The highest rated and longest-running show on the network, "Man Caves" is set to begin its seventh season of transforming a room or garage in to "one man's dream" of Tim Taylor-esque "urgh, urgh, urhg" do-it-yourself goodness. And the Roush propane E-350 will be serve as a rolling toolbox to take hosts Jason Cameron and Tony Siragusa and the rest of the team to all of their on-air projects.

“Building the ‘Man Caves’ work van is a perfect opportunity to show off the organizational capabilities of the ROUSH/Knapheide Utility Vehicle,” said Chris Weiss, Knapheide vice-president of engineering. “Our partnership with ROUSH helps us provide efficient work solutions for our contractor customers with the advantage of using green technology like liquid propane.”

ROUSH said this week that its liquid propane-powered E-350 will help clean up the environment and introduce a “green” presence to the half-hour program. Propane burns cleaner than gasoline or diesel, with up to 20 percent less nitrogen oxide, up to 60 percent less carbon monoxide, 24 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and fewer particulate emissions when compared to gasoline. Propane also plays a strong role in lowering our national dependence on foreign oil as 90 percent of the propane used today comes from domestic sources of production.

Propane has begun gaining a foothold in the school bus industry over the past several years thanks to new funding sources by the likes of such champions as the Railroad Commission of Texas and its incentives and tax rebates, and an announcement by Collins Bus, the nation's largest manufacturer of small school buses, that it would produce the first factory propane school bus. The Collins NexBus propane-powered school bus is currently in production after receiving full certification earlier this summer.

When Stender decided to add a little horsepower to a school bus, he went beyond using fuel additives or engine enhancements. After equipping it with a 42,000 horsepower General Electric J-79 Jet Engine taken from a F4 Phantom Fighter Jet, the owner of Indy Boys, Inc., painted flames on the side of the yellow bus and named it the School Time Jet-Powered School Bus. It has been deemed the world's fastest school bus with good reason, with a top speed of more than 300 mph.

Stender takes the bus along to air shows around the country, promoting the message, “Jets are hot, drugs are not!” When Stender hits the gas, the only thing chasing after his bus are the 75-foot flames. Could you imagine how much time you could slice off of your morning runs with this red-hot yellow bus?

John Whelan of School District #73 in Kamloops, British Columbia, located about 150 miles northeast of Vancouver, has used his aptly-named blog "School Bus Mechanic" to share wisdom from his school bus garage on a variety of topics, many of which are quite complex. But today's edition takes a step back to look at more mundane activities that can prove to be just as challenging.

"When you read them you may think they're too simple, but you would be surprised how the mind thinks sometimes when you're faced with a breakdown," he says.

Whelan's "Top 3 Tips for Mechanic Troubleshooting" promote the best possible results in whatever job technicians are working on. The first thing mechanics should do is set the exact sequence of events. This means getting the whole story and finding a starting point, then working through it logically.

"If you undertake it wrong by not listening or using your common sense then you could have problems going down the right path from the beginning," Whelan adds.

Next, you need to check the source of the problem. Skip this step and you're headed for embarrassment, expense and complications. Last but not least, use your resources. School bus technicians know full there is a manual for everything, and know the tools you will need.

How does your shop diagnose and work through a maintenance issue?

Since it made the Hino announcement last November, Starcraft has been tight-lipped about the direction it might eventually pursue when it comes to alt fuels, saying only that the first Type C would be a straight diesel utilizing SCR technology to meet EPA emissions requirement. Up until now, IC Bus and Thomas Built Buses have produced the only school buses operating on hybrid drivetrains for the large bus market. But that could change sometime after the completion of the new Starcraft-Hino project.

Toyota Motor Corporation and Hino Motors are partnering with Showa Shell Sekiyu, otherwise known as the Shell Oil Group, to pilot a new kind of diesel-electric hybrid transit bus fueled by a mixture of Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD) No. 1 and biodiesel No. 2. Fischer Tropsch itself is an ultra-low sulfur mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons that typically originates from coal, natural gas or biomass, the latter two being the preferred sources for vehicle consumption.

The trial is set to begin this month and will run through the end of this year on an existing Tokyo transit route, and it's obviously expensive as the project is subsidized by the Japanese government. One aim is to verify that the FTD-biodiesel mixture can be used at extended intervals without modifying fuel hoses, fuel injectors and the like.

Could it eventually become the latest route to realizing a reduced dependence on foreign oil and a cleaner environment? Such technologies, once proven and perfected, have a market but obviously need to meet the requirements of supply and demand before they could ever become truly affordable for fleet operators, especially those at cash-strapped school districts.

That's been one hurdle IC and Thomas still have to clear with their respective hybrids. Market saturation will come, and so will affordable alt fuel solutions.

Automotive News reported last week that, as GM is investigating ways to get back their market share and improve the company's overall outlook, it could be courting Freightliner or Navistar's International Truck division. Either move could prove interesting to the Type A school bus market.

What also could turn some heads are ruminations that GM could be interested in a outright acquisition of a competitor.