I rechecked the throttle and aneroid tubes as suggested and everything is in position and the throttle goes to the stop. This helped gain some Horse Power back then. I ended up boring and retapping for the cap screws and reposition the throttle linkage. This led to some time spent around the pump and I did find that the throttle linkage was installed wrong. The left over studs were in the top of the fuel pump where the aneroid limiter is on the top of the pump.
When I first started at the school here the bus was not running and I found that the fuel shut off had broken cap screws. I also found a few of them that had bad turbos.
The springs would wear out and you couldn't get full throtle, a valve adjustment would help too. The most common problem with the 5.9's i had was the throttle lever on the side of the injection pump. My former employer had a fleet of 50 Thomas Cummins powered. I don't have the VIN numbers, so I don't know for sure. One other thing that I should add, I worked for the AmTran distributor, so it is possible that the owner got very early models. I had ordered the 170s in May of 1997, but delivery was not scheduled until August.
Now that I think back, they were part of the "140" series of numbers, we bought two more blocks with the 150 and 160s, the 160 levels were delivered and in-serviced before I left that firm in June of 1997, so the REs HAD to have been delivered in Jan of 1995, the 150s were Aug 1995 and the 160s were Aug 1996. I do know two things for sure, we got two of the first 20 built for delivery, and we got them in January. Well we got ours in January of 1995 as I recall, but that was well over 10 years ago, so my memory might not be 100% on that. Also, ModMech, the AmTran RE wasn't available until '96.īuses are not a way of life, they are life The AT545 has no lockup on the torque converter, which is part of why then run warm. If you want customer service, you NEED an International! Is the aneroid signal tube sealing properly, I have found MANY that are loose and leaking preventing the engine from reaching full power. That's not very much for that weight of bus, but our '94/5 AmTran REs had a similar rating with the T444E and did just fine. They were available to 230HP+, but given this unit has the AT545 I doubt it makes more than 210 HP and 650 lb-ft of Tq. With the Engine and transmission configuration my thought has been the bus is under powered for the size of carcass that it has to push. The latest work I have done is changed the transmission fluid to a para-synthetic fluid which dropped the temp 100 degrees and improved lock up and I changed the trans modulator which greatly improved kick down when climbing a hill. I was wondering if I should accept that also as I don't know how the bus would perform when new. The bus was purchased from a public school district by the decision of my predecessor and everyone has basically accepted the bus as being slow and gutless.
I started working for a private school just under two years ago as their mechanic and when I arrived this Thomas was not running. I was wondering if anyone has had experience with an older Thomas Safe T Liner with a Cummins 5.9 and an Allison AT545 transmission just being gutless.