Skoolie Air Conditioning Units

[Wolfgearca65]

We purchased a 2005 Blue Bird Alll American EX Canadian Military bus. Its been exciting so far! It came with 2 serious installed air conditioning units. We will not be using them for our conversion so i thought id post here. this is 2 interior units as well as ALL the hoses and pipes and roof top unit. I wont separate this , its a package deal! Trans/Air P/N 2021295-08 S/N E040330 Rev C

[Dbacks2k4]

Christopher (cadillackid) may be interested or know someone who would be. He seems to be the go-to for all things AC!

[DeMac]

Originally Posted by Wolfgearca65

We purchased a 2005 Blue Bird Alll American EX Canadian Military bus. Its been exciting so far! It came with 2 serious installed air conditioning units. We will not be using them for our conversion so i thought id post here. this is 2 interior units as well as ALL the hoses and pipes and roof top unit. I wont separate this , its a package deal! Trans/Air P/N 2021295-08 S/N E040330 Rev C

Those TransAir systems are top shelf. Where are they (you, a/c & bus) located?

[Wolfgearca65]

They, us n bus are in Manitoba outside wpg, Canada. (Sorry forgot to put that on post )

[cadillackid]

those are definitely nice units.. I would totally go for those if i wasnt 3000 miles away from them..



Trans / AIR is still in business and anyone who takes those should also grab the VIN for the bus they were originally installed.. Trans /AIR keeps all the information on them and you can get parts for them.. the biggest pieces are the compressor brackets for whatever engine (im guessing Cat C7).. those should go with it as they are something hard to find these days...



I recently biought parts for the 22 year old Trans / AIR in my red bus.. they had the parts on the shelf...



I even have the equipment to recover and recycle the refrigerant from those.. but 3000 miles and having to cross a border with a bunch of A/C tools and tanks and yet tell customs im going for 'Vaca' might be an issue LOLOL...

[Wolfgearca65]

Ive dropped Trans/Air a note for info, value etc. No reply , yet. But yes, that is a long way to go i agree. Sadly, there are few skoolier's lol in Canada , unlike USA. BUT, onward and upward, WE are excited and proud to have ours underway!.

[cadillackid]

The value won’t be much… while the new systems cost and ram and a leg, used ones don’t bring much.. I’ve repurposed lots of them and most need some type of maintenance even if they were working when I pulled them.. most Skoolies give me the A/C units when I come to help them do the removal esp since I can handle the Freon and pull the electrical without disabling their bus..

Some people like me want road AC (travelling in Canada you prob need it a lot less than those of us that end up in Texas in July ).. so I repurpose systems and usually give them away myself except for items that need bought ..

That system you have there is prob about 12k including labor installed new in a bus..

[HamSkoolie]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

... most Skoolies give me the A/C units when I come to help them do the removal esp since I can handle the Freon...

Ummm don't you just take the little valve out of the fitting?
That's how we used to do it before all the silliness began.
And yes, I've been properly indoctrinated since then

Originally Posted by cadillackid

... and pull the electrical without disabling their bus..

Now that's probably worth a lot to a lot of folks.

[Wolfgearca65]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

The value won’t be much… while the new systems cost and ram and a leg, used ones don’t bring much.. I’ve repurposed lots of them and most need some type of maintenance even if they were working when I pulled them.. most Skoolies give me the A/C units when I come to help them do the removal esp since I can handle the Freon and pull the electrical without disabling their bus..

Some people like me want road AC (travelling in Canada you prob need it a lot less than those of us that end up in Texas in July ).. so I repurpose systems and usually give them away myself except for items that need bought ..

That system you have there is prob about 12k including labor installed new in a bus..

Hi, thankyou for insight. I sent a message in response im not sure if you saw it?!

[Wolfgearca65]

this is intimidating

[HamSkoolie]

Originally Posted by Wolfgearca65

this is intimidating

Nah, everything is organized and you have a nice label on the door. The scary part is all the corrosion I see on terminal posts.
Tackle this just like you would eating an elephant..... one small piece at a time.
If your stop flashers and stop arm still operate, I'd activate those with the cockpit switches, identify the relays, wires, and flasher, then disconnect and verify the bus still starts, runs, and shifts (might have some safety interlocks ya just never know). If the bus works. Trace all those wires into the cockpit right up to the switches and out of the wire box there to the end point and pull it all out.
I've pulled several thousand feet of wires out of my bus with no issues but I have experience in automotive and aviation electrical designing, building, and repairing others systems.
Just don't cut wires until you've verified they're not going to trip an interlock of some sort and disable your rig.

[cadillackid]

hamskoolie is right this is a Nice panel!!


now lets take it at face value.. the 3 relays on each bar for the A/C are labelled.. so you know a couple things.


1. its pretty safe(even without disconnecting the battery) to unplug the plugs on those relays, start the bus and see that it in fact still runs and shifts in gear.. try turnign on the A/C and likely you'll gert nothing.



2. next you can shut it off, disconnect the batteries and go to town.. after unplugging those relays you can disconnect any wires associated with them as you pretty much know they asre for the A/C.. (those are likely your indoor fan relays , 1 for each fan speed).. (trans / AIR can send you wiring diagrams too if you want them)..



3. those little wires most likely go to the dash control (you can see that brings in a 4th relay in the row since its part of the same cable.. )



4. remember pulling wires back at the equipment itself often helps too.. colors are your friend... this looks alot like I am used to seeing with Trans/AIR installs that need work when they age.. I rebuilt my panel and no issues since..

[HamSkoolie]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

4. remember pulling wires back at the equipment itself often helps too.. colors are your friend... this looks alot like I am used to seeing with Trans/AIR installs that need work when they age.. I rebuilt my panel and no issues since..

AND
Look at the wires themselves. You will find numbers printed on the wires. This helps you identify the wires (using color and number) as they go through looms, between panels, into components, etc.
If you do some research on your brand of bus, you may even find a wire number chart. I have on for our bus that's a couple years newer than ours but the vast majority of wires are exactly the same..... it's expensive to redesign a wire harness and makeup the harness build jigs in something that is so generic as a school bus that has pretty much all the same systems year after year after year.
You will probably also find wires in your harness that aren't used. You should consider leaving a few for future needs.
And all this type of work should be documented for future use. For example, if you determine that wire #75 that is 14ga and brown is unused but was left.... there should be a wiring page that tells you that. Because 2 years down the road when you need a new circuit, that little tidbit will save you time and effort.
One of the things I decided to do was to remove the entire wiring harness on the passenger side from the Right Rear corner forward. There were only two required circuits needed on the right side of the chassis. Forward turn signal over right wheel, mid point clearance lamp on top.
There will be more "house" circuits but "chassis" circuits are just those two. So I will run a wire over the ceiling from the Left side harness for those two items and I eliminated a lot of mess, some (slight) weight (ounces add up to pounds add up to lots of pounds though), simplified the circuitry, and freed up space for the "house" circuitry on that side.
The build file will have notes on those modifications for future use.

[cadillackid]

Originally Posted by HamSkoolie

AND
Look at the wires themselves. You will find numbers printed on the wires. This helps you identify the wires (using color and number) as they go through looms, between panels, into components, etc.
If you do some research on your brand of bus, you may even find a wire number chart. I have on for our bus that's a couple years newer than ours but the vast majority of wires are exactly the same..... it's expensive to redesign a wire harness and makeup the harness build jigs in something that is so generic as a school bus that has pretty much all the same systems year after year after year.
You will probably also find wires in your harness that aren't used. You should consider leaving a few for future needs.
And all this type of work should be documented for future use. For example, if you determine that wire #75 that is 14ga and brown is unused but was left.... there should be a wiring page that tells you that. Because 2 years down the road when you need a new circuit, that little tidbit will save you time and effort.
One of the things I decided to do was to remove the entire wiring harness on the passenger side from the Right Rear corner forward. There were only two required circuits needed on the right side of the chassis. Forward turn signal over right wheel, mid point clearance lamp on top.
There will be more "house" circuits but "chassis" circuits are just those two. So I will run a wire over the ceiling from the Left side harness for those two items and I eliminated a lot of mess, some (slight) weight (ounces add up to pounds add up to lots of pounds though), simplified the circuitry, and freed up space for the "house" circuitry on that side.
The build file will have notes on those modifications for future use.

great stuff for bus wiring.. TransAir usually doesnt number the A/C wiring itself.. but yeah on the bus wiring itself from the manufacturer the wires are usually number every foot or 2..



Transair usually bundles their wires together (in a perfect world you could just pull back the transair wire)..


that said, if old wiring is in good shape and you dont give it away to someone with the A/C, there's a couple nice 8 or 10 gauge wires in there that would be nice to keep for wiring up other projects.. I have repurposed a lot of wire i removed as long as it wasnt chaffed...

[Wolfgearca65]

got ahold of Blue Bird manufacturer here in Canada, sadly (of course) our bus was made in an Ontario plant that is apparently now gone and so are all the records of buses made there, so, no charts or info avail on ours except what we see, youd think those records should have been passed somewhere if the business went under, but, nope apparently not!

[cadillackid]

is that system a TRANS / AIR? or did another company install it?

[Wolfgearca65]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

is that system a TRANS / AIR? or did another company install it?

it is a Trans/Air system. it was installed in Manitoba after the bus was purchased by the military here. I have since removed it all except top of bus unit. Posted it but no takers. Sad to see it go to dump. kept water hoses and wiring to try to repurpose that much.!

[cadillackid]

if it wasnt in Canada id have taken it all.. I know exactly where id use it too..

[BuffaloBink]

We have a similar setup on our potential bus.

My question is:

Can we remove one/two of the units inside and keep the others?

If we do remove anything, we are located in Western NY and would entertain offers.

First hurdle is getting the bus, but its 90% done deal.

[cadillackid]

All depends on the setup. If it’s 2 separate systems then yes you can yank one. Is f it’s a single system the. It gets more complex on how to yank one out . A lot of those rooftop units actually have 2 separate condensers within and so you just remove the one system and cap the lines for the unused condenser to keep dirt out.. others it’s all one big system so you need to find the Y connnextors and pull them off.. just have to see what you have when you get it