2020 Chevrolet Silverado MD Introduces Shuttle Bus, School Bus Packages

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1. 

   I personally can’t wait to customize it into limousine.
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2. 

   Hopefully this piques the interest of motorhome manufacturers. I’d love to see a Class C Plus motorhome built on this chassis.
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   1. 

      Well, there’s already a dedicated motorhome package offered on this (these?) truck.

      It’s RPO code PCH – Motorhome Package and requires a motorhome transmission MBW, ME0, MIX or MF0.
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3. 

   Where’s the pickup bed?
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   1. 

      It’s a chassis cab. You upfit your own stuff aft of the cab.
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4. 

   GM is ignoring the California school bus business. Why? Because diesel fueled school buses are outlawed in California a few years ago. With a population about the same size as all of Canada, there could be a huge boost to sales if GM offered the 2009 new design 8.0 liter big block gas engine in the medium duty chassis. Or stroke the new 2020 gas pickup truck 6.6 liter engine to get more cubes and much more torque. That will make the torque happen at a much lower RPM and give about 515 to 550 pounds feet of torque. Most municipal and state governments have propane pump facilities for operating some of their trucks, street sweepers and cars on very cheap, clean LPG propane. The same version of the stroked 6.6 gas engine can be used for natural gas CNG, for those who don’t travel outside of the school zones. The CNG systems can use a slow fill overnight system, which allows the full 10 hours needed to refill trucks and street sweepers to fill multiple tanks without the driver standing beside it. All the driver has to do with those Slow Fill CNG system is unhook the CNG hose when he shows up for work in the morning. By the way, CNG is 120 octane and propane is 105 octane, so the very high compression ratio ( 10.8 ) of the 6.6 liter gas engine will run perfectly.
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   1. 

      That’s true, but I will wager in a year or two GM will have a gaseous fueled school bus chassis version of the Silverado medium duty.

      L.A. Unified recently purchased a number of International school buses powered by PSI 8.8L propane engines.
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      1. 

         Bob, that 8.8 liter PSI propane engine is the 2009 new design big block, that GM was planning to install in the 2010 medium duty trucks. GM closed that Janesville factory that made the mediums, so the new design big block 8.0, was never installed in any GM trucks for the public to buy. PSI just put a longer stroke crank in it to get the 8.8 liters and a lot more lower RPM torque. The difference between the older 8.1 liter big block and the new 2009 design 8.0 liter, is that the new design was specifically changed to allow full water jackets between each cylinder, because propane burns hotter than Hades because it is about 37 percent hydrogen by weight. Thomson Automotive in Michigan, did the development and dyno work on the new design 8.0 and he got 525 Lbs feet of torque at just 1800 RPM, with a square engine, with a 10 to one compression ratio. Maximum HP was set to happen at just 2800 RPM, which are the two standard RPM ratings for industrial engines, max torque at 1800 RPM and max HP at 2800 RPM. It had a 4 1/4 inch crank and a 4.27 inch bore. Both Brian and i tried to convince GM to run a longer stroke but during the testing, the 4.5 inch crank would flex too much. Guess why? The idiot bean counters only tested cast iron cranks. PSI uses a forged crank, so there is no issue with flexing, especially as all the school buses only use an automatic transmission and never rev above about 3300 RPM. We ran 380 cars on propane here in Toronto and GM in Oshawa always begged us for the worn out engines. The problem was, the engines running on propane didn’t wear out because propane is such a clean fuel. We ran them for 5 years and they would have from 750,000 km to 800,000 km ( that’s 466,000 miles to 497,000 miles )when we sold the cars off. We never had to replace any internal engine parts, even the valves, because there was no carbon on them, meaning less wear. We used only semi-synthetic oil in our fleet, but used 10W40 semi during the summer and 10W30 semi during the winter. They ran so hot, even with a cold 180 degree thermostat in summer, that they would burn off 1/2 quart of coolant each 12 hour shift. That’s why we used only 100 percent water in the rads during the hot summer, because they run much cooler than the mix of water and anitifreeze coolant when you burn LPG. We even had to put the factory power steering coolers on them, that were standard on the police pursuit Chevy’s, to keep the underhood temps down. Today, just like the past 40 years, propane at the pump is only 40 to 50 percent of the price of gasoline. We used truck oil filters because they were twice the capacity of those used for cars, to keep the engine as cool as possible. For trucks, we tell customers to buy an aftermarket engine oil cooler and a double oil filter adaptor and run 2 deep filters to help keep them as cool as possible. Oh, yes the PSI engines also use a much bigger oil pan, to help cool those propane buses.
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      2. 

         The Fuel Economy on those Propane School Buses that are manufactured by BlueBird really suck, to do a Field Trip 100 miles one way and back just won’t happen without the need to refuel in comparison to a Regular Diesel, environmentalwise this bus may have an advantage but certainly not for long distance travel, would be interesting if GM could shatter that barrier in the middle of the road.
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5. 

   If school buses will be assembled from such cool materials, then students will be delighted, just as students will be delighted with a best writing platforms, which contains the best essay writing services, you can just go in and choose the service that you liked the most.
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