a fairground life

Two and a half weeks over my schedule,but the skydiver is finally finished.Tomorrow I will couple the unit to the ride to test the air suspension & piping. Hopefully the sandblasting will no of caused any damage (fingers crossed). I had a problem with the new hinge in the floors, this has cost me another week.Since the hinge was made from angle iron and not box section it was more flexible.The result was that when the floors were raised for traveling the front two ends drooped out 18 inches at the top and had to be pulled in by hand to attach the cross irons. I was not best pleased. We spent two days welding in braces, they only reduced the gap to 9 inches. So biting the bullet, I lifted the treadplate flooring again, cut out the braces and then a 50mm gap along the back of the hinge. Now we inserted 12m of 50x50x4 box section and welded it to the hinge. As soon as I started to raise the floor to test it I could see it as a success. The floor went up straight into place. We repeated the process on the other side. You live and you learn. If you haven't made any mistakes then you haven't made anything.
Onto the other rides now, will have to stick to priority jobs as all the time has been spent (and the money).