NEW Dartford's Wrightbus Streetlite
2,729 views · Published 31 August 2012 · 5:04 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: Beno · 2012 · Travel & Events
New Wrightbus Streetlites for the 477 route from Bluewater to Orpington. These are similar to the Medway ones, but are slightly longer at 10.8 meters, when medway's ones are 10.2 meters. I normally like Voith gearboxes, but these ones are not very good, they only have 3 gears, and don't change as smoothly as a normal Voith. As these buses were new, the gearbox has not yet learnt the bus. This time the voith gearbox was overcorrecting weather to early or late gearchange. Normally it would change gear late if it is on a hill so that it stays in a lower gear, and change gear early on a downhill, or if the driver is uses less acceleration to save fuel, but these buses were way over adjusting this. see 1:51 - There is an ever so slight uphill, which normally would barely effect when to change gear, but the gearbox stayed on 1st for a very long time casing the engine to massively over rev. (even more so than normall on these crappy 3 speed voiths). see 1:28 - There is an ever so slight downhill, and it changes to 2nd then 3rd so early that it loses acceleration, when the driver is still accelerating. With every gearchange the gearbox knows how well it went, and it is programmed to learn the best moment to change gear. So in a months time it will change gear perfectly, just like Medway's Wrightbus Streetlites. (well, a say perfectly, when in fact these gearboxes are not capable of changing gear perfectly as they only have 3 gears) http://beno.org.uk
