X difficulties

Good answer.....Did you get to work on X?

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Judgement, Superiority (ego), intolerance, and Hostility.........Makes CB the "Jenny Jones for "Coaster Trekkies" LOL

Oh yeah,

I could write a book on what I know about X,

One of the most memorable parts was when Alan Schilke came up to me and said "did you notice who was in my office" and as Alan used to get lots of visitors, I kind of dismissed it, he when on to tell me it was one of the B&M guys Walter Bollinger I think, he was interested in the X and was Impressed that we had taken on the engineering effort in such a short time. I then asked Alan what he thought of Arrow and Alan said he likes Arrow because we aren't copying his ideas like those sob's at vekoma (refering to the SLC at the time) it was really funny, it was fun to work there. Alan was a great boss.

Out of boredom, I figured I'd try to see what kinds of loads the wheels on X have to take. So far, I've seen two completely different weights listed for the X train.

CoasterGlobe says the trains weigh 5 tons a piece. - http://www.coasterglobe.com/news/sp2002.cfm

ECC says the trains weigh 27 tons a piece. - http://www.coasterclub.org/fd/58/x.shtml

So, given CoasterGlobe's weight, plus 28 riders averaging 150 lbs, and the stated max G forces (that I assume are in the pull-out of the skydive drop and into the first raven) of 4Gs, it's supporting 56,800 lbs.

Given ECC's weight, plus riders at 4Gs, it's supporting 232,800 lbs.

ECC's weight seems a bit off to me, so I'm pretty sure the former is probably a more reasonable answer.

Even with 56,800 lbs, standing out in the mid-day So. Cal. sun, I can't say that I'm surprised that it seems to chew up wheels.

Time for some wealthy philanthropist to fund building carbon fiber trains to get that weight down! :)

This all comes with the caveat that a) I was bored at work and really don't know what I'm doing and b) I have no idea what kinds of loads other coasters put on their wheels.

I saw on the discovery channel that the trains are 25 tons.

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Old arrows might be rough, but they are the most gorgous rides to date.

The heat issue is interesting, because i thought i saw some black bars running from the left side of the lift to one of the rails. Anyways, the park is definitely not happy with the ride. One of the guest relations people said, "You want it back east? you can take it!"

So what days does X run?

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Judgement, Superiority (ego), intolerance, and Hostility.........Makes CB the "Jenny Jones for "Coaster Trekkies" LOL

I can only confirm that it's closed on Wednesdays, and according to rollerEastCoaster's TR, it's also closed on Mondays and Tuesdays now. I would imagine Thursdays as well.

It's been reported that Fridays are iffy, and Saturday and Sunday are a sure thing. In my experience with weekends over the past two months, especially given that things are warming up, ride it sometime in the morning on early afternoon. Even if they start the day with two trains, you can expect it to drop to one train operation by 4pm, at which point capacity more than halves. With two trains, expect a line from the beginning of the queue area to take about 1-1/2 to two hours, with one train, expect at least 3-1/2, probably more like 4-1/2.

This is *exactly* why S&S/Arrow will never sell another 4-D. No park is ever going to buy this kind of ride when they see the kind of headache X has been. Stan and Alan can attempt to convince parks that they've fixed the issues all they want, but no park is going to buy another ride without some sort of guarantee. And in these cases, a guarantee is completely impossible. Looks like everyone's just going to have to wait for B&M's version.

-Nate

Coasterdude that seems extremely unlikely. Prototypes have issues. Fact of life. They get ironed out in subsequent coasters if there are any. All parks know this. At worst they'll have to sell a smaller one at something of a discount. Make no profit on that one, let the industry go "huh, i guess the problems are resolved" and away they go.

I don't see an B&M version happening, personally. It'd require a new track style. The one thing B&M has staunchly refused to to is make a new track style. B&M makes very conservative coasters very well. Why do they need to make this radical departure?

The problem, as I see it, is the strength that needs to be built into a 4D train to hold the arms increases the weight significantly, and that seems to be the biggest problem. Any weight reduction measure would be very useful, but even moreso, some new wheel coating. How possible would it be to come up with some polyurethane substance that conducts heat more efficiently into wheels with fins all along the rim so they act as giant heatsinks? Something that could dissapate the heat from one of those wheels quickly would be invaluable for X right now, and I think is the key to getting it running reliably.

I know I have a two track mind (coasters and race cars), but F1 technology may again work for this. F1 brakes run incredibly high temperatures (anyone see the Canandian race last weekend? The rotors were glowing BRIGHT red on some of those cars...), but as soon as the car stops for an appreciable amount of time (read: 10 or more seconds) the brakes run serious risk of boiling the brake fluid and igniting the braking system. The key is keeping air running over them, and keeping as much surface area as possible on the rotors to dispell heat.

Something like a heat-sink type system for the wheels, plus a polyurethane coating that conducts large amounts of heat into the wheels themselves, would be great when the coaster is moving at a high rate of speed. Even air ducts to force more air onto the wheels might help. Then, in the station, keeping fans aligned where the wheels are when the coaster is stopped, blowing more air over the wheels might help. Something to keep those guys cool, and keep the wheels from breaking. Other than that, X seems to be running pretty reliably now.

All that air technology that you speak of sounds great... the only problem is that would cost $$$ on R&D. Granted, it might help the ride in the long run, however, Six Flags probably doesn't have that money budgeted to research all of these necessary upgrades.

IMO, what they should do is partner w/ S&S now and try to work to get the bugs worked out and maybe get some 4d's in their other parks. This would bennefit both companies, SF would get more 4D's (which most everyone loves) and S&S would get reliability (hopefully) to add to their sales sheets for these.

Although B&M may not create a new track style, who is to say that they can't use their existing track to make a 4-D coaster? Look what they did with the flying coaster technology and I'm sure that they can come up with a radical train design for a 4-D ride. B&M doesn't build conservative, parks ask B&M to build conservative.

What happens when a wheel on X overheats anyways?

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I play in a really awful garage band, but it's still fun.

onceler: Development of polyurethane that conducts heat better (assuming it doesn't conduct heat very well now, I'm not too familiar with its properties in that respect) would cost quite a bit, but the other things wouldn't be all that expensive. As is, they seem to have two types of wheels for X, ones that are completely smooth from center to edge, and ones that have ribs/fins all the way around. Those would be better, they have more surface area. Then, an air duct could simply be a plastic conical shaped addition that forces air onto the wheels. Easy enough (though it would increase wind resistance, possibly making the chance of valleying that much higher.)

Finally, adding some fans to the station to blow on the wheels wouldn't cost *that* much more, compared to the total cost of the ride.

Craig: I would assume the polyurethane around the wheel degrades and cracks open, either just making the ride suddenly become extremely rough, or possibly making it the ride go steel wheel on steel rail, which probably isn't particularly good for either of the two. That's my guess, anyhoo...

Comatose said:
Coasterdude that seems extremely unlikely. Prototypes have issues. Fact of life. They get ironed out in subsequent coasters if there are any. All parks know this. At worst they'll have to sell a smaller one at something of a discount. Make no profit on that one, let the industry go "huh, i guess the problems are resolved" and away they go.

It's not going to happen. No park is ever going to buy a 4-D given the problems that X had. These are not just "issues." The ride opened several months late, was down for four months last summer, and is once again hardly operating at all. Most prototypes have problems, sure. But the problems X has had are basically unheard of. No park is going to throw away millions on a ride that's going to cost even more in maintenance in the future, and that's hardly going to operate. No park is just going to buy one "on good faith" and hope that it works because every park in the world has seen the SFMM disaster. Everyone patiently waited to see how X would turn out before placing any orders for their own Fourth Dimension. Now that those parks have seen how it happens, they're certainly not going to buy.

I don't see an B&M version happening, personally. It'd require a new track style. The one thing B&M has staunchly refused to to is make a new track style. B&M makes very conservative coasters very well. Why do they need to make this radical departure?

First, who says B&M needs to create a totally new track style? Second, who says B&M has never changed their track style? The majority of B&M track differs ride to ride (hyper to inverted to dive machine, etc). When B&M creates their version, I'm guessing it will be a minor modification like that. B&M has never "staunchly refused" to use a new track style, there's just never been a need! Why change just for the sake of change when what you're using works perfectly? B&M will jump on the 4-D design because it was big in the public eye, and it's time somebody shows the world how it's done correctly.

-Nate

That ride should have never been built, Its too advanced for our time...They should have waited a few years and planned this out a little better. This is a mistake on Six flags side and arrow. Both sides rushed this coaster. That ride was doomed from the very beginning, SF will wind up throwing away so much money for maintenence. Who knows, But X's future is in serious doubt. And the future of 4D's in general. If B&M doesnt pick up the design or if arrow doesnt improve the design, X will be the first and last coaster of its kind. Basically any prototype SFMM has ever tried had serious problems. Starting with S:TE.
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-Dennis
www.Drinkduff.com

From the concept to the actual ride only took a year (from what I read). Give Arrow/SFMM a break. With or without bugs at least the coaster was made. Again I must remind . If it wasn't for Arrow this 4D concept wouldn't have been made period end of story.

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Judgement, Superiority (ego), intolerance, and Hostility.........Makes CB the "Jenny Jones for "Coaster Trekkies" LOL

It will be interesting to see how B&M make their own version of a 4-D (if indeed they do). Im just waiting for them to come up with some crazy idea that is simple, but is something that nobody has ever thought of. Kind of perfecting the 4D the same way they did with the flyer (a new way of getting those seats in the flying position that was simple and reliable).

B&M could just take the techonolgy from inverts and flyers and hybrid those technologies in a suspended way. Having the track above the train.

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Judgement, Superiority (ego), intolerance, and Hostility.........Makes CB the "Jenny Jones for "Coaster Trekkies" LOL

Yea, I'm saying arrow should have done the 4D, But they should have planned it out better and took more time to design it. If you say the ride took a year to design from the concept, Thats really rushing things.
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-Dennis
www.Drinkduff.com

Any new ride is going to bring tons of problems if it's never been done before. SFGAM is a prime example-our freakin deja vu has been plagued with CONSTANT problems and even V2 had a few issues in the first year. Granted, SF seems to have a running thing here these last few years making bad decisions on rides. Heck, even Cedar Point is having problems with TTD. Now at least CP makes an effort to post on the website and attempt to communicate the problems with the general public, but they're not perfect.

I personally hope they iron this thing out sometime soon. I'd love to make it out to MM and take a swing on X, but it seems like my chances are slipping. *sigh*