About Fun Fleet Bus #625

George Powell, the superintendent of LA SCRTD favored Flexibles over GM. His reasoning was that GM had stolen so many of his ideas and incorporated them into their buses, and that didn't make him happy. In fact, GM would send people to visit Powell's shop in Los Angeles and would secretly photograph changes made on his Flexible fleet. GM would then incorporate the stolen changes into the production of their buses, engines, and transmissions. 

In March of 1963 LA SCRTD purchased 300 buses to replace the streetcars. Flexible could only made 200 to meet the deadline so GM got the last 100; the 5303s or "5000 class". At the time of sale George told GM that Los Angeles would require their buses to have V8 engines. GM laughed and said they would never put a V8 into their New Looks as they were not designed for that. So in 1965Flexible got the bid for over 100 buses which came with V8 Cummins engines; GM was devastated. They actually came to Los angeles and rode on one of the new Flexible 6000s as it ran down the freeway at 70MPH. The story goes that the engineers went back to Pontiac and ordered the foremen to take the next 5303 off the line and put a V8 in it That bus was bus #625.

A V8 power plant would not fit into a standard 5303 body. To get around this, they lowered the engine cradle to make it fit. They also had to modify the bumper brackets for the lowered engine. Note: All New Look buses made after 1966 had new style bumpers to accommodate this as well as the lowered engine cradles. Additionally, the first 3 speed transmissions were introduced and #625 got a VS-2-8 version with a modified (lower) gear ratio. Reason being was that San Francisco was about to order 400 buses and they had to qualify to run on the steep hills. 

The bus was modified and went to San Francisco as a demonstrator. GM kept ownership and it was leased to AC Transit for many years. San Francisco also modified it by installing a VH 2-speed into it.

After purchasing #625 from AC Transit, I converted it back using a VS-2-8 transmission with the low V6 gear ratio and updated the engine to N60 injector. Wow would it run! Now it was back to its original condition...but there were problems.

The only problem I had with #625 was it not going into gear when cold. This was a big problem when the VS-2 transmissions were introduced. This is why, when the Muni buses were delivered, they had the push buttons for the air shifter to make it easy to go into gear. I modified #625 with an air shifter but used the original shift selectors to make it look original.