Road Fix Stories

One Hose Leads To Another
by Mike Muller
It all started when we were getting ready for a bus weekend in Flint, MI, at Crossroad Village. I took my coach, a 1966 Flxliner, to the garage where I work. I wanted to change the oil and grease it, then wash and wax it. Just before I left, I fueled up. Two blocks away it stopped running. I got out and checked a few things, got back in and it started! I thought to myself, "This isn't good." I went back to the garage and decided to change the fuel filter. Everything else seemed okay, so I left. Again after two blocks it sputtered to a stop. By then I was very annoyed and it was very late, so I dropped the bus off at the garage and went home.
Early the next morning I went back to see if the situation had improved. I changed the fuel filter again and took the bus for a spin. No problems! I went home and picked up my wife, Jackie, and we took off from Holland, MI, heading east to Flint. We drove over three hours and the bus was purring like a kitten. About ten miles from the campground it suddenly went to sleep, but it would start again and idle. We limped into the campground and enjoyed our beautiful surroundings. I figured that tomorrow would be another day.
So we spent the day at Crossroad Village and around late afternoon we started again for home. I had changed the fuel filter again and everything seemed fine. Well, 20 miles down the road the bus started to hiccup. Ten miles further I couldn't stand it anymore. I pulled into a farm implement store and bought some fittings. We coasted two more miles to a shady spot off the road. Thinking about what I needed, I pulled out a small garden hose and duct tape. I started putting the garden hose into the fitting but it wouldn't go. A light bulb came on in my head and I grabbed an adaptor hose from under the sink. I cut the small swivel off, cut the swivel off the garden hose, put the sink hose into the garden hose and gently clamped it until it was snug. I put the hose in the filter neck and taped and wired it to the side of the bus, making sure it was secure and getting the air out.
We made it home in record time. When I took the bus back to the garage to investigate what the problem was, I pulled the floor up and pulled out the suction tube...nothing wrong there. So I went further and found a check valve. It is used to hold the fuel in the lines by a little flapper. Bingo! A piece of rust had blocked the pipe. When the bus stopped running it would float back to the tank. I pulled the piece of rust out and the bus ran like a Swiss watch all the way home.

The hydraulic hose (blue hose) is connected to a sink hose, which is then connected to a garden hose.

Muller strings the connected hoses along the side of his bus.

Smokin’ on the Road
by Michael Kadletz
I left Long Beach with a full tank of fuel. The oil was fine and all systems were go! The first 150 miles were great, and I was ready to cover some blacktop. I had just made the turn off in Barstow, CA from Interstate 15 (heading for Laughlin) to Interstate 40 when I past the sign that said “Next services 105 miles.” Boy, I thought to myself, I would hate to breakdown on this stretch of road. Well, fifty miles onto this highway, my luck changed. I noticed huge amounts of smoke billowing out the rear of the bus. I checked my gauges, good oil pressure, good water temperature. What’s going on? I pulled over, left the bus running and walked to the rear of the coach. By this time, two truck drivers had pulled over, and one of them was running toward me with a fire extinguisher, ready to spray. I opened the tailgate, and all that could be seen was a huge cloud of smoke. I then ran forward and shut off the engine. Still smoke was billowing. Not from the exhaust, but from the entire engine area, yet there was no fire. After a few minutes, the smoke started thinning and I could see my Detroit Diesel. It was cleaner than normal, which in itself was a shock. Then I started looking closer, and spotted my problem. Someone had installed a 3/8” copper fuel line with a flare fitting running from my fuel pump to the fuel filters. It had cracked at the flare fitting coming out of the fuel pump. Fuel was being sprayed all over my engine compartment at 40 PSI from the fuel pump, and was being aided by the air movement of the fan blade. Fuel was everywhere. Dripping from my tailgate, running on the ground and of course, all over my exhaust system which was creating the smoke. The only nice thing to see was how clean the fuel made my engine appear!
Well, there I sat, 50 miles from nowhere, outside of a cell phone area, no copper tube, and no flaring tool. What to do? While I was thinking about my dilemma, I looked over the bus to see what I might be able to use to make something work. Fifteen minutes later it came to me! The propane line coming off the 3-way refrigerator has 3/8” copper tube with a flared end. I checked to make sure my propane was off, then removed the line from the refrigerator, and broke off the tube six inches down from the flair. In order to get the fitting off the fuel pump, I had to remove the water hose from the water pump to the radiator. Thus, I lost half the water in the system, but I was able to replace the old cracked copper line with the one I borrowed off the refrigerator. I used my needle nose pliers to break off the old fuel line, and then used the same pliers to make the holes somewhat round again. Now I needed to connect the new six-inch copper line together to the longer one leading to the fuel filters. To accomplish this, I went to my water tanks and found by breather tube to be 1/2 ID clear plastic hose. I cut four inches off the top, borrowed four hose clamps from other hoses off the water system, slid the hose and clamps over the two copper tubes, and tightened down the clamps. Because the hose was 1/2” ID, there was a lot of loose tube to be dealt with. I tightened it as tight as I could, and placed two clamps on each end of the hose. It worked! Although it still leaked a little bit from the large tube going down to the smaller copper tube size, it held enough to get me to Laughlin, where I made the proper repair.
And about the water I lost from the radiator. The coach I was in had an outside shower plumbed from the fresh water tank to the back of the bus where the recessed shower hose and fixture were installed. I simply placed the showerhead into the radiator fill and turned on the shower. In minutes, the radiator was full again and I was back on the road.
Looking back to what caused the problem to begin with was two-fold. First the fuel line should have been made out of more flexible hose. But the problem was created mainly by my shifting the transmission. The shifter was hanging up between second and third gear. When I manually shifted into third, the engine would jump hard and kick the bus into third gear. This jumping of the engine, I believe, is what cracked the line.

Out of Fuel
by Bruce D. “Ole” Ohlson
I had been working for the Green Tortoise, a bus-based adventure travel organization, for almost a year when I was assigned to drive the weekly schedule between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was a transportation run rather than one of the Tortoise’s famous adventure trips. We went south on Friday night and returned north on Sunday night. This was my second or third L.A. run. John, my co-driver, was newly hired and had never been on the run. While in LA, we were faced with finding something to do for the whole weekend. Not to worry. We decided to go visit my brother who lived in Pomona, rather than follow company policy and park the bus at Venice Beach. Once there, we collected him and his kids and went out to the flea market. On our way back to Venice Beach on Sunday, we stopped at a few yard sales. All in all, about 150 extra miles rolled under the tires.
Our bus for the trip was a GM PD 4106. The model was built between 1961 and 1965; this one was a 1962. It came stock with a powerful 71-series Detroit Diesel V-8, a 140-gallon fuel tank, and no fuel gauge. It never occurred to me that those few extra miles would consume enough fuel to jeopardize our making it to King City, our scheduled refueling stop, but that’s just what happened.
John was behind the wheel as we climbed through the Gaviota Tunnel on Highway 101. Just as we entered the tunnel, the bus began hesitating, and losing power. He knew what was happening, but he kept the hammer down until we were safely out of the tunnel, and he found a reasonably safe place to pull over. In addition to the fuel tank being out of fuel, we had run the engine out of fuel, too, and lost the prime.
The Detroit Diesel engine is not self-priming. When run out of fuel, it must be manually primed before it will start and run. The manufacturer recommends, of course, that you never run it out of fuel. If you do, they also recommend that you add a minimum of 10 gallons of fuel to the tank before priming the engine and starting it. Because of that recommendation, each Green Tortoise carried as standard equipment two 5-gallon Jerry cans. Fortunately, both were full of fuel that night. Unfortunately, I did not have a priming pump. We had a big box of spare parts in one of the bus luggage bays, and I had a big box of tools with me including a handful of brass fittings and several feet of automobile gas line, but no priming pump. It was on my list of tools to buy; I just hadn’t gotten around to purchasing one yet. I hate it when that happens.
We poured most of fuel into the tank and cranked the engine for a while. Neither of us figured it would start, but we crossed our fingers and gave it a go. Nothing.
“Now it’s time to seriously open the second drawer of the tool box,” John quipped. We unscrewed the spin-on fuel filters and looked in. Each was almost empty. We filled them with fuel, reinstalled them, and cranked the engine for a while. Nothing.
The problem, of course, was that the fuel lines and the passages in the heads were empty, too. We pulled the fuel filters again. The secondary was only half full, so we topped it up. For some reason, the primary was still mostly full. John had a brilliant idea. “Let’ pull the fuel lines, fill them with fuel, and reinstall them.” I readily agreed; I did not want to call a service truck. We didn’t have a funnel, so we used the coffeepot to pour the fuel. Since it was my fault that we ran out of fuel, I willingly got dirty. I disconnected the upper end of each flexible line and dumped in some fuel. That engine compartment was cramped. I spilled as much fuel as I got into the lines. John was supportive but was only half teasing me when he said, “This fiasco is going to cost both of us our jobs.” When I was done, we crossed our fingers and cranked the engine for a while. Nothing.
“We’ve got to force some fuel into the heads to drive the air out,” I said. I recalled that at one of the bull sessions around the kitchen table at Tortoise Towers, one of the other drivers had speculated that one should be able to force fuel into the heads by blowing into the hole where you connect the priming pump. “The air you push in will displace the fuel in the secondary fuel filter and push it into the heads and fill the injectors,” he had claimed. “Just don’t blow so long that you empty out the secondary,” was his caveat.
I removed the 1/8-inch pipe plug in the casting to which the secondary filter was screwed and gave it a try. I wrapped my lips around that hole and blew—hard and long. He had claimed that it would work, if your lungs were strong enough. It turned out that my lungs weren’t strong enough. Eventually I gave up. John declined to try. He did, however, volunteer to crank the engine while I had my mouth over the hole. I rejected his kind offer of assistance.
Later, around the kitchen table again, a different mechanic said this tactic had failed because I had left the restriction fitting plumbed into the system. “You should have disconnected the return line where it went into the firewall and unscrewed the restriction fitting,” he said. “Then it should have worked.”
“The muscles of the human rib cage can only put out a couple of inches of water column of pressure,” John mused, thinking out loud. “And we need a couple of pounds. How can we get that?”
I was getting discouraged. We’d already wasted over an hour. Maybe I’d have to call a service truck after all. I walked a ways up the road in front of the bus to take a little break and think over the situation. A one-gallon antifreeze jug was lying on the shoulder. I kicked it once, and then stood on it when I walked up to where it had skidded. “That’s it!” I said. “We can fill this jug with fuel, plumb it into the fitting where we are supposed to connect the priming pump, and squeeze.” I raced back to the rear of the bus. John wasn’t convinced, but I talked him into trying. “If we try this and it doesn’t work, will we be any worse off?”
With the awl on John’s Swiss Army Knife, we laboriously drilled a hole in the cap of the antifreeze bottle and then enlarged it with a rattail file. We screwed one of my small ‘hose barb to pipe threads’ fittings into this hole. I cut a gasket from a piece of inner tube, liberally spread Permatex on both sides of it, and pressed it into the cap. I stuffed in a couple of flat washers to take up the slack, then cross-threaded a nut onto the pipe threads to pull the fitting tightly into the cap and make a seal.
“All we have to do now is fill the antifreeze bottle with fuel, plumb it to the priming fitting, and squeeze the bottle,” I said.
John was dubious. “How are we going to squeeze that bottle holding it over our heads?” he wanted to know. “Our hands aren’t strong enough, and the hose isn’t long enough for us to be able to put the bottle on the engine compartment door and stand on it.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Besides, if we stood on the engine compartment door, we’d probably break it off. What we need is a big C-clamp. Or a gigantic pair of pliers.”
John walked off into the underbrush and came back with a couple of three-foot-long tree branches. We made the pliers by wiring the branches together. First, we tried the classic pliers-configuration with the joint in the middle, but found it more successful to wire the tips of the sticks together like a wishbone and squeeze with the bottle in the middle.
The contraption worked! We topped-up of the filters and then spent 15 minutes “pumping” our remaining priming fuel into the engine. It started right up. YES!
We were over three hours late getting into San Francisco. I had rehearsed my explanation and was ready to take full responsibility for what had occurred, but neither of us was disciplined.Oh, My Aching Leg!
by Pat O’Conner, Belding, MI
After a few months of driving my 4106, 4-speed converted bus, holding the clutch in at stops proved to be pretty painful on my left leg. To cure this problem I installed a 1-1/2 inch air cylinder in the compartment below the driver’s feet. It has a six inch stroke, and takes a minimum of 90 P.S.I. to disengage the clutch. Then I welded a piece of 3/8 flat stock onto the clutch lever which is connected to a clevise on the cylinder rod end. The bottom has a four bolt foot that the cylinder can swivel on. This is a two way cylinder that is actually used as a one way cylinder. The shaft port is used as the intake port. The bottom port is just left open for the air to exhaust. The clutch return springs pulls the cylinder back open.
I engaged the cylinder with a 12 volt solenoid. I used the one from my fast idle which I no longer was using, or you can purchase a new one. Air supply is taken from the air tank in the same compartment as the cylinder.
Since the clutch is directly related to shifting, I mounted a two-speed axle switch on the shifter. Although this will completely disengage the clutch I would not recommend leaving the transmission in gear and leaving the driver’s seat with the engine running.
The Cylinder and Solenoid can be purchased at Grainger for less than $90. You can use any switch you like. Here’s to your left leg!

Bus At 7,000 Feet & No Brakes—Almost
by John Hollingsworth
I was in my bus, a 1986 Neoplan Metroliner AN340, on my way from a Fourth of July outing and just about to roll over the 7,000-foot Donner Pass on Highway 80 returning from Nevada to Fowler, California. My air pressure had been acting a little weird during the trip, slow to charge up, but holding when running.
Pushing west through Reno, Nevada, I spied a TA truck stop ahead. I took about 10 minutes to fuel up 50 gallons. After paying, I walked back to the bus, slid into the driver’s seat and reached out with my left hand to hit the starter button. With a look of horror I saw my air pressure gauge out of the corner of my eye. The gauge read ZERO.
I had never seen the red and white pointers on that side of the round air gauge since I bought the bus. The bus is 40 feet long and has a Detroit Diesel 6V92TA connected to an Allison 740 automatic transmission. I pressed the silver start button. The engine fired right up, but as I anxiously studied the air pressure gauge, I could see that the air pressure wasn’t really building. I tried fast idle and pressed down the throttle with my right foot. These didn’t help at all.
Finally, the air came up. I looked at the gauge. Maybe I could just keep on going until I got home; then I could check out the bus in my own driveway. I looked over at my 87-year-old mother sitting in the second best seat in the bus, the front passenger seat. I thought about the 7,000-foot downhill drop up ahead. I was wondering (just in case, in the extremely unlikely condition that it might be necessary) if the spring brakes, those emergency brakes that come on automatically when air drops below 60 psi (on the drive axle only!) could really stop a 30,000 pound downhill rolling bus if it should lose air pressure and have no brakes whatsoever. Other than catching fire, I thought, probably not. I turned my head and looked straight at my mother. Then I pressed the transmission “drive” button and inched the bus out of the fuel bay.
Fifteen feet out of the fuel bay, I stopped the bus and thought about the guys on the Internet bus boards and all their questions, opinions, replies, arguments, counter arguments and philosophies I had read over the last two years. I began to think, I have a responsibility to my passenger, the others on the road, and to the reputation of my fellow bus nuts. I rolled the bus 15 more feet into the TA service bay line.
I walked over to the mechanic. I said, “I have a problem with my bus.” He replied dryly, “We don’t work on buses here.” I’m not sure how to exactly describe how I felt, but I do remember thinking that I would never stop at a TA truck stop ever again. Boy, did that thought turn out to be wrong! I took a long breath to regroup. “How about this,” I pleaded, “can you just take a look at it?” He replied, “Alright, but it will cost you $35 for me to look at it, and I probably can’t fix it.”
I waited for my turn behind a red 18-wheeler. While I was waiting, I decided that I would look for the problem myself. I walked to the rear of the bus and lifted the engine door. I poked my head in to the engine compartment. There was nothing unusual that I could see or hear. I went back to the driver’s seat and ran the air up. When I heard the air drier blow out a loud gasp of air, I knew that the air had hit 120 psi. I switched the engine to “off” and raced to the rear of the bus. Now, at 120 psi with the engine shut off, I could clearly hear a lot of air escaping. I poked my head in and located the leak. I could feel the air running out against my fingers although I could not see exactly where it was coming from. I went to my kitchen and started rummaging through the cabinets. I cut a piece of pink plastic off the end of a bread wrapper. I returned to the rear of the bus and tied the pink plastic strip on the leaking air fitting.
A few minutes later the truck in front of me pulled out. The mechanic motioned me to pull up over the pit. I yelled for him to come to the engine and I would show him the problem. He poked his head and body into the engine compartment where my pink plastic locator flag was, and he found the leak. He told me to shut off the engine and he would go to work. The problem was that I couldn’t get the engine to stop. I kept switching from “day run” to “stop,” but the engine refused to shut down. I was thinking that possibly the transmission was not in neutral, since the engine will only shut down if the transmission is in neutral. Eventually, I gave up trying to shut down the engine from the driver’s seat. I got out of the bus, walked to the rear and pulled on the fuel shut down lever on the top of the big silver 6V92 engine. The engine promptly stopped.
Armed with a collection of open-ended wrenches, the TA mechanic unbolted three airlines and disconnected two wires from an air solenoid. Two of the lines were connected to a “Y” that connected to a nipple screwed into the side of the solenoid. The cracked nipple broke off in his hand. He walked around the bus to his huge toolbox and pulled an extractor set out. It was the most impressive extractor set I had ever seen, not the el cheapo ones from the local auto store. A couple of twists and the broken pipe end was out.
Now that the problem and solution were evident, he wasn’t so sure he had the replacement fitting in stock. He explained how everyone was closed for the Fourth of July weekend. I thought how glad I was that at least TA was open. He disappeared in the back of the building and returned a few minutes later with a bright new brass fitting. A few more minutes and everything was re-installed on the back of the engine.
As he was finishing up, he turned to me and pointed to the bracket for the solenoid. “There are mounting holes, but they don’t seem to line up. This solenoid’s never been bolted in. It has been hanging by the hoses for a long time.” He added a couple of tie-wraps to hold it in place. I started thinking again about the bus boards: “Tie every thing down. Stranded vs. solid wire. Pretrip inspections.”
“Fire it up,” he said. I pressed the starter button, but nothing happened. This problem I remembered from once before. If the engine dies or is shut off with the Allison automatic transmission in gear, you can’t restart. This occurs because the transmission has a safety neutral switch that is wired in series with the starter to prevent starting if the transmission is not in neutral. This safety schema quickly becomes a real catch-22.
I pulled open the right rear cargo bay door and popped open my red toolbox. I dug around until I located a 12” yellow wire with alligator clips on each end. I had the mechanic attach one end to the start terminal on the starter solenoid. I told him to touch the other end to the big battery cable bolt at the master battery shut-off switch. This would bypass all the starting safety logic. (By the way, this was not the usual trick of shorting a screwdriver across the heavy starter terminals because the starter solenoid has quit. In this case, there was nothing wrong with the starter. We were providing 24 volts to the solenoid coil using a 12 inch piece of 16 gauge wire, originally from Radio Shack, to bypass the neutral safety switch.) I ran up to the driver’s compartment to be ready. The engine fired right up, and I pushed the electric shift button for neutral.
I looked with anticipation at the round air gauge in the center of the Neoplan’s dash. I could see the red and white needles lift off the zero mark. “We have pressure!” I turned to my left, to the control panel. I pressed the fourth rocker switch to engage high idle to speed the air buildup. Nothing happened. I watched the air gauge. After it climbed a little more, I felt the engine accelerate up to high idle as the high idle solenoid filled with newly compressed air.
I ran to the back of the bus. I looked at the mechanic’s blue shirt. Over his right pocked I read his name in white letters. It was Dave. I couldn’t believe how relieved and happy I was all at the same time.
I had one more request before I headed for the pass. “Dave,” I yelled, “I want you to check those hoses for air leaks.” He disappeared and came back with an amber spray bottle and started spraying the reconnected fittings with soapy water. “No leaks,” he reported. At this point, I had to recant all the bad things I had been thinking about the TA Truck stop not wanting to work on buses. Dave was getting me back on the road and over the Fourth of July weekend! I reached into my right rear pocket and pulled out my leather wallet. I opened it and pulled out a wrinkled twenty. “Dave, I said, “This is for you for helping me get back on the road.
A few minutes later I was in the TA office paying the bill: parts 59 cents, labor $35. It was the best money I ever spent.

Hollingsworth’s heart stopped when he looked down and saw zero air pressure while fueling at the TA truck stop.

Hollingsworth inspects his system for air leaks.

The red colored plastic identifies a bad air fitting.

After replacing the broken fitting, the air pressure builds up to 120 psi and holds.

Hammerin' It Home
My name is Jim and after five years of driving a class A diesel my dream of becoming a bus conversion owner finally came true. I have taken early retirement and didn’t want to wait to convert a bus so I bought one that was close enough to what we wanted in layout (wife) and in our price range (me). We found our conversion near Winnipeg, Canada, by searching Internet sites for over a year.
The big day arrived and we picked up our raised roof ‘78 Western Flyer 6V92TA V730 that was converted in 1998. The 50 mile test drive is o.k. so off we start for Oregon to get plates, visit my brother and his family and return to Michigan. While starting up in Oregon one day I only heard a click when I turned the key to start. Well, must be bad batteries, I guess. This shouldn’t be a problem since I have a genset. I start the genset and put the fast charger in “start” mode and hit the key—varoom. However, the voltmeter doesn’t show the batteries to be charging. I turn the key off and restart, okay, puzzling, if the batteries are okay. Then why did putting the charger in the fast charge start mode work? I call the previous owner and he hasn’t ever had that problem and doesn’t have any suggestions. We continue on our journey and a couple of stops later the same click is heard. Click, click, click, the batteries do not show to be low on voltmeter. I start the generator, charger to fast start mode, and varoom. I decide that the starter solenoid must be sticking or dragging with 12 volts but when I turn on the charger the battery voltage goes to about 14.5 volts and this increase must be enough to engage the starter solenoid. Great road fix, I’ll just replace the starter when we get home.
This trick works each time we have that problem except on the last day from home. We stop at a truck stop for diesel and can’t leave. Click, click, click. I wait about half an hour hoping that it will cool down and work but it still won’t engage. Fortunately for us the truck stop is not busy and no one needs this lane. The only thing left to do is call a—I really hate to say the “M” word, mechanic. Luckily, his shop is just behind the truck stop, smart huh, and he ambles over in about 45 minutes. He says, “I called all of my suppliers and can’t get you a starter for four days. You really should get rid of this antique and get something with an engine that’s still being made.” Long pause as I wait for my wife to start screaming but then he says, “I know that you want to get home, so I’ll get you started but don’t turn it off till you’re home. When I yell, turn the key.” He yelled and, “varoom.” What he did was hit the starter with a big rubber mallet when I turned the key. This jarred the solenoid enough to make it engage.
So there’s two ways to get started if your solenoid sticks, one with a genset and charger, and one with a big hammer.
We had many other adventures along the way on our first trip in the new, to us, bus conversion, but that’s another story. See you down the road.

Out of Fuel?
by Stan Chambers
It was a beautiful, late November afternoon, heading eastbound on toll road 80-90 just west of Angola, Indiana, in our 1981 MCI 9 conversion. My wife Karen and I were coming home from our daughter’s in south Texas when all of a sudden it felt like a wall of wind hit us, and the bus lost all power. I immediately checked the gauges; they all seemed to be okay, and just as suddenly as it quit, the power came back. Scratching my head I continued, when the power cut out again, this time lasting even longer before the power was restored. I knew I wasn’t out of fuel, even though my bus does not have a fuel gauge yet. I had dipped the day before and felt this was not the reason. I pulled over, telling Karen “it feels like we’re running out of fuel,” as the power completely shut down.
My years as a farmer have taught me that diesel engines are not fun to start if they run out of fuel. After dipping the fuel tank, I was stunned to find out that we were, in fact, out of fuel. How could I be so stupid? Obviously I should have dipped the fuel tank before we left Elkhart, Indiana, and not have assumed we could go two days without refueling.
After walking 300 yards to the nearest house some very nice people let me use their phon., There I was able to contact AAA road service. Back at the bus a toll road service truck stopped, telling Karen he would be back with five gallons of fuel. In the meantime, AAA arrives with fourteen gallons of fuel and along with the five gallons of fuel the toll road service provided, I tried to start it. The engine briefly started, but then quit, all the while I was running the batteries down. The AAA man thought he could jump a 24-volt system with his 12-volt truck, but wasn’t too sure. I asked if his truck had switching relays like some trucks do for a 24-volt start on a 12-volt system, but again he was not sure. I suggested we use the toll road service truck batteries as well and connect both trucks to my battery bank to get the needed 24 volts (one truck to each battery), but it still wouldn’t start.
Finally, I removed the fuel line after the fuel pump and before the secondary filter and sucked on the line until I got fuel. Then I quickly attached it and tried the starte. Nothing. I again removed the line and sucked on the fuel line, noticing that it takes a while to get fuel—thinking it should be right there—having just been drawing on it. I quickly reattached the line and tried again. Nothing. Again I repeated the process, but the fuel seemed like it was further away than it should have been. Suddenly it occured to me what was happening. I knew the filters were full and I was drawing the fuel up after the fuel pump so it would be primed. I figured the pump must be losing its prime while I was reattaching the fuel line. As I sucked up the fuel again I held my thumb over the end to hold the fuel, then had the service man press the rear start switch while I reattached the line. I hadn’t gotten the line all the way on, when the engine began to run. This procedure—to restart an engine after running out of fuel—should require only five minutes .
Needless to say, from now on I will dip the fuel tank before I go anywhere, and as planned, I will be installing a fuel gauge. If this should ever happen to you, hopefully this information will provide an easy way to restart your engine after running out of fuel.
Note: Because my bus was originally a GO Transit Bus on a single run from Oakville to Toronto (2-hour trip), it never required a fuel gauge. Happy bussin’

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