The cover photo of this post is a photo of Happie Skoolie's push button gear shifter displaying the number "6". The reason the 6 is present is because we recenlty had our Allison MD3060 TCM reporgrammed and we can now use all 6 forward gears of the transmission.
This might not sound note worthy but it allows our bus, which previously ran 65mph at 2000/rpms, to run 65mph at 1700/rms. For the mathmaically inclinded amoung our readers that is a 15% reduction. 15% less fuel...15% less wear & tear on the engine...15% less stress on transmission cooling.
The reality is that fuel milage in a bus just sucks! Now it will suck 15% less. When we drove the bus back from Dallas after first purchaing the vehicle we got (near as we can figure) 7.5 miles to the gallon (thats diesel which is the expensive stuff at gas stations). If we see a corresponding 15% increase in gas milage (that is very hopeful) we will get just over 8.6 miles to the gallon. With a 60 gallon tank that is an extra 66 miles on a tank of fuel.
I'll report on actual numbers once we have a chance to actually travel some but...here's to hope.
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