Dragster shut down after riders injured by debris

That was a good summary in the last paragraph, Lord Gonchar.

If you can read through my long winded rants, sometimes I actually make a point ;)

Gonch- Good call on the whole "opposite of the MF hysteria." You're absolutely right on that regard.

Impulse-ive- Brett, I agree with you, too... IF it were definitely the ride tearing itself apart, and IF it were definitely a design flaw, wouldn't at the very least CF have closed Xcellerator, or Intamin closed Xcellerator and Storm Runner until they figured out how to prevent this problem again?

I dunno just what to make of this whole deal yet. All I know is Intamin is taking a beating in the reputation department lately.

Jeessh...I was not attempting to compare this to a plane crash. My point was that dragster and jet aircraft are both very complex pieces of engineering so therefore there is a learning curve.

They didn't give up on planes because of problems and they got better. They won't give up on dragster either.

Here is another article on the subject.

http://www.nbc17.com/travelgetaways/3528643/detail.html

A few things, first:

tricktrack said: "We all know (except Coasterguy) that all the eighties "Intamin" rides are actually Giovanola products."

Uh... First of all, that isn't true. Not all of the rides in the '80's that Intamin manufacturered came directly from Giovanola. As you even noted, Schwarzkopf was one of the many other designers that they had.

On top of that, exactly where did I refer to any Intamin rides from the 80's in my post. Lemme see here... drop towers, Impulse Coasters, SFNE Superman, SFDL Superman, CP Millenium, CP TTD, etc.. Did I miss the boat somewhere? Wait a minute, I just had to check the records to realize that all of these rides came out directly from Intamin's design team in the last 14 years.

What do 80's rides from Intamin have to do with this discussion. Moving right along...

tricktrack also said, "IF the cable was faulty and it was supplied by an external company, than this company is to blame. But even then there are so many unsanswered questions for which we don´t have any answers."

By that logic, if a car manufactuer decided to go out and put bike tires on their car, and the wheels were found to blow apart, the bike tire manufacturer should be at blame for not providing a tire that was strong enough to work with a car. I'm sure that the company providing the cable for TTD did not come into Intamin and tell them that they had this great idea for a cable, and that perhaps they could use it. Chances are, Intamin came to them and asked them to make a certain type of cable. They did, and viola it goes on the ride.

Jeff said "That's just not true. We've all seen the TV special on Discovery. The system was designed by American engineers from Universal, to the extent they were shown experiementing with prototypes. "

Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think B&M definitely had a hand in the fabrication and implementation of the launch system, even working with the IoA engineers. If the system that they created wasn't liked by B&M, I don't think B&M would've installed the coaster until it was.

At the same time that Hulk was being constructed, B&M made it clear that they did not feel that LIM and LSM technology was reliable - I remember taking part in a discussion that cropped up because of this statement on another board at the time where it was debated if B&M could or couldn't actually use LIMs because of the weight of the trains.

I will admit that I have not seen that particular show, but from what I know of how some of the other B&M proto installations were created -- and that does fall into place, that is how I assume that it happened.

And lastly, for everyone that has said that this wouldn't be nearly as big of news if it hadn't happened on TTD... you're exactly right. But then again, when a ride like the Ragin' Cajun opened at Six Flags this year, it wasn't on the front page of USA Today. The media works in the same way all of the time. If this isn't a big deal, why was media day for the ride such a big deal to the same stations? And I guess it isn't, as the local news hasn't said a peep about the incident around here and I assume that applies to most of the country outside of Ohio.

*** This post was edited by thecoasterguy 7/14/2004 7:26:56 PM ***

What is this "B&M made it clear?" Were you there working for B&M or Universal Creative? If you weren't, you don't know!

It was a statement that either Walter or Claude had made in an interview during the time that Hulk was being built. I would have assumed that those guys knew what they were talking about, but I could be wrong seeing as how I don't work for them.

@ Coasterguy:

Back in the seventies and through the eighties Intamin was mostly a ride broker. They did conceive observation towers such as the oil-derrick for SFOT, the towers at SFMM and the Marriott Parks. They also came up with those double and triple ferris wheels and water-rides. However, they were no steel processing company. All the hardware was made by Giovanola which was a highly industrialized steel building company at that time.

Schwarzkopf never worked, built or designed for Intamin. His company was represented by Intamin in the USA, South America and Asia. They were responsible for bringing in the contracts and doing the trans-continental organization. Thats why many rides are "accidentally" credited to Intamin.

The first Intamin/Giovanola coasters appeared when Schwarzkopf was already fighting with his bad financial situation. The swiss (most certainly two engineers named Walter and Claude were at the forefront at Giovanola/Intamin) obviously thought that there was a market gap opening up.
Enter the four-abrest stand-up coasters and the Spacediver.

When B&M decided to go solo the coaster output from Intamin/Gio was rare until the late nineties.
By this time, it seemed that Intamin and Giovanola parted ways. Gio tried to get their foot in the market by exploiting the B&M legacy, while Intamin teamed up closely with the Stengel design-office to become the Intamin that we know now.

Sorry for the excursion :)

As for the cable/tire comparison:
I think that your argument does not reflect what I mean. I was referring to faulty materials, not to inadequate material. If Firestone tires blow up on Ford models, who is to blame?
That was all I wanted to say: At this point we just don´t know where the mistake occured. It could be a mistake in design, a mistake with the cable manufacturer, a combination of both or other factors we didn´t consider yet.

Tricktrack, thanks I actually do understand all of that and it is accurate to my knowledge too. I still don't understand where you are going with that, as I was only referring to rides since the "Giant Drop" model debuted, which was their first real hit and has proven to be pretty unreliable (how many of them do you see operating all sides now?)

I actually considered the Ford argument as a seperate thing too after I typed that. I guess you're right on that point :o)

And Jeff, to make sure this conversation stays on topic if you want to discuss Hulk any further, I'll be happy to do so in private messages :o)

Something came up when I was driving back from Geauga with my friend tonite. She's no enthusiast, but she is an engineer with a very inquisitive mind, just like me and we came up with this:

I know it's been said that the cable came from a separate company. Does anyone know how different the cables are between Xcel, Storm Runner and TTD? Also, is the cable an "off the shelf" model as in "ok, well this seems like it'll work", or did Intamin or whoever did the cable design actually say "we want it this way"?

Just food for thought from my ride home

Shameless plug: check out my GL TR!!! ;)

^ I am no engineer, but if I was in the position I would contact specialists in that field and would tell them what I need and what what the requested article should be able to do.
I just don´t believe that they went to a surplus store and ordered some steel cables. :)

The cable is one of the most important parts of the ride, so I think (hope) that some research has gone into it.

Well it just seems to me that while it might be one of the most important parts of the ride, it's also one of the easiest to acquire off the shelf, thereby saving some money. Since we know already that CP cheaped out on the cooling system and now has to resort to the high-technology garden hose approach, maybe they allowed Intamin to cut a corner when it comes to actually engineering the cable itself too ...