Today was the autumnal equinox.  The weather today was chilly early and stayed cool as the cloud cover shifted back and forth between overcast and partly sunny.  We had occasional drizzles early and blustery, fall like conditions later.  So often it seems the autumnal equinox occurs during an Indian summer; but not today.  I have always liked fall.

We signed up earlier in the week to drive golf cart shuttles on the early shift this morning from 7:30 to 10:30 AM.  That meant we would miss the pancake breakfast, which ran from 8:00 to 9:30 AM, but that was OK as we would not choose to eat what they were serving anyway (buttermilk pancakes and breakfast sausage.)  We both bundled up against the chill and zoomed around the fairgrounds for three hours giving rides to folks.  We saw lots of people walking this week, which was nice, but the golf carts were there for those who wanted/needed to ride.  We were glad to volunteer for this duty as we get to meet a lot of people in a short time, and folks are always appreciative of the service.

The pancake breakfast has to serve a lot of pancakes to a lot of people in relatively small time window.  To accomplish this, they hired a company who brought in two conveyor/depositor systems.  I got the following photographs from Vicky Lintner:

We chose not to eat breakfast before our shuttle shift, so we had a late breakfast / early lunch in our coach around 11 AM.  We planned to attend the noon tour of the ABC Bus repair facility in Nappanee, and needed to be on the road by 11:30 AM.  We were a few minutes late leaving, and the trip took a few minutes longer than our mapping software said it would, so we did not get to the ABC facility until 12:08 PM.  The entrance wasn’t obvious to us, and although we eventually spotted cars that we recognized, they were behind closed gates that we did not see how to get through or around.  We drove around for a half hour looking for an entrance before we ended up back where we started only to discover that the gates were now open.

But all’s well that ends well, I suppose.  When plant manager Mike Papp finished the initial tour (with almost 60 people) he took Linda and I and one other guy (who had been following us in his SUV) through the facility.  We probably got a shorter tour, but we did not have to compete with other people to ask our questions.

 

ABC Bus operates two different programs at this Nappanee location, a former Gulfstream RV facility.  The operation they are best known for is re-manufacturing of Greyhound buses.  This work takes place it its own building and is a very tight, exclusive relationship with Greyhound.  We did not get to tour that building, but the work they are doing is very similar for both programs.

I think they are just finishing a run of some 800 MCI 102D3 or 102DL3 buses for Greyhound.  They are replacing the original engines and transmissions with Detroit Diesel Series 60s and Allison automatics.  This requires all new wiring harnesses and a rebuilt dashboard.  They are also rebuilding the entire underside of the bus (suspension, brakes, and axles if they are needed).  They are gutting the interiors and putting in new seating with 3-point restraints and updated electronics.  Finally, they are repainting the exterior a dark blue color with the iconic Greyhound logo down the side.  We were told that if you see a Greyhound bus painted this color, it came from the ABC refurbishing program.

The operation we toured was basically doing the same kind of work as the Greyhound operation, only for Van Hool and other buses.  ABC Bus is the exclusive North American dealer for Van Hool.  They have sold a lot them and they have taken a lot of them back in on trade.  A primary function of this second operation is to rebuild these “stock” coaches for resale.  They are also doing this work, however, for coaches that are already owned and they are looking to expand into doing motorhome work; hence the tour.  They had several MCIs there, and Mike Papp, the Operations Manager, told us they can/will work on Prevost coaches as well.  Basically, if you own a bus, they will work on it, whatever it needs.

Note: I presume they are looking to work on diesel pushers, but they may be willing to work on anything.  Anyone interested in their services should contact Mike Papp, Operations Manager, at 574.773.4277 Ext 103 or 407.340.0108 (cell) to discuss their needs.

I’ve been thinking about pulling the radiator on our coach and having it cleaned or re-cored and replacing all of the coolant lines with new, high-temperature silicon ones.  I asked if they could do that work and the answer was “yes, we can do that.”  They also have access to an alignment shop in South Bend that does all-wheel alignments on buses.  Apparently they were expecting a handful of people, so they were a bit surprise, but pleased, when 60 of us showed up to see the place.

 

(BTW:  The cost to pull an engine and transmission and replace it with a brand new DD Series 60 and Allison automatic, including the wiring and dashboard work, is $60K – $75K depending on the bus.  Depending on what kind of conversion project someone wants to take on, ABC Bus has lots of used buses for sale in the $50K range.  That means someone could have a 45 foot coach with a brand new engine and tranny for $110K – $120K as the starting point for a conversion project.

Mike told us that he has approximately 500 daily person-hours that he can assign to projects.  Hypothetically (but not practically) he could assign them all one bus for a day.  Ignoring the fact that the workers would be inefficiently getting in each others’ way, an enormous amount of work could be accomplish in a very short time.  He did not mention their labor rate, but that would probably be a $50,000 day for that coach.

Because ABC is purchasing in volume from Detroit Diesel Allison, and because they want to be able to turn around buses somewhat quickly, they keep a lot of DD Series 60 engines and Allison transmissions in stock.

When we got back from the ABC Bus tour we went to a seminar on Places To Take Your Grandchildren RVing.  The presenter had a nice slide show that highlighted places children might enjoy, but did not differentiate places and activities by age range, which would have been helpful.  The presenter was also the vendor for SkyMed, so we ended up sitting through a presentation on that as well.

SkyMed is an insurance program that will cover the cost of medical transportation by ground or air for a variety of situations.  Like all insurance, it is more expensive than you would like for something you hope you never have to use, but if you ever need the kind of coverage they provide, you will wish you had it.  (A typical helicopter med-i-vac flight runs about $25,000 and probably isn’t covered by your existing health, auto, or RV insurance.)  There are many nice features to SkyMed, including a Global plan, which I won’t mention here other than this one: you do not have to call SkyMed first.  First you call 9-1-1, then you call SkyMed, and as part of your coverage, they will handle almost everything from there.  We’ve listened to SkyMed presentations before.  We didn’t sign up, but we always leaving thinking about it seriously.

After the seminar we went back to the vendor building to purchase a windshield mounted camera/DVR device, but got there after the vendor area had closed.  This seems to happen to us a lot; we delay making a decision to buy something until it is too late.  But hey, it’s an effective way to stay within budget.  This device will record up to 10 hours of video on a 32 GB memory card.  It can be pointed out the window while driving, or at the cabin while parked and away from the coach, to provide video evidence of events that may occur (such as an accident or break-in).

Saturday evening Dane Bailey (The Singing Auctioneer) did a warm-up performance followed by the Harbor Lights focal quintet.  Harbor Lights is an a cappella group that specializes in “doo-wop”.  They sang for almost an hour and a half without an intermission.  Many of their songs were authentic doo-wop toons, and some were doo-wop rearrangements of songs from the 1950’s and 60’s.  The members of Harbor Lights are local to north central and northwest Indiana.  They brought a lot of energy to their show, and it was a trip down memory lane for many of us.  Some of us noticed that they seemed to have trouble holding pitch on the tight doo-wop harmonies, which detracted from an otherwise good show.  I suspect it was due to an inadequate monitor speaker system or the lack of wireless headphones, making it difficult for them to really hear each other.

We walked back to our coach under an almost full autumnal equinox moon.  Rving is a good life.