(05 Jan 2017, 3:16 pm)RBZ 5459 wrote Can only assume it's down to depot costings, maybe a slight bit of reluctance(!). Quite a bit of money has been spent on sorting 22570/74/79/80/81 and they're barely par, I can only assume they keep being put on the back burner resulting in slow progress. Suppose fettling 13 buses at once (inc E300), MANs at that, together with their remaining MAN-heavy fleet (which is costly enough), would pretty much blow Slatyford's monthly budget and wouldn't look great when Slatyford in particular is trying to curb it's costings. 

Being 18.240s I'd assume the Kinetics have gone the same way as the E300s with climbing maintenance and high depreciation costs making more economic repairs the best way to keep them ticking over, then offloading to other regions meaning their acquired condition could be questionable... Pretty ironic as the Stockton ones seem to go well still.

They have mixed quality between them, The majority are/seem wrecked and the one or two that are actually ok.

All internally are ok in my opinion, But the mechanical condition of a few of them is rather bad.

Ive noticed 22512 and 22514 have had their setup modified ( kickdown turned off is one of them ) to save there engine's from going bang, So thieve either had there engine's replaced in the past or there current engine is on the brink, Which is a familiar trait for MAN's! Unfortunately this has resulted in them becoming rather sluggish.
22513 is in a lot better condition than the above two, With it being in original condition mechanically and performs well, Though I felt it was on the brink of overheating when I last had it on the X47, Also had a few rather unhealthy squeals come from the gearbox too.

18.240's I believe are the heaviest single deck chassis that was on the market at the time, And MAN's aren't exactly fuel efficient either.

The Enviro300 bodied MAN's feel a lot better than the Kinetic's, But some rather unhealthy squeals etc coming from them too, I'm sure there is only one of them that sounds healthy.

There hit and miss to be honest.