Yeah, I love my benz, but this is the diesel I drove well before I got my benz. We have a TON of busses in our fleet including a 60 foot articulating bus. This is one of my fav's it's on B100 right now.
-Nate

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'82 240D, 4-speed, 617 turbo engine

What's that got for power?

I'm guessing either a DT-466 or a 6.9l/7.3l IDI...

My buddy in Boulder has a very similar bus (I guess thats boulder for you)! Its been painted white and blue, and most of the midsection of the bus was cut off just below the windows and raised a few feet so it has a full height ceiling inside. They did it up like a recycled materials RV with granite countertops, hardwood floors, etc. Its running on SVO right now, and doing great at around 10,000 miles on waste oil. Its a real top notch piece of rumbling salvage.

We drove it out to Burning Man and back, and she did great. I was amazed at how much power and stability it had on mountain roads coming over the passes. We were passing gasser buses left and right. In fact, when we got to the desert, we found a Winnebago that had broken down, and we towed them in. Amazingly, the bus would tow the winny at idle, and you could actually just get out of the bus and walk along side it at 4ish MPH while it drove itself along, towing a loaded RV like it was made out of styrofoam.

What kind of retarder does that have? Ours has an electromagnetic driveline retarder, very smooth and controlled. Indispensable on mountain roads!

Burning Man had a wealth of nice buses, a few good articulated buses, a SWEET double decker (from london, right hand drive even), nice crowns, etc. At the end of the week we were even given 40 gallons of veggie oil by a group using it to power their diesel generators who didn't want to drag the leftover fuel back home.

Anyway, sorry for waxing nostalgic there, just seeing that imposing front-end I could almost hear the rumble and smell the distinctive smell of desert and diesel. Nice bus.

peace,
sam

Holy crap! I'm a student bus driver at the University of Toledo. www.transit.utoledo.edu.
Not a bad ride you have there... we have a fleet of Bluebird TC/2000s with Cummins 5.9s in them, 3 Bluebird All Americans with 8.2 Detroits, 2 Bluebird Q buses with Cummins 5.9s, a Bluebird Excel 102 with a 7.3 Cat in it, 2 Freightliner Sprinter Cutaways, 3 MetroTrans Eurotrans buses with 24V 5.9 Detroits in them, and we have 4 BlueBird Ultra LMBs with some sort of strange 4 cyl Detroit Diesel in them on order.
It's wierd to see other bus drivers of such a young age out on here
~D.J.~

yeah, I got my cdl when I was 19. I really like the transit busses, they drive like a dream. That bus is powered by an IH diesel, we have cummins, cat and detroit powered busses as well. I really want to get a bus for my own.

It has an electromagnetic retarder, they work great, we take these things all over the mountains.

I've seen that bus that's all cut up (I think) does the guy live off of table mesa?
-Nate

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'82 240D, 4-speed, 617 turbo engine

I got mine when I was 19, also. I have logged a little over 120,000 miles as of this past weekend, and am loving every minute of it.
I'm actually driving a charter right now. I work 5-7 and 9-11, and am getting paid for 8 hours. I have our Sprinter 2500 outside waiting on me... I can't help but drool at that 5 cyl marvel of a MB engine.
However, the damn flipkey just blew up in my hand. I flipped it open and it threw the key portion of the remote about 15 feet across this computer lab.
~D.J.~

Best part about driving busses, the mechanics are cool and like to talk diesel, they hook it up with oil and other fluids from the shop and instead of topping off the 100+ gallon tank one is potentially able to throw 2.5 gallons into the empty anti-gel jugs they have laying around the filling station and place them into ones car, also since I park in the spot where I get my bus, there's always a place to plug my car in.
-Nate

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'82 240D, 4-speed, 617 turbo engine