Stengel did all the original engineering for the ride which was fine and met any and all specs.
Towards the end of construction it was obvious RCCA wasnt doing things right so the park dismissed RCCA and finished the ride themselves, but was still built to Stengel specs.
Then the ride opened and it was horribly rough, the park deemed the problem to be that the structure was to flexable and/or not stable and caused alot of the lateral roughness and it allowed the track to sag also between ledgers (a product of the abnormally heavy trains.
So after the park park, without any help from stengel or any other engineer started to add extra bracing to the ride to help stiffen it and keep it from moving so much, and that is where the classic saying comes into play, if it does not shake it will break. The lateral movement of the structure dampens the lateral load, when PKI added the bracing the structure did not sway anymore to absorb the laterals, so all of a sudden the lumber between the track and the bracing (vertically we're talking) now had to support many many times the amount of force it was designed to handle, will attempt ASCII here to illistrate, forgive me if it sucks..
Track
| < bent leg taking stress that broke right near track but above the added bracing.
|\
|\\ < added bracing to prevent lateral sway
|\\\
|\\\\ (Ground level)
at least that's what I got out of 25 pages of post incident inspection report.
Favorite Wood Coasters: The Voyage, Ravine Flyer II, Thunderhead, Balder Favorite Steel: Voltron Nevera, Steel Vengeance, Expedition GeForce, Olympia Looping Parks visited: 232, Coasters Ridden: Steel: 894, Wood: 179, Total: 1073
Thanks for the explanation. SOB looks like a great ride so its too bad that it didnt turn out that way. Even though I want to ride SOB with the loop hopefully removing it and using lighter trains will solve the problem.
Son Of Beast officially has new trains!
No, they aren't PTC's, or Millenium Flyers, they're Gerstlauer Wooden Coaster Trains. Not new ones either, they're from Mrytle Beach.
All I know is that now I'll probably never know what it's like to go upside down riding a woodie. I say probably because you never know if somewhere, another wooden coaster is made that they put a loop in. Or possibly, a corkscrew?
Oh no! Imagine the pain of going through Iron Wolf's corkscrew (as if that's the only painful part of the ride) combined with the roughness of an average wooden roller coaster. The pain! The pain of it all!
Hee hee, look. I have a signature thingy um, thing.
For those who don't know, Mean Streak south..errr, Son of Beast ran for the first time w/ a g-train the other day and didn't make it the entire course. It's not a big deal, as of yet, but is still rather funny imho. I wonder if the new magnetic trims that are *supposed* to be all over the ride now (including the first drop) were on, and if so, just how hard.
SOB is exactly that... a mean SOB. I rode it opening year when it had the loop and it was the most painful ride of my life. It was just unbelievable how rough that ride was. Your legs were destroyed from being bashed into the side of the lap bar. I'm sure there's some improvement with the lighter trains, but I'd be willing to bet that it's still horribly rough. I might try it again, but I don't have high hopes.
Millennium Force Laps: 22
Maverick Laps: 1
TTD Laps: 12
Just moved to Chicago from Ohio, and I'm ready for SFGA!