TMC City Cruiser Rehab - This Old Bus - May, 1989

Another of our series of documenting vehicle problems in the 1980s. The City Cruisers were built by Greyhound under contract to Orion for U.S. sales. They cheapened the Orion design and did not undercoat the buses or prep the metal correctly. The result was that buses built in 1981 were severely rusted by 1989. Davenport, Sioux City, and Ottumwa also had these buses and similar problems. We made this video as part of a grant application to show what was needed and also to explain how we were being forced to use local money to pay for the rehab. CyRide had seven of these 30 foot heavy duty buses.
Jon and Garrett Meyer explain the problems with the buses. Jon started with CyRide in August, 1981 and is still working at CyRide at the date of this posting. Garrett worked as a mechanic while going to ISU from Feb. 1984 to Aug. 1992. He took two courses per semester and worked full-time, usually on the evening shift.

[@dsevil]

Holy crap. We had 12 of these things in Louisville, some '79 models and some '81 models, and as far as I can remember they didn't last 12 years here either.

[@ClassicTVMan1981X]

At least the Detroit Diesel 6V53T survived on most of these examples.

[@trainmanthunder]

When NYC had frame failures on their brand new Grumman buses, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renting fishbowls from Washington DC and rehabbing 1966 to 1970s GM fishbowls at Blitz corp in Chicago. Those lasted into early 90s. 30 year old buses did not have engine cradles and frames sagging like this.

[@mrceleb2006]

CyRide (the transit authority for the city of Ames, IA, owned and operated by Iowa State University) no longer has any TMC CityCruisers/Orion Is in their fleet...two-stroke Detroit Diesel-powered transit buses are a thing of the past as four-stroke Diesel-powered transit buses replaced them!