If my wife was not disabled and unable to climb into a semi, I would have bypassed a bus and bought a semi truck and a 5th wheel toy hauler. Even a low powered semi tractor 400 hp with a jake and a 10 speed would be the ticket for me. Pre- emissions is the ticket.
Holy smokes... Impressive. Thanks so much for the info. I sincerely appreciate it. I know well what I need for these big rocky hills and am hoping find a pre-emissions bus fully equipped, but pickings are slim. Adding a retarder seems to be the next best thing and goodness do I wish I had the skills and tools to do it myself! Kudos to you kind sir.
I did all of the work myself. The drive line is the same length with either transmission. No changes there. But the end yoke was different and I had to get the balancer re machined to fit. I also had to install a oil to water cooler just for the retarder. I upgraded the transmission cooler too. I found them on ebay. One was new the other was clean used and was a bolt together cooler I could take apart and clean. About 600 dollars. The transmission was a rebuild-able core that I rebuilt myself. 1500 dollars with shipping. The transmission parts were about 600 dollars. Machine work and other stuff and oil, coolant, hydraulic hose, fittings and band aids for skinned knuckles 4500 dollars?? But it is nice! There is a feeling of safety I get coming off grades I never had before. I have logged over 1 million miles in semi trucks and I do know what it takes to be safe in the mountains. I learned to drive in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.
Greetings. I was going through a thread on exhaust brakes and read this that you wrote:
"Check with Cummins. Some engines require stiffer valve springs to work properly (mine was one of them) and must have a way to lock the converter. In the end I decided to just replace the Allison with a retarder model."
I'm looking to do add a retarder to a rear engine bluebird with a cummins 5.9 and an Allison mt643 by replacing the transmission with an Allison mtB643.
Curious if you don't mind me asking what you swapped around...??? Did you add a whole new cooling system to the transmission? Any info you could provide, including ballpark cost and where you got it done,. would be greatly appreciated!
I live in southern NM, and the local DMV satellite office can't tell me what I need to do in order to make a "legal" conversion here and have spent way too much time on hold waiting for a MVD rep to answer in Santa Fe. I did a conversion in Alaska, but had to sell it when I moved from there almost a year ago. Finally picked up a new project, but running into issues with the title/registration process. Since you are still in NM, and drive a nice looking skoolie, thought I would ask if you did your title conversion in this state or if you did it elsewhere, then transferred the title? Any help would be greatly appreciated!