School Bus Pusher Radiator Removal Shortcut

Changing the radiator or removing it for repair at the local radiator repair shop is a big operation on the pusher school bus. The charge air cooler, oil cooler and radiator are sandwiched on top of each other making it hard to get the radiator out of the chassis.

The objective in this video is to show you a short cut that all mechanics love to do saving time and some frustration. The way we do it is to support the upper components and loosen off the radiator mounts. The frame supports have to be loosened as well to allow space so the the rad core can be removed freely.

The cooling fan which is a Parker system is braced to the main frame around the radiator so it needs to be chained up out of the way. In most cases if the radiator is original and has a leak the chances of repairing it is remote I'm sorry to report.

This rad core is over 12 years old and has gone through a lot of weather and road debris kicking up into and around the core area on a daily basis. There are cores out there but we had to get one from Thomas buses. I hope this video helps you bus mechanics out there.

I would appreciate it if you shared or commented on this post. It's great to get some feedback from others who have had similar problems and found a faster way to get them done. Time is a precious commodity in a fleet garage and with that said I'll continue to share videos on repairs that will help out fellow mechanics.

Watch the video below on what our shop did to remove the radiator on a pusher school bus:


Radiator Repair Thomas Pusher School Bus from John Whelan on Vimeo.

Mechanics and Corrosion

The most difficult job when finding an electrical fault is when corrosion is involved. It's hiding somewhere in a connector or poking through the wiring insulation.

So what is the best way to troubleshoot corrosion in the electrical system? One way is to search and destroy the problem by opening the loom and exposing the green stuff but that is frustrating and  takes a lot of time. However it's necessary to make a proper repair.


Another method (when you know which circuit is faulty) would be to check for voltage drop in the circuit that is not functioning. If you can hook up a volt meter at each end of the circuit and see if there is a loss of voltage when the circuit is energized then you can be assured it's a bad wire. Checking the resistance is another check that works.

In our shop we've been using a load on the wiring circuit in question. A regular light bulb (non LED) hooked up to the one end of the wire will tell you if there is a lack of current when the light is dim after energizing with battery power. The wiring is either corroded or frayed restricting current flow.

If you have money to spend on tools you could use "diamond logic builder" software for International trucks to see the circuits working in a graphic form on a laptop. You can click on a circuit and actually see if the load is getting battery power. The pin outs on all the connectors are at your fingertips. I've used this software and it's a great tool to have compared to digging through wiring harnesses with a hope and a prayer.