Brill_C-37M_Bus

Beautiful work! And I sympathize with the PA antique paperwork issues. There was a straight up clerk handwriting mistake on my antique registration, which took a while to fix. But considering the vehicle I registered as an antique had been a commercially inspected bus from 1951-2016, it’s certainly strange they would ask you for specifics on gross or unladen weight, when nobody asked me. Good luck, I hope the plate comes in time. Now your photos gave me the motivation to go check some more wiring on mine. Thanks for sharing! -Steven

I’m also working on wiring. Lots and lots of wiring! I’m chasing a short in the gauge lights or sender circuits. And that means crawling underneath. It’s actually kinda nice under my bus, the ground clearance means I can even sit up in some places. I gave the old stateside Korea vet some subdued decoration, and the best occasion-appropriate message I could think of, for last Friday’s somber anniversary. Trying to draw block letters in pseudo-cursive was strange, but it got the feel I wanted. -Steven

I could look for a different replacement, but I’d have to know more about this relay to do that. For instance, at what voltage does it trip and turn off the NOT GEN light? I’d prefer to learn more about the numbering of these different relays, so I can tell if the Cadillac part is the same relay, but repurposed. This listing I found on Delco-Remy’s website doesn’t say much, but does describe it as a “continuous duty” relay, though I’m not sure exactly what difference that makes. http://www.delcoremy.com/find-a-part/product-details/1116845

My ‘51 ACF-Brill has a 12v relay from Delco-Remy. If I understand right, it’s supposed to close and send power to a dashboard “NOT GEN” warning light when the voltage from the generator armature drops below a certain level. There is a short circuit somewhere in this relay or its wiring, so I’m looking for a replacement. The Delco-Remy part number stamped on it is 845, or the longer form of the same number is 1116845. Here’s an edited bit of the wiring schematic showing both kinds of relay in my bus. The 845, on the right, is what I’m wondering about. My questi

I’m curious too. Since the Red Diamonds (formerly called FBC engines) were production from ‘41 to ‘74, there were a couple incremental changes over the years. Here’s my 1951 RD-450. Lots of the accessories got changed over its service life, but it’s still original. If you find any good sources for new or old stock parts, I’d love to know about it. I’m always looking, and would gladly pass on any leads I find, if I ever get that lucky!

Good luck with the Halloween goal! Personal deadlines like that always seem to work well for me. My project has an RD-450 also, it was a real pleasure to listen as yours make its lap around the block. -Steven

I got a vastly better night photo on my new phone. Maybe turning the interior lights on helped too. Please forgive the sort of double post! -Steven

An unexpected bonus of my bus is all the optional lights Uncle Sam ordered. Finally, I got all the original lights working on the correct circuits again... no more parking lights on all the time! And I just have to share this shot a friend took during a spontaneous night photo shoot. My ‘51 Brill waits at a country crossing for a 1925 St. Louis Car Co. streetcar to pass. -Steven

Sounds like this proposal is a good balance. Everyone talks about the young hiker, but what about preserving the actual history of the bus, not the sad story that co-opted this fine machine long after its retirement? It sounds like there is room for the museum to talk about who built it, who drove it, and what road or public works projects it served on. Telling the entire story makes it well worth the effort to retrieve this rare old piece of history.

That’s an amazing list of cars! As a historical side note, this shows what sort of work the host of this show did. My bus was also at Parish Steel in Reading during the early 1950s... but she was in pieces, just a pile of newly formed steel, getting shipped to Philadelphia for assembly. I found this original stenciling behind the undercoating on the steel frame below the driver’s seat.

1951 ACF-Brill Motors model C-37M 30’ military coach, with a 12v electrical system. She has a standard Stewart-Warner panel, and while the gauges are all from the right time period, I can’t be certain these are the exact right ones. The backlight is just plain little GE 57 bulbs, which shine through slots in the sides of the gauges. A bench test, the lights look similar in the bus, but I’ve never taken a photo of them at night. -Steven

I have a Guide fog light fixture that recently lost its ground connection to the frame of my vehicle. The fog light has worked ever since I first replaced the sealed-beam bulb, but after doing some work on this area, it stopped lighting up. The other side works, and the bulb works when I bench tested it. After checking connections with a continuity tester, it appears the entire fixture has no electrical ground connection to anything else, while the working fog light has continuity to pretty much every other metal part on the bus. I took the bulb out this spring to paint the area

I really don’t understand expecting ordinary old cars to be an investment. Supercars, collector cars, or rarities, I get it, but expecting anything else to leave you a handsome payout must be a generational thing, and one that probably died off a generation ago. Aside from my unusual love of mass transit history, the reason I have a half-operable 30’ bus parked in my small yard is, I wanted to learn more technical skills. I don’t need them for my job, and I’m really uninterested in learning on a modern car. I think that is a great reason for a teenager or young adult to get a re

That’s certainly true, but the C-37M model was still an outlier among outliers. The engine option it has isn’t listed in the Brill C-31 spec booklet, although exceptions seemed to be the rule at ACF-Brill. Pittsburgh Railways got the same bigger engine in their even smaller 27-foot buses. Also, the enlarged Evans heat/ventilation setup was unique to the Army coaches. ACF-Brill thought the unique buses they delivered to the Army might catch on with civilians, so they introduced a revised version right after C-37M production ended: the model SU-37. Sadly, they only built 15 of th

Mine is an interesting hybrid: a suburban coach built on a city transit body, all a special order for the US Army. They started with ACF-Brill’s rather lightweight C-31 city bus and specified a larger engine, a spare tire compartment, luggage racks, and more comfortable coach seats. I only knew she was built by Brill when I got her, everything else I figured out as I worked on the bus. If you want some more details, this is the historical sign I keep with the bus: