KIDNAP & RANSOM (SERIES 2 EP 1) ABC TV

[SIMON ARMS]

On Saturday night we watched this show and while my wife was getting into the plot I was transfixed by the Bus/Coach.
The scene was Srinagar which I didn’t recognise, it seemed VERY busy, no sign of Lake Dal, not a Shikara in sight and no sign of a “pesky Ralph” trying to sell toilet paper and tampax, (there was a woman in charge of the police on the ground as well???????) all that had me concerned, but what held my full attention was this bus.

A Silver Eagle! Now where the hell did they get one of these and one which was still running? I have since replayed this show on ABC Iview and I am here to tell you that it’s a very rare vehicle and I wondered what Fred Sparksman did with the one he had in Overlanders?

The Eagle and later Silver Eagle was first made in Germany, then Belgium before Continental Trailways in the US had a production line of all left hand drive and mainly 40 footers. The one in the show was a right hand drive with a “pushed tag” which rules out Germany and leaves only Belgium. As it only had two luggage bins I believe it was a 38 footer which is even rarer.

The running gear was a GM 8V71N with an Eaton 4 speed (a bastard of a combination) and to be able to change up you had to go to the full 2250RPM double the clutch while pulling the box into neutral then waiting until the revs came down to 1500RPM exactly, .... before attempting to select the next gear (quite difficult to operate in a chaotic environment).

The 871 was a fantastic motor (lacked torque) producing lots of noise (fitted with a Jacobs engine brake to add to the excitement) and was great to drive on the Cahill Expressway approaching the Sydney Harbour Bridge (a very long tunnel with several corners requiring engine breaking – passengers were definitely awake at this point).

Back to the TV show this bus had been “Indianised” and the most obvious alterations were the mirrors, originally a small square solid mirror on a really strong aluminium arm but I would say that the mirrors had been knocked off as they were quite low and replaced in a typically Indian manner with the horizontal aluminium arms remaining and a vertical extension added with a larger rectangular mirror sitting out of harms way. A few colourful plastic tapes on the vertical extensions completed the alteration.

The airconditioning also had me concerned. When the passenger door was open and passengers were being loaded there was no engine noise? Now these GM motors were not allowed to idle as they lacked oil pressure at low RPM (and they needed Revs to keep the a/c compressor working), engaging and disengaging the increased engine idle management system produced lots of lovely noise. I suspect that this bus had lost its airconditioning system within its first week in India.

So My question is, ....what happened to the Silver Eagle I saw Fred Sparksman driving on the Overlanders promotion video shown to us at the last reunion, you will probably remember the one, it had the classic line “ and here are the Drivers discussing their route notes”.

[Colin Davidson]

Simon,
I watched it as well and I also was wondering how and where they got a Silver Eagle. The one Fred Sparksman drove was a left hand drive, but the one in the movie was a right hand drive.
Col

[Darcy]

Hi Simon and Col, I can recall a silver eagle running out Canberra/Queenbeyan in the very late 70's early 80's, I think it ran express services to Sydney  and tours  I can not recall the name of the Company, I am sure it had a mostly green colour scheme, I was with AAT at the time a cant recall seeing this coach in the usual spots i e Melbourne Brisbane, I will ring a mate of mine who still drives at Murrays he may recall the name, It was definatley a right hand drive
Cheers
Darcy

[SIMON ARMS]

I believe it was Levers of Queanbeyan that had two Silver Eagles in something like "British Racing Green".

[Vicar]

Simon how do you remember all the details especially when it comes to the ins and outs of the various vehicles? I must say I do remember the "Eagle" and thought at the time what a rugged rudimentary looking bus.

[SIMON ARMS]

Vicar, I travelled as a passenger on Silver Eagles and MCI Americrusiers in the States and I always put the MCI up as my favourite Coach until I returned to OZ and drove an Austral built in Brisbane, what a rocket they were, we went throught two basic drive lines, firstly the GM8V71 with the six speed spicer then we moved on to the GM6V92TTA with the spicer six and seven speed but the thing they had in common was the suspension, the ride was unbelievable and you could go round a 80KM/HR corner and not slow down. In both set-ups we used the 3.3 diffs and depending on where the governor was set (and they varied a bit) the 871s would pull in the range 120-125km/hr at 2500RPM and the 692 at 2250RPM would pull 115-120km/hr and in my experience we drove them flat out most of the time in the ealy days. To complicate things there were several different sized injector nozzles and mostly we used the smaller ones for fuel ecomomy but we had some of the best GM people in Australia working with us and when the 692s arrived they were VERY slow to accelerate and caused lots of trouble passing trucks and the boys threw the manual out the window and broke governor seals meaning in the beginning every bus was different to drive and you had to be carefull not to put the accelerator to the floor because these motors would put out so much unburnt fuel that everything behind you disappeared in black haze. We had one Denning 692 that by chance was fitted with bigger injectors and it flew but the ride was terrible and I hated the rock and rolling thing.
To answer the question, I have always had interest in mechanical things and grew up pulling things apart to see how they worked but I did find it interesting that when I started driving overseas I discovered that I had a very good memory for directions (handy that) and passengers were often amazed that I could find my way around without using a map.