a fairground life(washing)

Monday
We started to erect the rides just before 12 noon. The plan is to erect all the rides today. The repairs and washing will be left for tomorrow. "r" and the labourer started on the skydiver while I did the Dropzone. By 6 pm these two rides were finished. We all moved onto the Miami ride. This is a quick ride to erect and we finished it for 8 pm. The mud was now dried onto the rides flooring and seating. It will require the pressure washer to clean it off tomorrow. As for the cog repair, I will have to wait until we strip it all down and discover the problem. If I had to guess I would say it will be the steel collar in the cog centre that has split. Time will tell.
Today
As soon as we got to the fair the labourer started to wash the Dropzone and Miami. The pressure washer was worked hard and it took over six hours to clean the mud from the two rides. In the meantime, "r" and I concentrated on the skydiver repair. The drive cog is a Nylon material (Tufnyl) with a steel centre tube to hold the keyway. This steel collar is attached by 6 bolts to the cog. Amazingly all these bolts had sheared and was allowing the Hydraulic motor to turn the drive shaft without turning the cog. Of course it took us nearly 4 hours to strip it all to find out, then an hour to get new bolts of the correct grade & size, another hour to drill out the broken studs then remove them with 'easyouts' and finally another 3 hours to put it all back together again. At least it's working and I suppose this was the best possible out come as 6 new blots are a lot cheaper than a new cog and I will be operating again on time. It always surpises me how many tools you need to do a job and it takes another hour to pack them away. 10 pm, time to call it a day. There just isn't enough hours in the day, my father always used to say "you are never ready until you have been open half an hour!", he was correct.