Will we see more reprofiled Arrows?

Wow. That picture of the chassis is one of the coolest things I haev ever seen. How did you get it?

*** This post was edited by (SF)Great American on 9/19/2002. ***

I bet Morgan could reprofile many of the old Arrow loopers without having to do too much work. They're not all that poorly designed, they just have a few major flaws.

First off, if they used the old Arrow chasis to create the new PR trains, why couldn't they do that to all Arrow trains. The trains themselves, not to mention being horribly uncomfortable, seem to be built very rigidly and don't "ride" the track very well. That's what I think creates the roughness, especially in the twisting inversion elements (i.e. batwing, corkscrew). It's as though the wheels need shocks or something.

The other flaw I see with many Arrow loopers is horrible transitions. The elements themselves seem constructed well, but it's as though the ride designers just put in the elements to have them there, and didn't think very much about the track in between.

Example: The first hill and vertical loops on GASM (SFGAdv) are pretty smooth, but then there's that rough corner in between. Also, the midbrakes kill the speed so much that going through the batwing is far too slow and painful. By the time you hit the corkscrews, you are going so slow you seem to hang in them, not to mention the headbanging transitioning out of the batwing and into the first corkscrew.

If Morgan can make the same gauge track as Arrow, as they did with PR, taking out parts of the ride and replacing them shouldn't be much of a problem. I would suggest making the turn after the 1st vertical loop much more banked and smooth. Then, they could replace the midcourse brakes with a helix to slow the train down (heck, they could even keep the brakes as long as they don't put them on so heavy). I would also suggest replacing the corkscrews with a couple of bunny hills like the end of PR. That would add a whole new element to the ride and raise the excitement factor. I think adding a new element - airtime - to the ride would more than make up for deleting two rough inversions, especially when there's already 5 before it and the ride doesn't really need to retain it's "7-loop" status.

I'm not very technically proficient, so if there's a technical problem with these things, please feel free to point it out. But it seems like it would work. It seems to me these few changes would be much less expensive than tearing down the ride entirely and building something from scratch, especially now that SF has so many financial problems, and since most of the Arrow culprits that need these treatments are at SF parks. But alas, they'll probably do something dumb and corporate as they always do. I digress.

~me*** This post was edited by nelson324 on 9/19/2002. ***

Edit: Absimillard - I didn't know that such a thing was tried before. Thanks for the insight. Since you probably know more about techical things than I, what mechanisms do coaster trains use to remain smooth? Is it just a matter of maintaining fresh wheels? What contributes to making those Arrow trains so "rigid?"

*** This post was edited by nelson324 on 9/20/2002. ***

Frankly, I think Shock Wave (a virtual twin to GASM at SFGAdv) would be fine if all they did was give it lap-bar only trains. Other than that, my only complaint with it is the turn int othe mid-course brakes. Make that a right-hand 275 degree helix, and the ride woudl be awesome. Oh, and we'd have to keep the brakes on Shcok Wave. It's not too often anymore, but they still occasionally run all three trains.

Shocks on Arrow trains? Whould not help, unfortunately. Vekoma tried doing that to one train of Goudurix and the ride in that train was more violent than before! Vekoma mounted the wheels directly into the running wheels.

Personally, I'd much prefer to see Arrow doing the retrofitting of their rides, rather than Morgan. Morgan had Okamoto, and his modified AutoCAD that some like to think is the greatest piece of engineering software on the face of earth. From what I've heard, Okamoto is now freelance, or at least, not working for Morgan.

Arrow has proven over the past 5 years or so that they aren't the same company of the 70's, 80's and 90's. They're making seamless transitions, a wider range of elements and certainly improved comfort in the trains a bit.

I'd like to see most, a redesign of the upper chassis on Arrow trains, with a better restraining system in place, it doesn't neccessarily have to be a lapbar, a well designed OTSR that takes into account the view and slight freedom of the riders would be great. I'd love to see the sides and front of the trains reduced to minimum, if nothing. Arrow coasters ride very low on the track, much lower than the 'T' shaped track of Intamin, B&M and so on. To utilise this 'lowness', by creating an unrestricted view of the track around the riders, the speed, combined with the very close track, would create a spectacular visual - I'm sure much better than that of the Floorless coaster.

I'd rather Arrow did it, to keep the rides closer to original - Phantom's Revenge isn't an Arrow style ride by any means, is is very Morgan, which isn't a bad thing, but I'd rather the classic Arrow coasters around the place stayed Arrow.

I know Arrow got contacted by one of the Australian parks regarding the reprofiling of a non-Arrow ride, because they were so impressed with the quality of their Arrow coaster (a mid-90's 150ft looper).

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So what if the best coaster in Australia is a second hand Arrow?

I think Phantoms Revenge is great but I would rather see Morgan make coasters then retrofit other companys rides. Also Arrow's coasters arent that rough IMO compared to Premier with the OTSR. I do think Arrows would be better with lap bars but ever since Premier started doing it if a coaster has 1 bump people say it needs to be retrofitted by Premier. We have people that come back from parks now and say well I rode Medusa today and felt a bump when are they getting lap bars on that thing. Besides I think Togo would be the next company Premier took care of because they did some work on there coasters anyway. Instead of getting Premier lap bars on Arrows and Togos wouldn't you rather a a new Premier launched anyway.

*** This post was edited by medusafanatic on 9/20/2002. ***