yeah.. this bus the air system froze up on my in january of 2017.. it had the valve you are talking of as it came from texas.. the governor and the pop-off froze in -10 degree weather so it ran my air gauge off the scale... cracked the head on the compressor and started pressurizing my coolant system... it was blowing coolant all over the ground.. I thought I lost a head gasket as the overflow was pushing coolant in subzero weather.. only thing that tipped me off was when i was diagnosing.. it kept blowing coolant after I shut the engine off I had bubbles in the coolant and would push out until i drained air tanks.. needless to say NOW it has of course a new compressor and a heated air dryer!!! .. and a new air gauge because it even froze the air gauge in that incident.. now its sept 2019.. that issue was in jan 2017

The sending unit was bad, I replaced it with one from Amazon shortly after and it fixed issue now 3 and a half years later it’s dying again. Gauge works but is inaccurate so I’ll be getting another one real soon lol

@@eldoradoboy I’ll give it a try, thanks for the quick reply.

Christopher Abnett that whining you heard seems normal my Ford truck 2001 with the 7.3 does that when it's cold out but it goes away when the engine warms up

the air compressor replacement and adding of an air dryer has completely Solved the coolant issues.. new dash gauge, nice Wabco heated air dryer, reman TF-550 compressor , some repiping to eliminate possible water trapping and she runs like new again.. also replaced the thermostat since it was super easy to get to with the air compressor removed, I pulled the original, tested it and it never opened fully.. ive got a 182 in there now so when i get back to florida it will likely run cooler than it did in the heat..

it was a Cypress Fairbanks district in the Houston Area

I went to Cy-Fair ISD. Those T444E short buses were an experiment they tried that failed. Their fleet was all DT466/360/408 powered. I remember seeing those T444E buses hit the auction. Glad one went to a collector.

interesting, what was the experiment? the 444E or running short busses on smaller routes? I figured the bus had aged out at 15 years, its given me zero issues other than my own induced issue of freezing the air lines bring a texas bus to ohio.. otherwise the seats are hardly worn, the engine and trans work perfectly.. its even geared for the small wheels.. (3.54).. when I went to that auction theuy also had a bunch of mid 90s 65 passenger waynes with mechanical DT-466s.. those went to an exporter who paid top dollar for them all. it seems the 444E is perfect for a short bus but in anything heavier would be a dog.. its obvious my DT-360 has more sheer Brute even in the carpenter which is much heavier bus..

Christopher Abnett The T444E engine in the smaller buses was the experiment. They went back to running DT engines.

this is good stuff.. im guessing the T-444E's didnt stand up to the Texas Heat? the Thermostats on 444E's were a known issue.. if they didnt leak they often started to stick just a few years into service,.. not to mention schools bought busses with Cheaper Viscous fan drives instead of electric Hortons.. Viscous fan drives dont like continuous duty.. they often over-heat and lose their fluid and become useless.. in dusty areas the thermal coils get coated with dirt and then the fans wont engage.. this little bus ran warm for me when I drove it from Houston to st pete.. a couple times I had to slow it to 55, open the windows and turn on all the heaters to keep the temp at 220 and under.. (230 is alarm bells on a 444E).. my Fan clutch was weak and turns out the Tstat only ever opened 3/4 of the way.. if you severely over-temp a 466 the worst that happens is the liner seals go bad and you dump coolant into the oil and you have to in-frame it or at least pull the head and replace the liner seals.. you dont lose the engine.. if you severely over-temp a 444E you damage the heads / ruin injectors / dump fuel into cylinders and wash out rings or worse yet burn a piston and ruin the block... the later VT-365;s were worse.. one oil temp over 260 and you melted the internal oil filter housings and instantly destroyed the block...

Columbus / Grove city

Christopher Abnett nice I'm a Cleveland man myself

how are the busses in CLE? are they rust-buckets like the ones in C-bus? (other than the 300 C-bus bought new in 2013/2014). our busses here all seem to get rusty within 5-7 years..

Christopher Abnett definitely rusty and sad to say the 2013 are rusting worse the an 1987 internationals all my friends in the schools systems say that the clear coats are pealing and fading horribly on the international but the freightliners are holding up good

Where I was a bus garage apprentice at was Ravenna city schools in portage county we had all different years and models of buses I myself particularly liked the 1987 international 9 L Thomas 59 passengers we had 4 of those witch we retired in 2012 we also had 4 1988 international carpenters witch we just retired to Years ago as well as 8 1990 internationals with carpenter bodies 1 1991 carpenter with what you have in it that was also one of the ones I loved

after my transmission swap I get 11-14 MPG now.. it used to be about 7. 3 I think before!