Originally Posted by
Denny
I think that mileage and age must make a difference on the bushings that are being discussed. Let's face it, we will never put 75, 000 miles a year on our busses as Russell Coach does or any other transportation company. We will never see 400,000 miles on our busses when used as we do. There are too many incidents about bushing/A arm replacements on POG for it to be a fluke or a Prevost ripoff. When I had my bus at Prevost NJ, they tried to replace the lower ball joints since they were out of stock of the complete A arm. They could not remove them to replace. The covers had deteriated and water was getting in rusting everything. They could have been soaked in penetrating oil and pressed out eventually but it was less costly to replace the whole arm assembly than go thru this process. I had some bushing that came out in pieces when the arms were removed. The dog bones did not have any bushing in them in two places.
I was there to watch the techs work and saw what was bad and what needed to be replaced. All of this took place on a 10 year old bus with less than 100,000 miles on it. Many parts on our busses can wear out from use or from lack of use and on our coaches I feel it is from lack of use. This is a problem on IFS front ends rather than the straight axle suspension. Since there are a lot more bushing on the IFS than on the straight axle, we notice the problem more. Also, the IFS busess that are having this problem are hitting the 10 to 12 years old bracket. Does Russell Coach have any units that are this age with under 150,000 miles on them? I am not doubting or questioning what Rob said nor am I trying to reflect any negativism on him. His use of a bus is totally different than ours. We are Not comparing apples to apples when comparing ours to an over the road bus.