We were a Traveling Time Warp. The company I worked for had bought the entire fleet of a transit company in South Carolina, and we were traveling northward toward our facility in New Jersey.
Just then, fifteen ancient GM “flat-bottom” transits sporting 6-71 Detroit Diesels and 2-speed automatics roared up I-95 at “flank speed”, occasionally exceeding 50 MPH on long downgrades.
Desperate for drivers (otherwise, yours truly would not have been on this jaunt), we had even drafted our lead mechanic for this winter trek.
About a hundred miles into the adventure, he smelled something strange and noticed liquid trickling down his leg from under the dash and running down the aisle. Simultaneously, he realized he was getting colder inside the bus.
Then his temperature gauge pegged, and his hot engine light came on. It turned out that the smell was antifreeze; the liquid he saw in the aisle was from a leaking heater core. The coolant that his engine needed to keep running was instead puddled on the floor.
Pretty quickly, the venerable Detroit Diesel engine gave up the ghost, and a hissing white cloud of steam appeared. An astute driver would have noted the pungent smell of antifreeze and stopped to investigate its source before any damage was done. A clever mechanic would have known that losing cabin heat is a symptom of low coolant. Our guy was neither. The engine was fried, and we sold the bus for scrap on the spot.
You’re guessing our target here is cooling systems. Gotcha!
It seemed a good idea to discuss bus smells. Part of your training as a competent bus driver is the pre-trip inspection, and good drivers take the time to walk around their coaches at every stop, looking for puddles, parts falling off, or other harbingers of disaster. Frequently, the earliest hints of impending disasters are olfactory.
Most of us recognize the distinctive smell of overheated brakes. It’s remarkably similar to the cooked clutches of ye good old days. If you pick up that scent while driving or when stopped, and you haven’t been punishing your brakes, then something is wrong. A stuck caliper or some other nastiness that, if ignored, can lead to a fire.
If you notice a puddle under your parked coach, your bus could just be marking its territory as many old bus engines do, but more likely it’s hemorrhaging some precious bodily fluid. If it smells like water, it may just be AC condensate, but oil, power steering fluid, antifreeze, and DEF each have unique aromas. They ain’t Eau de Bus.
If you aren’t familiar with typical bus fluid smells, ask your shop folks to let you sniff around the garage. You’ll get an education and maybe some funny looks, too.
Don’t taste stuff, some is toxic, and none is delicious (don’t ask how I know).
Electrical problems often have a unique aroma. It’s hard to describe, but once experienced, it’s seared into your memory (pun intended).
In ye olden days, for a dense driver (like me), the first sign of a flat tire on a dual might be the distinctive scent of burning rubber. That’s because the vibration normally associated with a flat is sometimes disguised by rough road (or the desperate hope that it is anything BUT a flat). Modern tubeless tires make tire fires less likely, but the smell of burning rubber is never good. Gee, maybe it’s just a frying belt.
Sometimes odors originate outside your coach. The truck next to you has a flat, or bakes its brakes going down a steep hill. Your bathroom may need service, or you’re passing a sewage treatment plant (or both). The point is that, if you don’t know the source of an unusual smell, assume it’s your problem until you can be certain it’s from outside. Doing otherwise can get expensive really fast.
Some smells require immediate action, while others are less urgent. A pungent bathroom odor is a problem that can wait a bit. A flaming dual, not so much. Like cats, tire fires have nine lives. You want to kill them early and often. (fires, not cats)
In ye pre-A/C days an integral part of coach “climate control” was vents on the front of the coach. In the summer, you opened them for ram airflow; in the winter, you stuffed rags in them.
A convoy of Brills was rolling westward in close formation one night on the Kansas prairie when the leader hit a skunk. The unfortunate (and irritated) little stinker was tossed high in the air and landed “dead” center on the following bus’s wide-open vent. Several lessons were learned from this single event.
First, tailgating is bad. A bit further back, and Brill #2 would not have learned the second lesson; the fastest way to evacuate a bus is to squish a fresh skunk through its vent. Third, when a manufacturer installs a screen over an opening, don’t remove it. The distinction between inside and outside odors can be significant when skunks and ram air are involved.
Bottom line, know your bus and its normal smells. Spend some time inside a shop, and you will learn the smells of different liquids your bus requires. Gas smells different than diesel fuel, and gear oil has an even stronger odor. Coolant has a sweet smell, and you can taste it on your tongue if it is in the air. Propane smells like rotten eggs. If you smell rotten eggs, get out of your bus as fast as you can.
If you experience any of these smells while driving your bus, find the nearest place to pull over, shut it down immediately, get out, and determine where it is coming from. Doing so quickly can save you a lot of money in repairs. Only then can you determine whether to continue your trip or call a tow truck.
