Extended Closure

DA20Pilot:

I would think that any certification of a revised design might require some metallurgy experts...

Could get those for free right here on PointBuzz.

In a presser prior to the ride opening, Zamperla talked about TT2 “pushing the boundaries of engineering”.

Could it be that they pushed it too far and won’t be able to recover?

I can say that on our way out last night we noticed that at least 3 of the seats on the silver train were missing.

I have no idea of this is new or exciting, or both, or neither. Just something we noticed as we were headed to the front of the park one last time.

I’m wondering if the modification they are making is resulting in other necessary modifications as well that weren’t necessary prior to the issue being discovered.

Whew. What a sentence.

Something caught my eye recently and made me think. It looks as if Silver train is the only one in need of more work (other than Blue not having any wheels). Not only that, it's only the 3 inner cars of Silver that are seeing work done on them. Last Thursday and Friday, cars 3 and 4 were disassembled/reassembled before they did a few test runs. No more testing happened after that and those same cars were once again disassembled/reassembled yesterday and today. So something about Silver is off. Then a thought occurred to me. What if something happened during the initial testing back in December? And after checking out the PitStop video that highlighted that first series of testing, I noticed something else.

So the 3 problematic Silver cars were part of the Frankentrain AND there was blue tape present at that time. It could obviously be coincidence but it's definitely still interesting.

But if the silver was the only one in need of more work, why wouldn’t they open up the ride with the other trains?

Other coasters consistently run down a train or two.

Sure. But not an incredibly popular coaster that has been both heavily promoted by the park and praised by those who've been on it. They obviously have reasons for what they're doing.

TTD 120mph:

Sure. But not an incredibly popular coaster that has been both heavily promoted by the park and praised by those who've been on it. They obviously have reasons for what they're doing.

Maybe silver is just the worst out of the three in whatever it’s doing.

Also can you check your PM please

^Ooo Adam's got someone sliding into his PMs

It’s all of the trains. They just don’t have a tool in their toolbox that can modify all three at once ;)

In my professional expertise building coasters and running amusement parks, you can’t change train design unless you hit the red closed button first. But then there’s no way to know the excitement level of the new train without test runs.

*new wheel bogies increase excitement level +2

Another interesting thing to consider is that when this thing likely/hopefully re-opens in the middle of summer is that maintenance will immediately be thrown into their next potential hurdle of running TT2 in prolonged high heat for the first time. Being down all but a brief period of the spring operating season and at least the first month of summer has eliminated any ramp-up time of having a random warm day here and there to see if operating it in 85-90+ degree temps happens to aggravate anything on the ride's trains or propulsion systems. They figured similar issues out on TTD by turning the launch sled track into a de-facto water coaster, but there could be additional modifications on the horizon for this beast when it reopens as well.

I'm not in the "Aluminum was a bad idea" camp as of yet, but it is interesting to note that the thermal expansion coefficient of Aluminum is 3x greater than that of steel, especially in light of the apparent tight clearances between train and stator.

The understanding, predicting, and compensating for the linear expansion coefficient of aluminum vs steel is well documented.

It is doubtful that the engineers, fabricators, or inspection labs neglected to account for this.

Well, I'd agree except for the fact that the ride closed after 8 days because the vehicles needed to be reengineered lolol. So the engineers obviously missed something. What that something is, who knows.

^^ Sheldon Cooper has entered the chat.

Sheldon Cooper Presents: Fun with Wheel Assemblies

Send it to this NE Ohio treasure.