Extended Closure

JUnderhill:

...it is very easy for someone to look back and say "how the heck did they miss that, it was so obvious".

And the manufacturer could have very well not missed it as it was very obvious to them. But when they presented the problem to the client, the client could have easily said "Thank you for your observations. We are still moving forward with our opening date.". Those types of situations do happen, even with multi-million dollar rides, because at the end of the day, you are working for a client who gets to dictate how things are done. This is said from experience building, working with, and opening new million dollar attractions.

Or, it could have very well been a known issue that both Cedar Point and Zamperla thought they could manage and mitigate therefore they mutually agreed to move forward. The possible scenarios here are endless as we do not know what the discussions were or what the real issue even is.

I wonder how much this closure has affected Cedar Point's Coastermania plans. I would imagine quite a lot.

If you look at the itinerary, a TON of the special events planned for the day revolve around the ride, including a "Q&A about Top Thrill 2 featuring Mike Maney, VP of Maintenance and Construction".

Tickets were supposed to go on sale this week prior to the closure announcement, but no sign of that happening yet. I imagine CP wants as much clarity around the ride before they move forward with this.

Sure, and they don’t have to cancel that. There will still be plenty of Q’s- it’s just that the A’s will be slightly different.

Dave: I have a genuine 8" (9" with tire) Arrow wheel, and it does appear to be aluminum. It makes an ideal door stop.

Intamin was/is absolutely the lowest bidder on a great many projects. I know this to be true from a number of people who would know. And if you talk to mechanics and people who've had to maintain the things, they're over-engineered in all of the wrong ways, and often difficult to work on. The industry reputation is earned and is not controversial.

Kevinj:

Some perspective, as I still wonder how many people really remember the pain of Top Thrill Dragster.

Probably the same number of people who remember Sharpie weather maps and Tim Apple.

exander05:

If you look at the itinerary, a TON of the special events planned for the day revolve around the ride, including a "Q&A about Top Thrill 2 featuring Mike Maney, VP of Maintenance and Construction".

Why do I suspect that Q&A topic may be amended?

RideMan:

Setting those wheels in a good place, then using a resilient assembly to push them up against the track (not necessarily a spring; B&M and Intamin both use some kind of resilient compound to behave like a spring; not sure what Zamperla does) closes that gap and prevents the train from bouncing around, or at least that's the idea.
...
As nearly as I can tell, the only thing that changed was the switch from a constant weight train to a random weight train. If that's causing problems, then maybe the train needs to weigh more so that the passenger load is a smaller percentage of the total train weight. Or maybe it is wearing the road wheels more quickly than expected and causing the height of the train to vary, which would also affect the location of the guide wheels relative to the centerline of the rail. Or maybe the guide wheel pressure just needs to be increased.

This is what I'm curious about. From what I have seen / can tell, it appears that Zamperla is using spring loaded assemblies in the wheel bogies as you can see here:

I'm unsure if the springs are in combination with some other dampening / spring type material though.

While it was mentioned that weight distribution is a large differing variable between the test runs vs. general public / operation runs, I'm wondering about the environmental differences combined with weight. We saw the ride testing a lot throughout the colder winter months (starting in December).

Spring stiffness increases with colder temperatures, decreases with warmer temperatures.

Below the springs on the up stop wheels (and in the foreground on the guide wheels) you can see some form of dampener / absorber. What's interesting is that I've noticed in various clips that some of these have been black in color, some have been red. Color difference could mean nothing, or it could mean they are some other compound of material that they were using / testing.

If the tolerances become too great, misalignment will happen which could cascade to other components causing material stress, wheel wear, LSM clearance/tolerances issues, etc.

I'm hoping we learn more details on what happened and what is changed once the issue is solved.

Here's another angle of the wheels from November at IAAPA.

Whatever it is they need to resolve, I think it's implied that something has to be fabricated. We're focusing on the wheels because we've noticed some lateral shifting along with what looked like some marks on the motors. That could be totally normal and it's something else.

It would be really funny if it wasn’t the wheels after so much "insider information” has been around on YouTube.

"Insider information" is code for "making stuff up" in the hopes that it might be right.

Maybe they have been talking to people who have divulged information based on the condition of remaining anonymous.

^^ I have insider information that I have no clue what I’m talking about.

Well I do not like to brag about my insider connections but, my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who worked on TT2 and she said it will remain closed until it re-opens.

I guess it’s pretty serious.

Jeff:

Insider information" is code for "making stuff up" in the hopes that it might be right.

Personally I do believe people like El Toro Ryan generally have some good sources of information and I think he runs a really good channel ( just as a disclaimer). But yeah there’s a lot of clout chasing out there.

Also question. Since it took REAL humans to notice a defect in the trains it will take real people testing it to know it is fixed right? Let’s say it’s fixed. What if 4 weeks into successful public operations a new issue is noticed?

My mechanical ignorance is well documented around here. That’s okay. I’m open to learning.

Yes, I worked at the park at 2002, memorized a page and a half of spiels, and could remotely stall out the go-karts if someone was goofing off. But that’s about the extent of my knowledge.

Back to my question. How would a mechanical alteration of the train affect its ability to operate in launches and brake runs? Could alterations to these become necessary as well?

Have seen multiple videos of it testing today.

https://www.instagram.com/s...k2cWxrMA==

Going back to wheels for a minute, it's interesting that RMC's single rail v2.1 trains have no springs in the wheel bogies.

What if 4 weeks into successful public operations a new issue is noticed?

considering Cedar Point went with a completely inexperienced company again for such a large scale project, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are future problems found. This is as much as a prototype roller coaster as was the original Dragster with Intamin. This coaster does what only one other coaster in the world (Formula Rosa) does and that is going this fast for this long. And with that you’ll see a lot of hiccups in the first few years. I am not setting my expectations high on this because I don’t want to be disappointed.

Meh, there's not a lot going on here that hasn't been done before outside of speed. It's a new train design, but it's simpler, not more complex, than prior designs.