Brighton and Hove order 21 Eclipse Geminis!

They should arrive in April and will be new build single door, although they will be attached to a London order so they can get the discount. They are part of a 250 bus order by the Go-Ahead group.

Poor sods...

That's what I said. There were two buses tried out. Basically Go-Ahead said "No more Scanias, you're having a choice between these so choose"

The other choice was a ADL Enviro 400 which got more favourable reports from the drivers who took it out. I knew it would be the Volve as they also had two other Geminis but they never went out in service.

B9TL chassis, urgh. A few months ago Cambridge took delivery of 50 Enviro400s and they're surprisingly nice, better than the equivalent Volvo or Scania.

What don't you like about B9TLs? Couldn't say myself as I've never been on one.

Gutless, hopeless gearboxes,no hold gears......In 3rd gear by about 12 mph! Wright body, badly made and very flimsy, and awful blind spots for the driver...

Why have they stopped buying the Scannia's thought they were better buses meant 2 be.

They must like wasting nearly £2 per litre on adblue! A substance that doesn't work!! At least Scanias don't need this.

I thought the Scanias have the same transmission, ZF 6 speed aren't they? Our Volvo Centros (which are same setup I believe?) hold their gears very well if needed. Yesterday a driver held it in either 4th or 5th for a good minute or two. It helps if you know the optimum place to kick it down too. I'm pretty sure you can spec gear holding of some sort on them, so maybe yours just haven't got it.

Although ours are single deck of course, and double decks are obviously heavier, but ours are fantastic and well up to the job. If only First would see sense and get some instead of putting pathetic Darts on... ugh.

What is kickdown? First seem to have the kickdown removed on most of the fleet to 'save fuel'.

It's when you're low down in a gear and it's going a bit sluggish, when you need a bit of speed plant your foot to the floor and it should switch down a gear and rev higher for a few seconds. That'll give you a burst of speed. If you're on something like a hill then it will usually stay in that lower gear revving high and hold it there til you ease off the pedal.

It's basically the same thing as you'd do with something like a Dart, if you move the gear lever to 2nd for example it will switch down so you can get up hills a bit better.

Also, if the bus has a ferry lift, it tends to be in kickdown mode constantly if it's left up. i.e. the gears will hold themselves for longer than usual and the bus won't change up until very high revs. One of our Centros is doing that at the moment, but I don't think the ferry lift is even up. It's stuck in kickdown mode

I was being sarky. You will find 99% of ops disable kickdown now, as it dont arf chew fuel! It is also one thing less for the bollock scratchers to bodge when the kickdown switch breaks.

Pukerlicious wrote:I thought the Scanias have the same transmission, ZF 6 speed aren't they? Our Volvo Centros (which are same setup I believe?) hold their gears very well if needed. Yesterday a driver held it in either 4th or 5th for a good minute or two. It helps if you know the optimum place to kick it down too. I'm pretty sure you can spec gear holding of some sort on them, so maybe yours just haven't got it.

Although ours are single deck of course, and double decks are obviously heavier, but ours are fantastic and well up to the job. If only First would see sense and get some instead of putting pathetic Darts on... ugh.

I believe Go-Ahead had a load of trouble with the last batch of Scanias, the OmniCities which had brake caliper issues (they caught fire) and the fuel consumption was rather...um...high.

They do have the kickdown. as you wouldn't get up this hill without it...


...or this one...

Bristol LH wrote:Gutless, hopeless gearboxes,no hold gears......In 3rd gear by about 12 mph! Wright body, badly made and very flimsy, and awful blind spots for the driver...

I have heard bad things about Wrights. Bit of a cowboy outfit if what I'm told is true. With our Renowns, the wiring went after a few years and the engines kept stopping on the road.

B10BLE's all do that no matter what the body is. The engine ECU on them is very fragile. Drove an ex Blackburn one a few times, and more often than not it ended its duty on the back of a wrecker. The bodywork is crap too and the Classic body style all have leaky windscreens, and dodgy floors, plus trattle more than an East Lancs body! The Eclipse series sound like Rolf Harris is in the roof with his wobble board, and the latest DDA Euro 4/5 versions have a very weak body by the emergency door!

Oh haha, wasn't sure if you were being sarcastic or not :L

I'm pretty sure our 4 First Volvo Oly's have kickdown too.

And Veolia (Cymru at least) don't give a flying fondant about fuel consumption, the drivers all floor the living daylights out of the 4 Centros and by no means drive economically. Hence why they pack up fairly often, usually something to do with the engine. Mind you, they don't give a damn about anything, including checking the time and waiting if they're early or getting their money either, if the machine's not working or there's a coach on (to cover an f'ed up Centro) which has no machine then freeeeeeeeeeee

My favourite was last week, "the roll has run out in the machine and I haven't got time to change it, hop on mate"

Still, at least it's not more of these bloody things

Just leave it ticking over in a corner somewhere. It will soon be a pile of ashes. Lombard Finance still cannot offload the shorty B7's and Tridents, plus the Citaros. They have had them all well over 12 months now.

I wonder what the optare versoin of them is like, probably horrible. Arriva have some on the 110, the reason I always go on the 446 or 444.

LynxZF7 wrote:I wonder what the optare versoin of them is like, probably horrible. Arriva have some on the 110, the reason I always go on the 446 or 444.

It'll leak and rattle if the Scania chassied Olympuses in London with Metroline are anything to go by. Nice to travel on at the front top deck though due to the huge window!

Leak, rattle, shut down a lot...Look very tatty inside already..

Metrobus and London General have several. Their inspector was cursing their names at Three Bridges station last weekend... No wonder Metrobus usually use Omnidekkas on that, they are far more reliable than anything that came after...

Wright I believe are now the cheapest on the market for deckers..Says it all

Then there's the Optare/Darwen bodies Scanias. Don't even get me started on those...

Bristol LH wrote:Wright I believe are now the cheapest on the market for deckers..Says it all

So that explains why they're the double decker of choice for First