Everything Wrong With a 7.3 (t444e) & Why I Bought One Anyway

[Music] hi i'm chuck cassidy for the last eight years i've been converting school buses into homes on wheels and well everything else you can do in a bus today i've got a special treat for you and i got to be honest with you i've had a little secret i've been keeping from y'all that's right i bought another bus we gutted it did a roof raise and it's already sold and leaving the shop today and i didn't share any of it with you i'm going to try to make it up for you today though and before this bus gets out of here i'm gonna do a side-by-side comparison of these two seven window international buses now they both say international on the front they're both seven windows long but that's where the similarities in and i wanna share with you the differences so you can understand how two buses that appear identical even after the roof raise are actually quite different thanks for tuning in let's get started taking a look at these awesome buses [Music] [Applause] if you've been following along on the build series about my own personal bus you know that i love short buses built on full-size bus chassis and that's why we picked this one up they offer you all of the ruggedness and durability of a full-size bus but the maneuverability and footprint of a short bus it's the best of both worlds in my opinion now this bus here is an international 3800 series chassis and it's got a t444e engine which is also the virtually the same engine as a ford 7.3 power stroke it's a turbo diesel v8 and it's got an electronically controlled injection system very different from the bus next store built on the same chassis but that bus has a dt466 all mechanically controlled so there's no computers on there and that engine is a straight six whereas this is a v8 this bus also features an allison 2000 series transmission it's an electronically controlled five-speed transmission with overdrive and a lock-up torque converter and it couldn't be more different than the one in my bus which is a four-speed non-computer controlled non-locking torque converter allison at545 maybe not the best transmission in the world if i'm being honest the differences keep rolling though because my bus is a thomas this one's a bluebird and additionally this bus rides on a slightly different set of tires these tires are a full-size bigger go figure i can't tell you why but that's just how they are now if you've watched my other videos you know i'm not the biggest fan of v8s you know i'm not the biggest fan of electronically controlled computers but today i want to walk you through what's actually awesome about this bus and how i've changed my tune a little bit since we picked it up let's go take a look at the engine well i feel like it was just yesterday where i was bad-mouthing this engine but like i was just saying i've changed my tune a little bit after driving this rig because it's actually kind of sweet take a look so let's start with the basic engine topology what kind of motor is this what do i think about that so it's a turbocharged v8 engine i don't like v8 engines especially in heavy duty applications the first reason is that it is not inherently balanced straight six is perfectly balanced and it's a very smooth running engine these actually require a harmonic balancer or some type of you know weights spinning to counteract the forces of the pistons moving up and down not the most elegant design also because it's a v8 there are less main bearings there supporting the crankshaft straight six has seven i believe this has five but i could be wrong but it's not as many and it's got more cylinders bummer the other problem with the v8 is that there's two of everything so you have two cylinder heads you have two cylinder head gaskets you've got to have a timing chain or a timing gear that connects the two and that's just more opportunities for failure additionally you've got two more cylinders which means you've got two more injectors and all the costs associated with that and this bus because it has glow plugs which are another thing i don't like instead of having six glow plugs you have eight of them what a bummer am i right the next thing on this like i was saying before it's computer controlled i'm not a fan of computer controls but because of the computer controls i will say for its size 7.3 liters of displacement it does make pretty good power and in different applications you can actually tune this engine up simply by loading a different tune into the computer that's a pretty sweet way to gain some power it will cost you longevity though in the long run moving right along because it's computer controlled there's a whole slew of acronyms that follow this engine everywhere and if you get on the forums it's so hard to remember you got your icps your cprs your uv chs your hpops they just keep coming that's because this thing is full of sensors and gizmos that supplement what is a pretty complex injection system it uses a high pressure oil pump to hydraulically inject fuel through the fuel injectors and those hydraulic injectors are controlled by a computer that activates a small electrical solenoid so the name of this system is a huey system it's a hydraulically activated electronically controlled unit injector i think that's i think that's the acronym there so look the acronyms just keep going on the other bus there are no acronyms it's just engine the last thing that i don't like about this engine is it's a parent bore engine and what that means is that there are not sleeves in the cylinder liners so when you wear this engine out you can't just leave it in the bus pop in a new set of cylinder liners and be out the door with essentially a new engine you have to pull the motor out it needs to be re-board you need to go with oversized pistons and rings and frankly most people don't do that they'll just replace the whole engine so that's in my opinion a pretty big drawback i could do an in-frame rebuild on my bus leave the motor in place you know there are guys out there who say they can do that rebuild in like a weekend i'm not that skilled or that fast but i would way rather have a bus that is set up like that than have to rely on this one taking the engine taking it to a machine shop you name it the last thing about this bus that i can't stand as far as its engine is that international in all of their infinite wisdom decided to put a wiring harness underneath the valve covers of the motor and that wiring harness is really important it not only sends power to the glow plugs it also controls those electronically controlled injectors i was talking about those under valve cover wiring harnesses are notorious for creating problems that may or may not be impossible to troubleshoot quickly because you could have an intermittent short under the valve cover and the only way to see it is to pull the valve cover and you don't really want to run the motor with the valve cover off luckily this platform the motor is really accessible but because this engine is also in cutaway vans a lot of short buses that you see that have this motor it those are so frustratingly hard to work on it can be a 10 hour job to replace the glove plugs on that whereas you could do that job on this bus here in half the time so that's my list of gripes however this motor does run really well and if you have good batteries and a proper functioning glow plug system it starts up great in the cold but if you don't it's sometimes not going to start at all now what are some of the benefits and advantages of this motor well what's nice because it's essentially the same engine as a ford 7.3 finding parts for this engine is pretty simple so all of those acronym sensors i was talking about you can usually get them at a place like napa or a ford dealership if you're in a bind that's really nice on my big international over here those parts aren't generally stocked at your average auto store and i have to get them either online and order them which can be almost impossible when you're broken down on the side of the road or i have to go to the international dealership that's a real bummer because this motor was also in ford pickup trucks and you know truck guys and their you know attachment to them as a symbol of their masculinity have spent a lot of time documenting all the problems and issues and how to make these engines more reliable how to get more out of them how to do repairs that's really nice you know i don't know the exact numbers but i would have to say there's got to be at least quadruple the number of these motors in existence than the dt466 that's in my bus so the support the parts network it's there and that's really good the last thing to talk about because of that injection system i mentioned that uses engine oil to operate the injectors you can't run this motor if it's out of oil which is really cool i mean granted you should probably be checking your oil enough to not be surprised by a sudden drop in your oil levels but if you're the type of person who doesn't stay up on their maintenance you won't destroy the engine that way that's kind of nice now this engine in particular being as low miles and low hours as it is it's one of the most powerful 73s or t four four four e's i've driven and it's a rocket in this bus this bus is only seven windows long i just weighed it today it only weighs thirteen thousand pounds and between that and the fact that this allison transmission allowed bluebird or international whoever respect it to put a high numerical ratio rear end gear set on this means it's got crazy good acceleration and it can still pull off highway speeds so it drives awesome it makes good power this this engine has a lot of life left in it there's almost no blow by so is it my favorite motor no is it a great motor in this application yes now if this was a 40 foot bus these motors are notorious for being dogs but they're still put in those big buses and they'll get by but i would never recommend this motor in a 40-foot bus but in a short bus like this some of the advantages of having a more popular motor that has more support and the fact that it runs so smoothly and makes good power in my opinion can offset the fact that it's maybe not the best motor from a overall design and foundation standpoint thanks for coming to my rant about the t44e and everything that i love and everything that i hate about it let's talk about the rest of this bus this bus while it is an international chassis it's actually got a bluebird body on it and i really have a strong preference for the old bird here the biggest reason i like them is if you look down these walls they go straight up and down i'll take you over to my thomas and this thomas bus for some reason at the factory where thomas built buses they decided to make these walls slope inward i don't get it it's obnoxious when you're building out the interior but they made up for it by using screws on all of their interior ceiling panels whereas bluebird uses rivets now rivets are probably the superior fastener but because we're always dropping those ceiling panels i don't mind the fact that thomas used screws the other thing that thomas does right when you're doing a conversion is this gutter across the top here it's all one piece and it's solid come over here and bluebird they really like stamping metal parts and picking up the style points they've got these cute little eyebrows over every window which is fine until you do something like we have here where we cut in a double wide window and it gets a little silly right there because well you know you see what's going on so some people will often you know cut these eyebrows off i don't love doing that though because then any rainwater that you have coming down the side of your bus is just going to roll straight onto the side and not be deflected off everywhere which was why these were put on here in the first place so kind of a bummer another thing i like about bluebirds you see how the back of this bus has this cool stamped pattern on it this is just mostly aesthetic it does make it a little stronger you know thomas they just went with a straight back it's not stamped it's not that cool i don't know the last thing i got to go over and this one really drives me nuts for some reason thomas put their windshield wipers up top i actually flipped these around because in the original configuration when these wipers were in the park position this one would be over here which is right above the steering wheel right in your face staring right at it it means when you do a conversion you have these wiper motors up here if you're trying to do a shelf or something cool up there well gosh dang it that gets really annoying look at bluebird they got it right wipers down low right where you want them out of the way out of sight out of mind i don't know why thomas didn't do it that way but it drives me crazy oh and i almost forgot perhaps the worst part about a thomas bus oh and can i get to it now i'm going to zoom in take a look at what they did on the top of that roof they got these rub rail doodads on there with a thousand and one screws holding it down all kinds of places for water to leak in now let's look at the bluebird one smooth sheet wrapped completely over and they do another nice little thing with their stamping you see how on the edge here they have a little bend in where it curls under that's to help seal it up and keep it a little more watertight nice so nice as i was saying before on these seven threes it's really imperative that you have as many cold cranking amps in your battery bank as possible so when we picked this up it only had two batteries and they were getting pretty weak and it was really having a hard trouble a hard time it was really having a hard time firing off so we replaced it with three brand new group 31 batteries so we've got about 2 700 cold cranking apps available to this engine and it lights up in a hurry check this out [Applause] put three lights on i thought i'd pull the bus outside to talk about tires and brakes another way that this bus is very different than mine like i said is that it actually is running a different size tires than my bus go figure we've got 11 our 22.5 shoes on this bad boy my bus only has these little tens again that's just a decision that bluebird would have made the factory and i have noticed that historically bluebirds even the short buses run the big tires the same size big tires as their full-size buses whereas thomas they would actually run smaller tires and shrink them down as the size of the bus shrank i'm partial to having the big tires but the trade-off is of course they're more expensive i know i spent a good amount of time ranting and raving about the engine connected to the go pedal but i want to take a second and talk about what's connected to the stop pedal another way that this bus is very different than mine is that this bus actually uses hydraulic brakes just like the brakes in your car which means it's got this big old emergency brake lever too that's nice especially if you're not experienced with running on air brakes because hydraulic brakes actually give you a little bit more of a feel than air brakes do and air brakes have just the slightest slightest delay from when you apply them to when the stopping happens and that's because the air system has to energize you know lengths of tubing down to the brakes which might be all the way in the back of the bus that's usually where there's brakes you know so the hydraulics have a little better feel now the thing i don't like about hydraulic brakes is the systems are more complicated if you have leaks the hydraulic fluid can leak out and they're not a fail-safe system so air brakes when they fail because they have leaks or run out of air they fail in the set position and it will stop you these brakes just like the brakes on your car if you run out of fluid because a line breaks or something like that you're in a very dangerous situation because you just lost your brakes additionally for safety's sake this bus features an electronic hydraulic boost system so these these brakes require a booster to deliver adequate stopping power well if the engine should die and you need to stop the bus this bus has an electric pump that kicks on and you'll hear it right now you hear that it's a whole another system required just for emergency braking if the engine dies so these systems are more complicated more expensive parts are harder to find the driving feels a little bit more like a conventional car but to me i'm always going to be an air brakes guy the last thing i got to talk about are the exceptionally low hours on this so just like my bus this engine is going to run for a long time it's only got 7 550 hours and 159 000 miles that's really great that means this bus is going to provide years of dependable service for the new owner and just like the bus with that i'm going to be calling home which has actually a brand new engine put in it they'll be able to get a lot of use out of this if you look over here on the transmission if you look at those numbers we've got d four two one that means that this is a five speed transmission you've got your d which is overdrive or normal driving position fourth gear it skips over third and gives you the option to manually select second or first love the overdrive features the transmission on this bus is one area where i'm really envious however it's an electronically controlled transmission and the problem with that is you've got a computer you've got sensors and you've got a whole lot of things that can go wrong the last perk that i love about this bus is it's got cruise control are you kidding me i kid you not i would die for cruise control on my bus i can add it and you don't have to have a computerized engine to have cruise control but it makes it a lot easier if you do and so they threw it on pretty jealous of that one since we stepped in here i thought i'd show you how they're picking it up so just like on my bus they have the four inches of insulated subfloor with the advantech subfloor material and then we went ahead and installed dual pane insulated rv windows with screens for them this bus is ready to be framed mechanically installed with all the plumbing and electrical insulated built out and lived in this is the international dt 466 in my 1996 international thomas cooley and as you can see it is a straight six cylinder arrangement so it's just all going back and instead of having a computer it has what i would call the mechanical brain of this bus which is this bosch p pump all mechanical injection pump it's driven by the timing gears off the engine not high pressure oil and it's controlled by the governor springs and the fuel delivery valve which is operated by the accelerator pedal to deliver flow through these tubes to the six cylinders and six injectors on the bus quite a bit simpler and easier to troubleshoot and lucky for me this engine is basically brand new below that you can see the air compressor for the air brake system so while you do have a whole component which is the air compressor it gives you a braking system that in my opinion is actually simpler because you have all the parts right here air operated if these hoses leak it's not going to mean the loss of braking power really important to me for safety and also like i mentioned before this transmission it's only a four speed so our drive is followed by three two and one and that's because it does not have overdrive kind of a bummer the cool thing about this bus though the chassis and body only have 162 000 miles on it so still low miles and when you compare when you add to that the fact that this engine right out here was installed brand new from reviva in 2017 this bus should be good for a long time and because there are no computer controls on this in fact the way you turn the engine off is you actually pull this lever out and it kills the fuel to it go figure and like i was saying we don't have glow plugs so if you want to start this you can just no waiting for glow plugs pretty fantastic well i hope you can forgive me for keeping in the dark about this awesome bus for so long but you know that's just how life goes sometimes thanks for watching i thought this was a really cool video that i got to shoot because it's not every day that you have two very similar buses each with a 12 inch roof raise each very desirable for their own reasons and still with a lot of differences that the untrained eye might not notice i wanted to take this as an opportunity to share with you all the things that you can look out for when you're bus shopping because it's not just a 7 window and forget about the rest you got to think about the engine the transmission the chassis who was the coach manufacturer and even the braking system all come into play when you're trying to find the perfect rig for your skoolie home thank you for watching if you like this kind of content make sure you hit the subscribe button we'll catch you next time [Music] you

Channel: Chuck Cassady

Views: 23,613

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Id: 6FO0s3NsPJw

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022