Home » New Articles (Members Only) » Sniffing out Trouble. Smells Every Bus Driver Should Know. We were a Traveling Time Warp. The company I worked for had bought the entire fleet of a transit company in South Carolina, and we were traveling northward toward our facility in New Jersey. Just then, fifteen ancient GM “flat-bottom” transits sporting 6-71 Detroit Diesels and 2-speed automatics roared up I-95 at “flank speed”, occasionally exceeding 50 MPH on long downgrades. Desperate for drivers (otherwise, yours truly would not have been on this jaunt), we had even drafted our lead mechanic for this winter trek. About a hundred miles into the adventure, he smelled something strange and noticed liquid trickling down his leg from under the dash and running down the aisle. Simultaneously, he realized he was getting colder inside the bus. Then his temperature gauge pegged, and his hot engine light came on. It turned out that the smell was antifreeze; the liquid he saw in the aisle was from a leaking heater core. The coolant that his engine needed to keep running was instead puddled on the floor. Pretty quickly, the venerable Detroit Diesel engine gave up the ghost, and a hissing white cloud of steam appeared. An astute driver would have noted the pungent smell of antifreeze and stopped to investigate its source before any damage was done. A clever mechanic would have known that losing cabin heat is a symptom of low coolant. Our guy was neither. The engine was fried, and we sold the bus for scrap on the spot. You’re guessing our target here is cooling systems. Gotcha! It seemed a good idea to discuss bus smells. Part of your training as a competent bus driver is the pre-trip inspection, and good drivers take the time to walk around their coaches at every stop, looking for puddles, parts falling off, or other harbingers of disaster. Frequently, the earliest hints of impending disasters are olfactory. Most of us recognize the distinctive smell of overheated brakes. It’s remarkably similar to the cooked clutches of ye good old days. If you pick up that scent while driving or when stopped, and you haven’t been punishing your brakes, then something is wrong. A stuck caliper or some other nastiness that, if ignored, can lead to a fire. If you notice a puddle under your parked coach, your bus could just be marking its territory as many old bus engines do, but more likely it’s hemorrhaging some precious bodily fluid. If it smells like water, it may just be AC condensate, but oil, power steering fluid, antifreeze, and DEF each have unique aromas. They ain’t Eau de Bus. If you aren’t familiar with…