Landseer wrote:Was it rear engine ????? with KW 8 bag sus??? 5 of the Ansett Pioneer RFW's had KW 8 bag sus fitted to them
only centre engine for bogie drive!!!!
Photo of it Down under coach in qld section you spoke off
Down%20Under%20Denning%201989.jpg
That's the one, never thought I would ever see it again, thank's for the pic.
From memory, it was rear engined 8V71, and the full bogie drive and suspension was 'swiped out of a KW', pretty sure it was Phil Dixon, who had the bogey drive fitted into it, along with quite a few other mods, to do the camping safaris.
The suspension was operated by a couple of height valves only, just one on each side, not one on each axle, how I know this, is because the left hand side actuating arm had dropped the bolt holding it together and the left rear end just went straight down, whilst the coach was going around a right hander, interesting to say the least, trying to keep it upright in that situation. A real quick fix and on the way again in about 15 mins.
It had an electric fan fitted to the radiator shroud, now when that thing turned on, it sounded like a German Brass Band had just fired up down in the bowels, wow, it was sure noisy.
Going west from Emerald, there is a bit of a range you have to climb to get to Alpha, that range is just a bit west of Bogantungan, doing the slow crawl up that lot and that fan kicked in.
There was the other driver trying to get a bit of shut-eye in the bunk, be buggered if I can remember his name, well, when that fan fired up, he exploded out of the bunk and rushed down the front to see what had gone wrong. I knew the fan had kicked in, as there was this big red light that came on, and under it was the word FAN, the noise was a bit of a give away too.
Seems he'd driven this jigger quite a few times, and that was the first time, he'd ever heard the fan kick in.
A good vehicle on a straight road, just had to be a tad cautious on quick curves, as it did tend to sway around and try to lay over a bit.
regards Greenie