Lady Antebellum's Bus Catchs Fire

[Gil_J]

From Lady Antebellum's Facebook Page this morning:

"Hey guys, we had a crazy morning on the way to Dallas today. Our bus tire caught on fire and we had to evacuate very quickly. EVERYONE IS SAFE AND SOUND. It was me, my husband, our tour manager, and driver. Thanking God for our safety and the safety of all of those who helped put this fire out and keep us safe. Love you all!!!! ~hillary"

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Here's a video (Click Here) (http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Bus-Fire-Blocks-I-30-in-Rowlett-Police-300079591.html?hc_location=ufi)

[travelite]

There's more over here (http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/tour-bus-catches-fire-on-1-30-near-dalrock-road-officials-say.html/). Gil, are you guessing a seized or corroded brake caliper sliding pin? It pays to get out once in a while and shoot your wheel assemblies with an IR thermometer.

[Joe Camper]

Good thread to address potential fire hazards so id like to give u my 2 cents. We have many. 23,260 know what that number is? The hours on the bus generator im currently working on. an 01 chassis originally bought as a shell turned into a entertainer and then used in their own fleet thru 500,000 miles when we bought it. Senators coaches never missed a service interval and documented every last screw ever turned on it and nowhere in the service records does it have any generator replacement. That's gotto be some kind of a record. I cant remember ever seeing a gen with over 10,000 or 12,000. R there any others out there that can affirm other gens going this distance this is an amazing amount of hrs to me.Anyway back to fires lots happen in the gen bay I will start here. During a debrief following a spring shakedown one of the boys just kinda mentions in passing oh ya he says that gen aint long for this world its still shuts down when it gets hot outside overheats. Oh no Tony responds ya just gotta open the door on it. I ask how long has this been happening? easily a year or more all last summer.............................. good grief So I get looking first thing I see is the bottom half of the face of the gen radiator is very dirty, blocked with cottonwood seed deteriorating sound insulation and oil. Looked like a very dirty dryer lint screen. So next notable fire hazard is a dirty gen bay. even if pushing a gen thru lack of maintenance and even more so reason to keep that bay clean oil soaked deteriorating sound insulation is a potential fire hazard too so if u have lots of it get rid of it even if u do not have something to replace it with immediately it wont be that much louder but IMO the bus will be safer. keep leaking oil and fuel cleaned up after every use if there is any.How bout fire extinguishers everybody has those little ones and often many of them. We should all have 1 big one in a bay for chassis fire I think everyone should get 1.Now Im just guessin here. Pontificating about for discussion sake and pulling from first hand past experiences. There is 3 different things that most often create a fire. When U get your stuff hot enough burn if u r moving many times it does not burn as long as u can keep moving. Its not till u staft to smell something or worse the hub seizes and the tire locks up and blows that any one of these things finally become evident to u that u stop and POOF as soon as u do its burnin. I experienced this first hand with the rear most axle on a 13 axle Michigan train I was pulling. I was notified by a passing car my back brake hubs were " GLOWING RED" and they were. I stopped walked back to look they were cherry and right about then they started to flame up. I ran to the culprit air line shut off opened it correcting my mistake hooking jumped into the seat and got rolling again. The flames snuffed out and the stuff cooled of without the dragging brake. The rest of the ride in went without incident the inner seal did not even go bad it was like it never even happened and the entire drum was glowing cherry red.SO this long winded story makes tis point first any time u r rolling along and smell or see smoke get as many fire extinguishers in your hand s before u stop it may prevent a great deal of damage when u do the fire has not yet begun.Im gonna half this post up here for fear of losing it.

[Joe Camper]

Ok I moved to my phone.

The first of the three common hub fire causes the emergency brake or also refered to as the parking brake also called the maxi. Any responsable driver will never have this occure by simply doing a pre trip emergency air test.






Here is why a maxi leak is so dangerous. Often when they begin to leak they start very slight and often take 1000s of miles before a negligent driver not doing his pretrip can finally begin to here it or finally begin to feel the drag from the brake on that 1 hub. Well what if u add a big hill. Then add slightly too fast. U end up at the bottom with yer stuff on fire.

So do your pretrip. Start the bus block wheels release the brake air up till the air dryer sneezes and turnthe bus off with the brakes released. If u here any air loss or see any air pressure loss this is totally unacceptable a potential fire hazard in the making. Fix at the closest service center u can get too. If u follow this advice u will never have a brake fire with the maxi as the culprit.

[Joe Camper]

The second thing probably happens with frequency close to maxi failure in my past experiance and thats low level in the hub and again any responsible driver will never have this it is completly avoidable with a pretrip.

We have 6 hubs and they r hugely different. From about 06 and newer the oil is gone on the steer and tag for grease thats awsum check hub every 250000 miles. The older chassis need hub oil and the cavity is not big only holds a pint or so.

Again the failure and leak begin slowly usually. They can loose fluid from the front AND the back do not assume its good based on just looking at the front of the rims. Unless it has begun to weep out the holes of the rim at that point u r on borrowed time.

Do your pretrip. We have all this wheel jewelry cant just easily look that way. Ya gotta get down on 1 knee and look across under the bus at the backside of the tire on the other side for any signs of oil streaking on all the hubs. This also applies to the drive axles on all chassis although these hubs r lubricated with rear end lube and have a large well 5 gal thus greater room for error u only have a pint to start with on the steer an tag pre 06.

If u get on your knee so u can look across under the bus to the backside of the tires on the other side of the bus for oil streaking. Its either that or remove all the wheel chrome to look. Follow this advice u will never destroy a hub creating a fire hazard.

Those at home will cach it more obviously with it in the same spot all the time. This is a slow leak usually. So thats more dangerous for buses that r on the road and frequently moving around. If gone unchecked a leak could completly drain a pint in a few thousand miles . I urge every bus driver I know to do this.

[Joe Camper]

Travelite mentioned brake caliper yes probably not in a frequently used bus like entertainers but motorhomes used less a exposed pin can rust and stick easily not used frequently. The dust boots on the knore bremse disc brakes r prone to failure. Ive seen many dry rusted pins on motorhome chassis thas see much less frequently than the entertainer coaches. If u do stick one and need a caliper the replacement has been changed eliminating tbe rubber component that fails with such frequency on the initial design.

The original stuff there good definatly servicable indefinatly.. Do this. Insist when changing oil the tech release the parking brake and jiggle all the calipers to be sure they r free. Also inspect boots and when they r torn replace. 50 dollar rebuild kit should take 2 hr max for 1 hub.

I suppose bad tire pressure is going to have a percentage of fire in the trucking Industry than with this bunch. U gotta be pretty lame running a tire flat and flailing around till it burns but believe it or not it does happen..

Thats it. Hope that it helps.

[travelite]

Really great stuff Joe! Thanks!

[Gil_J]

Great information Joe! Pre use checks are obviously important.

[Joe Camper]

In a truck it is easier to catch the emergency brake leak very early when it is so slight but the driver still needs to have a good sence of the feel. U see always at least every now and then a truck gets empty and wthout a load its easier to feel the bad maxi just slightly beginning to drag the brake on that one hub. Say he did a pretrip and the leak did develop after he began driving. Almost no driver even the best will not feel it the first day unless super human or possibly if he got unloaded then he might feel it. He would for sure pick it up the following day on pretrip. Our buses never get empty like a truck so u gotta have a pretty keen sence of awareness to catch it with the bus. The leak will also be 40 ft back and harder to hear as early on like a truck where the driver sits right on top of 2 axles with maxis.

When a driver does not do the pretrip and his hearing does not pick it up first the preformance will get odd from behind the wheel . U will feel like u r bucking a crosswind but there aint one. A dragging brake from a leaxy maxi will feel like a fuel filter is starting to clog but the filters clean. U may get a sniff of brake lining a second or third time in short order. U may notice the compressor running a bit more frequently than it should if u r on a road that is real flat and straight and u know your not using the air.This is stuff that is all much easier picked up on with time and experiance. By the time it sinks in whats happining and the leak gets big enough could be hundreds if not thousands of miles and the pretrip will catch the failure the day it begins.

Chalk the wheels start the bus release the parking brake wait till the air dryer sneezes then turn the bus off with parking brakes released and listen and watch the gauges. NO AIR LOSS SHOULD BE EVIDENT NONE. If u do here or see something it needs to be less than 1 lb per minuite or u dont go u have a road service come to u.

We should all be doing this every time u drive it. That and checking the back sides of the tires for oil streaks always keeping good oil levels in the hubs. 2 big things easy to do. Its a good habbit and easy to get used to.

[Gil_J]

Here's another fire that happened a couple days ago. Similar to the other fire, it appears to have started near the drive axle.

I'm beginning to wonder if the H in H-3 stands for HOT :-)

No one was injured, so all is well.

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[travelite]

Word is that the Antebellum fire was caused by: "oil seal on the hub failed, and the bearing overheated and caught fire, mostly happens on trucks and buses that have the fancy hub caps that cover the hub seal, poor pre-trip on the driver's part", as reported on the TMZ site.

I had leaking stemco hub seals on my tag axle. When I bought my bus in Kamloops, BC and stopped for service at Vancouver the techs spotted it. They said Prevost went to a new style stemco hub seal. Here's a pic of the installed new stemco cover, note the larger red breathing button:

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[Joe Camper]

That photo is not the hub seal it is the hub cap. The seal can only be viewed by removing the cap removing the bearings removing the brake caliper and the hub itself. The seal is in the rear.

The photo does bring up another good topic. That particular hub cap can not be filled by removing the center cap like about every other manufacturer and design. It has a fill plug into the side of the cap. Trying to remove that red cap on the one in the photo will brake it. It would seem to me that if they stayed with someting more conventional and familure it would be a better choice of component.

[travelite]

Thanks Joe,

BTW, I do want to get together with you someday, it's just been a zoo lately. You're absolutely right, sorry for the confusion. My bus didn't require the hub seal, only the hub cap.

[Joe Camper]

That hubs got too much oil in it

[Gil_J]

There's not much that gets by Joe's eagle eyes. Unless that coach is sitting an extreme angle the hub is way over full. Between the 2 rings is where it should be.

[travelite]

Not any more. Thanks Joe!

[MIsheeTX]

From Lady Antebellum's Facebook Page this morning:

"Hey guys, we had a crazy morning on the way to Dallas today. Our bus tire caught on fire and we had to evacuate very quickly. EVERYONE IS SAFE AND SOUND. It was me, my husband, our tour manager, and driver. Thanking God for our safety and the safety of all of those who helped put this fire out and keep us safe. Love you all!!!! ~hillary"

http://forum.prevostownersgroup.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=13646&stc=1

Here's a video (Click Here) (http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Bus-Fire-Blocks-I-30-in-Rowlett-Police-300079591.html?hc_location=ufi)

"The bus was transporting bandmember Hillary Scott, her husband and her tour manager when it blew a tire, according to her post on social media."