A little background information on this beautiful photo.... This is the corner of Wilshire Bl. and La Brea Ave. in Los Angeles, about 5 - 6 miles west of downtown l.A.. The corner on left side, with the coffee shop, would be the N/W corner of the intersection. The building with the 'America General' sign above the door would be on the N/E corner. That 'America General' building is still there. Everything else is gone...... Current pic, looking in the same direction, from Google Earth:
Is that bus running right? It sounds like it has to rev up pretty high, in order to get it moving, as if the transmission is slipping too much. What's that monstrosity attached to the roof? It almost looks like rocket power
Detroits are long on noise...it's the Roots blower. And the monstrosity is likely the A/C unit, especially if that bus was used in SoCal.
The way I understand it is they are not really "Automatic" Transmissions, but some type of Torque Converter and that is how they start off. They probably "slip" a little before it gets going. Even though I'm a Manual Trans fan, those were pretty advanced for their time. I believe they were introduced in the early 40's. Also Andrew is correct. Those units on the back are AC. Of the hundreds of buses I've seen, I never actually saw one with AC. Only in pictures. I had the same reaction when I first saw one, lol.
Yes, the transmission would either have had a Hydramatic, which was a two or three-speed gearbox with a fluid coupling (one step down from a torque converter) or a standard, but in providing a smooth ride, most companies elected to have the Hydramatic.
The ones I rode in were all 2-Speeds. Both the Old Look and the Fishbowls. I'm not sure about a smooth ride, but they got the job done. The way to shift the Old Looks was to let off on the throttle, hesitate a bit, let it shift and throttle it again. But you had to be going a certain speed for that to happen. If you weren't going fast enough, it would just stay in first. The newer Fishbowls they had (approx '68 and newer Models) seemed to eventually shift by themselves, but I believe you could also make them shift, like the Old Looks mentioned above. Another interesting thing about these Transmissions (Torque Converters) in the Old Looks was that you could keep it in "Drive" even when parked. It would just sit there and not creep. If you were to park and leave it, you just needed to apply the old style Handbrake. By the time they got the Fishbowls, that all had Air Pressure "Maxi" Brakes (or Spring Brakes as some called them) for an Emergency Brake.
I'd never rode in any 'Old Look' model, but I certainly remember the Fishbowls. My dad was a Seabee, and so a couple years ago we were going through YouTube for videos of Seabees in action, and had some very interesting conversations about the trucks and other equipment. That's where I learned how the Hydramatics drove and shifted, was from him.
