Sparr Bought A Bus: Opus Operator Manual

I've been trying and failing to get in touch with anyone at New Flyer, who bought NABI, who bought Optima, who manufactured my bus, who might have access to any sort of documentation on the bus. I posted to a few bus forums and someone pointed me towards an expired ebay auction for an almost-right operator manual. It's off by one year, and possibly wrong in other subtle ways, but I'll take what I can get. I contacted the seller and found they had re-listed it. I bought it, and it was waiting for me when I got back to San Francisco tonight. This post is me live-journaling my discoveries as I peruse it for the first time.

The "Summary of Changes" section of the book describes the revision history of the book. This is good news, as it indicates this book does cover my bus, it just happens to be one year newer than my bus. Better yet, the 2004 revision of the book contains no content changes, just copy editing and formatting, which suggests the Opus bus wasn't changed in 2004, so this book should be an exact match for my bus, barring any custom changes that the RRTA requested.

I am apparently supposed to inflate the tires to 110PSI, so my instructions to the Tire Pass folks to aim for 115 was a bit high. I know better, now.

My turning radius is 31' for the tires, 36' for the body. Ouch.

My bumper to bumper length is 34'5", with a wheelbase of 18'1". The height, probably including the heater, is 10'4", and the outside wall width is 8'3.2" (no idea why this one gets an extra digit of precision).

I am supposed to have a 75 or 90 gallon fuel tank. My estimate based on the fuel gauge and fill-ups was 80, so now I need to actually figure out which it is.

The driver's seat is a Recaro Ergo Metro. Knowing this will allow me to find spare parts! Apparently it's missing a non-optional headrest, which I would love to find. There's also apparently a seat adjustment control that we didn't see and I'll be poking around for when I return to the bus.

The light inside the engine compartment is on an 18ft retracting cord, which is long enough to drag it to the side to see the fuel tank, radiator, tires, etc in the dark. Spiffy!

There is a button on the dash with the engine retarder icon on it, which we couldn't identify before. Apparently my transmission has a built-in retarder, and now I want to get on the highway and check out its function. It claims to augment engine braking for steep downgrades. I wish I'd known that 3000 miles ago.

There are seven electrical system multiplexer nodes. I only found ~4 of them in my initial round of panel-opening. Now I know where to look for the rest of them!

My Allison transmission is apparently a B300 or B300R. That narrows down the possibilities significantly.

The section on the climate control system is a tease. It identifies which system I have, but won't tell me what the mystery buttons/LEDs are!

It may be possible to raise the bus suspension above the normal not-kneeled height temporarily, for crossing things like slope peaks and raised railroad tracks. This requires further investigation of a particularly arcane set of conditions and button pushes.

Apparently I'm not supposed to idle for more than ten minutes. This is probably why there's an automatic shutdown. The suggested failure mode is "overcooling" which will result in carbon buildup in the combustion chambers in unburned fuel in the oil. The internet already told me that unburned fuel in the oil could result in the weird oil levels I've seen. This requires immediate investigation.

Also I'm supposed to idle the engine for a few minutes before shutting it off, to promote even cooling. Good to know.

"CAUTION: Do not allow the vehicle to coast in neutral. This can result in transmission damage."... Also good to know!

I need to learn more about safe amounts of engine braking. I tried to balance load on the transmission and brakes while leaving the Appalachians, Rockies, and Sierra Nevadas. However, the manual suggests that all the way down to first gear is acceptable.

Apparently the broken air hoses in my doors go to some sensors that are supposed to stop the doors from closing on people. I probably want to disable that functionality, for primary and secondary reasons. And I could probably save a bit of wasted vacuum or air pressure by capping those hoses.

For some reason, this bus sold to a transit agency in Pennsylvania apparently doesn't have the optional front defroster modules, which would have been responsible for turning the cold air coming out of the dash and driver vents into warm air. I need to get under the front dash and see if they are installed and just missing the controls. If not, at least I know there's room under there to add them.

Apparently the lit up /!\ button and indicator on my climate control indicate a fault, and I can get it to read an error code out to me. I'm not lucky enough to have a key for those codes, but at least now I know what that does/means.

Apparently my powered windshield defroster (which has such cute tiny wires running through the glass) is coupled with mirror defrosters. I hope I don't ever need that feature again.

I never tried the emergency door release buttons because I didn't know if I'd be able to reset them. The operator manual sheds no additional light on this situation. :/

Along with knowing where all the multiplexers are, I now know where 3 more fuse panels are. I should document them.

Additionally, I now have a pre-flight checklist, most of which I will ignore. I also have a few hints at weekly/monthly maintenance tasks, which I will not ignore. Overall, this is a lot of useful new info. Sadly, there's still missing operational info, such as how to engage the baseboard heaters, the specs on the climate control air filter, etc. Hopefully I can find a service manual some day to fill in the rest of those gaps.