Ride Maintenance

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Acdcrocks73

Jul 9, 2013
19
41
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Williamsburg
Is there a thread about ride maintenance? I'm a mechanic by trade...hydraulics, diesels, pumps etc. just curious if there is anyone who knows someone or has pics of the rides be overhauled in the off season.
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Might be able to dig up some pictures of the maintenance bays for the coasters from the coaster insider tour. I'll see what I can find later.
 
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bigbadwolf.gif


4043


4044
 
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not my picture..



That is a good picture of the wolf cart. It was designed and built by Craft Machine works in Hampton Va. I was working for craft at the time and worked in the wolf den for a couple weeks assembling and testing the wolf cart.

The machine had a 16 hp. gas engine that drove a hydraulic pump and a valve bodies that sent hydraulic fluid to all four sets of driven wheels located on top of the track. The lower wheels kept the upper wheels tight against the pipe track. The wheels were filled with silicone to make them hard and not blow out. The platform was approx. 4" X 8" where the engine, seat, pump and valve bodies were mounted. As you can see in the picture the four wheel sets were spaced out by a frame that had two hydraulic cylinders mounted to it and the platform. You could extend the cylinders one at a time to level out the platform when stopping the cart anywhere on the track. It was designed and built to work on the brake systems used on the Big Bad Wolf.

It was a lot of fun working with the Craft engineers and the park engineers testing and modifying the wolf cart at night making sure it was safe and worked as designed.

Eric M

Then there was one night when we almost died on the damn thing..
 
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Well since you asked,

There was a design flaw I noticed as we were assembling the drive chains each of the traction arms. One drive chain was being driven off of each hydraulic motor that drove the upper two wheels on each corner of the wolf cart. I discussed adding an offset dual chain drive so that each drive wheel would be driven by a separate chain. That way if a drive chain broke the hydraulic motor could still drive one wheel on that arm.

We were driving the wolf cart up from the bottom of the big hill as we approached the top of the hill a drive chain broke and we headed back down the hill towards the lake as fast as the train would go. The wolf cart framework had ball joints on it allowing the platform to hang under the track regardless of the angle of the track. So as we were heading down the hill the track banked and we were above the track nearly upside down, it could have been very bad. Luckily we didn't flip over and were able to replace the broken chain and drive the wolf cart back into the wolf den. I called the engineer at 4:00 am letting him know what had happend and we needed to redesign the drive system for safety sake. We made the changes and as far as I know they never had another problem with the wolf cart.

Eric M
 
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So in other words, is it made for testing whether or not the ride has enough clearance from trees? That was actually my guess. I always wondered how the ride let you get so close to trees.
 
destroyer421 said:
He's saying it's used for working on the brakes. Those trim brakes on the drop to the Rhine River, that's how they got there.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up. That makes more sense. I would still love to know how they keep such a close proximity to the trees on rides.
 
I have been told that the landscapers rode the ride and held their hands outside the train. If they thought the leaves and trees where getting too close, they would walk out and trim them back. Kid you not.

Not a very sophisticated method, but looks like it worked for them.
 
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