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churchbus
New Member
USA
4 Posts |
 Posted - 01/07/2003 : 07:35:34 AM
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Does anyone know what manufacturers made aluminum conventional school bus bodies? I have a friend who has a '46 Chevy Superior body and it's aluminum, but was it only Superior or did other manufacturers make them, and for how long? ANY info. would be very appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Bill Gardner
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Buskid
Top Member
USA
3368 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2003 : 07:57:42 AM
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Hi churchbus,
Crown Coach Corporation used aluminum body construction for their Supercoaches (not conventionals). They used this body construction from 1949 until they went out of business in 1991.
Crown Supercoach - The “Royalty” of Pupil Transportation |
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wagonmaster
Top Member
USA
2298 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2003 : 10:24:04 AM
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The procedures for using aluminum are a little more intensive than those required for steel bodies. At the end of WWII there was some aluminum left over from aircraft production that was utilized a number of different ways, I was unaware that school buses used any.
Joe
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John Farr
Top Member
USA
642 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2003 : 5:46:23 PM
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Years ago a man named Delmer Keyes bought Superior Body Company's corporate material, including body building plans. Delmer manufactured some small buses, I believe in Oklahoma, with aluminum body panels. It sounded like a good idea and I thought about buying a few in the mid to late eighties, but never got around to it. That is all I can recall. Maybe someone else can provide more detail about Delmer and his aluminum bus bodies.
I was just reading about Henly's, the present owner of Bluebird. Perhaps some day they will be using aluminum panels in school buses (currently used in many European bus products), but for now they say they will stay with steel.
Superior had a galvanized body. The plant in Lima, Ohio had an acid dipping tank into which the completed body was placed after it was assembled. The bus was then painted with zinc oxide (I believe) prior to being painted yellow. These buses tended to have paint adherence problems as they aged. The trick was to sand them well and give them a primer coat of zinc oxide before final painting.
Crown used aluminum on the exterior panels and stainless steel on the interior side panels below the windows. There was an opening between and below these panels permitting rain and bus wash water to flush the area between the panels to prevent corrosion. No wonder the Crowns lasted so long!
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churchbus
New Member
USA
4 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2003 : 06:41:41 AM
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Don't take this the wrong way. I appreciate the history lessons, but surely there is someone out there that has actual years of when CONVENTIONAL school buses were made with aluminum bodies. Is this the wrong catagory to post this question, and are there other areas/sites that could answer this?
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churchbus
New Member
USA
4 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2003 : 06:42:12 AM
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quote:
Does anyone know what manufacturers made aluminum conventional school bus bodies? I have a friend who has a '48 Chevy Superior body and it's aluminum, but was it only Superior or did other manufacturers make them, and for how long? ANY info. would be very appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Bill Gardner
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Buskid
Top Member
USA
3368 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2003 : 07:10:39 AM
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quote:
Don't take this the wrong way. I appreciate the history lessons, but surely there is someone out there that has actual years of when CONVENTIONAL school buses were made with aluminum bodies. Is this the wrong catagory to post this question, and are there other areas/sites that could answer this?
I don't think anyone was trying to give you a history lesson; I think we were just noting additional information about the topic you posted a question about in case anyone else was interested.
I'm not that well versed in my history of early conventional school bus body construction, so I won't be able to add much more to this topic myself. I'll see if any of my friends know more about conventional school buses that used aluminum body construction. I only mentioned Crown because they were one of the more major companies that used that type of body construction — they did manufacture conventional type school buses, but that was before 1949.
You could also try posting your question on the School Bus Explorer Website Forum at: http://www.busexplorer.com/SchoolBus
These forums get more traffic than SBX's, though. Also, many of the people who frequent those forums are already a member of School Bus Fleet's.
Good luck in your search.
Crown Supercoach - The “Royalty” of Pupil Transportation |
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churchbus
New Member
USA
4 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2003 : 2:54:39 PM
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 I'm sorry, I didn't mean come across the wrong way.
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Buskid
Top Member
USA
3368 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2003 : 3:17:39 PM
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That's all right. Many of the discussions on this forum rarely stay completely on-topic. It's kind of hard to avoid. And yet it can be a good thing at times because you learn things that you otherwise probably wouldn't. 
The only website that I know of that has useful information about almost every school bus manufacturer is the School Bus Explorer website (web address listed in my last post).
I tried looking in one of my books to see if it made mention of body construction, but I didn't find anything. I also asked a friend and he thought Superior could've been using aluminum body construction as early as 1936-'37. Superior was big on their steel body construction, though, so that's a tough one.
My main interest is Crown Coach Corp. history, but if I come across anything else regarding the other manufacturers of the day, I'll be sure to post.
Crown Supercoach - The “Royalty” of Pupil Transportation |
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Topic |
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aluminum bus body
