top thrill top trouble
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I'm not an enthusiast. I just play one on message boards.
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Tim Brown (Cleveland Plain Dealer) about TTD: "Think of it like sex: a lot of anticipation for an instant of whoopee. But man, with whoopee this intense, who cares how long you have to wait?"
Michael Darling said:
Stop and think about the big picture. Yes, the ride is huge, and yes, it's a pretty new ride system. Problems are supposed to happen, but when a ride is thrown together over the course of a winter like the one we just had things are going to go wrong more frequently than they should.Something, somewhere, had to be functioning improperly to cause the cable to break so soon. Whether it was a faulty cable as Rideman suggested, small piece of debris on the launch sled track, a bad pully, or whatnot, something went wrong. Yes, it was inevitable, but to happen so soon is not a good thing.
The ride was not "thrown" together, and the winter weather has nothing to do with a cable break. If you look at the bolts holding the brake fins on, they even had time to paint lines on the bolts to allow for visual inspection. New machines very frequently cause problems because they are new. It takes time. I just spent $3500 rebuilding a boat engine, and couldn't use it this weekend because a leaking oil pressure switch was spraying oil into the engine compartment. Stuff happens, the cable probably had a manufacturing defect in it that caused it to break. It's not Intamin's or CP's fault, neither company makes cables.
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Colossus [1]
Nemesis: Inferno [6]
MagnumForce said:
Millie had serious damage when the cable snapped and it still only took a week.
MF's cable was only pulling the train at about 22 mph when it snapped though. So if it had serious damage I can only imagine what kind of damage a cable pulling a train at 120 mph is going to do.
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tambo
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Zero G Thrills - Moved and Improved
Failure of the tow rope or the return rope is an anticipated failure, and the design of the ride is such that when such a failure happens, that failure is accounted for and will happen in a 'safe' manner. It might tear the machinery up a bit, but it's designed not to hurt anybody.
Interesting to see Cedar Point going back to the same language they used when they broke a tow rope on Millennium Force. A 'separation'? Who came up with THAT?
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
RideMan said:
If you have a critical component with a particular service life, that component will usually fail almost immediately after being put into service, or it will last until (or beyond) the end of its service life. Assuming, of course, that nothing else causes trouble. So if a tow cable was faulty and going to fail, it makes sense it would fail early in the life of the ride.
John: Read, re-read and read Dave's comment again. I think that it illustrates my point better than I did. It's not a BFD.
And how funny that Coasterdude04 would mention the chain breaks on SFA's Superman. Have I ever mentioned I was on the second of those breaks? I was there, got the walk down. One of my most memorable experiences. Though after two chain breaks early in the ride's life, has it happened since? Not that I know of.
The great thing about it was that people were having the same ridiculous discussions back then (all this nonsense about design flaws, curses to Intamin, etc.). Let's be honest... this is no different. You guys are making a big deal about the most low-tech component on the ride failing. Stuff happens. The only reason anyone cares is because 1) It's Cedar Point and 2) It's Dragster.
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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"Pray that your country undergoes recovery!" - KMFDM
*** This post was edited by Jeff 5/27/2003 9:46:07 AM ***
Comatose said:
If they'd bought the cable from B&M it wouldn't have broken. When will Cedar Fair learn?!
Um, no. The fact that the cable "comes from" Intamin has nothing to do with it. Odds are that even if B&M DID build a cable-driven system, the actual manufacture of the cable would be farmed out to some 3rd party, quite possibly even the same supplier that provided this cable.
As RideMan pointed out, frequently components like this will break pretty early, or last well beyond their rated service life. This is why most computer manufacturers proudly tout that they have a "burn-in" phase in construction -- if a card or chip is going to fail, odds are it will fail early. So they run the computer nonstop for a period (typically 24 or 48 hours) to shake out those early failures. There could very well have been some small weak point in this cable which failed "early".
Now, if this becomes a repeating pattern, then it's possible that there's another factor at work, but for now, I suspect Cedar Fair and Intamin will just replace the cable and move on.
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--Greg, aka Oat Boy
My page
"Mary Jane, don't you cry, you can give it a try, Again when the sequel comes out" -- Weird Al, Ode to a Superhero
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BMCOASTER
bmcoaster@wi.rr.com
There are a few exceptions to this rule. My favorite is disk drives, which tend to fail when things get warm in the box. Students arrive at Michigan in the fall, join research groups in late fall, and get machines. At this time, the building is rather cool. By mid-June, the building heats up, and disks suddenly start to fail. Luckily, most disk manufacturers warranty for 3 years, but this is yet another reason for backing up early and often. ;)
So, it should be expected that several things fail early in a ride's deployment. Pre-open testing can get some of this, but nothing can match real in-service use, when unplanned things can happen. (e.g. very unbalanced trains, etc. etc.). If the ride is still having these problems late season or this time next year, then perhaps the sky really will be falling. However, until then, everyone needs to relax.
Speaking of S:ROS/SFA, I rode it about seven times yesterday. Chain worked well all day. ;)
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http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~bnoble/
*** This post was edited by Brian Noble 5/27/2003 10:27:18 AM ***
If you want to see pictures to help you better understand they are here:
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com/galleries/CP_03-05-26/default.asp
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Scott W. Short
scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com
Jeff said:
Stuff happens. The only reason anyone cares is because 1) It's Cedar Point and 2) It's Dragster.
While I do agree with this, one need only look to the threads expressing the outrage that SF parks' waterslide complexes weren't ready on time to see that people get worked up over little things. I am sure CP will have the issues worked out asap, but it would have been nice had they not happened at all.
Fafolguy
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I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, 'cause every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right. -Ani Difranco
Maybe it'll be fixed by the weekend, and they can hit it post-SRM (Though it could mean giving up time at IB, which isn't a sacrifice I'd be willing to make!)
Edit: FWIW, the woman at the CP info line said the ride was down this morning but was 'expected' to be back up today. She didn't know anything about the cable breaking, though, so the info is clearly suspect (plus, we all know those people truly know jack squat about what's really going on). Here's hoping Rob & co. will ascend into TTD heaven later today.
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Maihama, Maihama Desu
*** This post was edited by ThemeDesigner 5/27/2003 12:03:45 PM ***
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Yeah, if coasters WEREN'T men we'd have Raging Cow instead!;)
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Goccvp1
SFGAm...When you need a good example of a SF park, this is where you look.
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