structure where I could be trapped (rather than squished). Talk about “sheltering in place”.

Years ago, at UMA’s Expo our slogan was “Above All Eagle”. A lift was going to raise and lower the Eagle demo in a regular cycle. It soared majestically up to 8 feet, the lifts’ hydraulic line ruptured, and it then dropped 2 inches onto the safety stops. We couldn’t get it down, and for the whole show, the only part of that coach our customers could see was bussy bottom.

Maintaining lifting equipment is good.

If you’ve been willing to read this far, you’ve earned the free watch… so if you’re near Colorado Springs and see a Pit Bull wearing a Timex… tell him I sent you.