RE: Euro 6 credentials & road stripes being added to more buses
(14 May 2021, 8:21 pm)streetdeckfan wrote Which begs the question, why haven't they?
I don't know, why would I? At a guess - the same type you could make yourself - I would assume that because Riverside has a fleet of almost 200 buses, they haven't gotten around to doing it yet? If you've wrongly assumed that these vinyls are being added at Saltmeadows, where a 'proper' paint job could be done at the same time, then you're mistaken. These vinyls are being applied locally at the depots (because it's very easy to do).
As for the reason why this work is being done - it's not 'titivating', there are well-established issues with the wheel washers being too intensive resulting in lower skirt panel paintwork and vinyls peeling. Once the vinyl starts peeling, the water from the 'normal' bus wash then starts getting underneath the rest of the vinyl, resulting in it all peeling away. Rather than replace these swooshes with more swooshes, for little extra cost, a 'patch' can be applied with stripes instead of a swoosh. This patch covers a greater area of the skirt panel, therefore is less likely to be damaged by the wheel wash. It also updates the buses into the current 'house style', where a full repaint cannot be justified given the age of the vehicles.