a fairground life (Back on the tools)

So its been a short few years since we re-furbished the miami ride, but time and rust waits for no man and the front stage section of the ride was severely in need of renewal. I figured a weeks worth of work, but r had other ideas including new elephant feet (aka ride main support legs),brake shoes,spotlights, LED lighting, new back flash supports, paybox stage, laminate flooring, flat screen monitor ( in prep for cctv) and galvanisation of ALL the new fabricated sections.

Thus the 10 day window of opportunity was soon made unrealistic, but we made an attempt at it. The first day saw the ride set in the shed and the whole front section of the ride removed. We kept it in component pieces to use as templates. The next two days saw it completely re fabricated from new steel and back on for testing. We couldn't fit the tread plate due to the galvanisation process, but every thing was prepped by drilling,buffing and fitting all the little extras that would spoil the finish if welded on later after galvanisation.The largest section was 40ft in length, the smallest only  2ft and we loaded all 16 pieces  onto a 40ft arctic trailer sent by the galvanisers. The turn around was quoted as 3 days and I felt confident that we could make the ten days window. During the galv time we moved on to paint the chassis,body panels, spot banks and complete the other tasks. We worked in the shed from 10am-10pm most days and sometimes later. I should mention that we changed the front floor slightly by modifying it to fold with the front handrails still attached. This would do away with three handrails to lift  and a packing frame during the pulldown / setup. It had to be a precision job to get the angles to work on the hinges so that everything folded in one smooth movement using only the original hydraulic system. With the aid of a  computer animation we cracked it first time (phew!). I called after the 3 day window but the galv job would be late, four days late in fact and this bust our time frame. I had wanted the ride out to catch a weekend at a fair, but now we would miss this and aim for the next weekend instead. In reality ten days was too short, especially since the galv process now took up seven! The extra days didn't go to waste as  we spent them doing more jobs and the ride got a real good service. The following week it came out after a 2am push the night before. It was shining like a new pin, unfortunately by the time it had travelled a couple of miles, the road spray had dulled that.