Not really. Even with a small compressor (not even “that” one, but a small easily installable non portable one, maybe with a slightly higher CFM displacement), if it’s drained and powered down daily, with its air vents cleared, it would last well beyond a year being in use during the rides operational hours. And it would be cheap to replace too. There is no way that any of those Farmer studios animtronics would be stretching the use of that kind of compressor to the point where it is damaged; there would still be enough constant air intake without a risk of the motor overheating. The movements were slow and intermittent on the ride too.
I will take some readings at some point to see how much CFM & PSI/Bars are involved in necessary movements.
It’s worth saying that the sailor was broken for years before the rides actual closure. Having such a long pipe network all the way to the large compressor (the main compressor for the ride was over 2 metres tall btw) makes me wonder whether this was half the problem for maintenance. Going through that entire network to check for leaks in hard to reach spots or replace valves would have taken a number of labour hours for maintenance to go through.
Farmer studios built the effects with the expectation that the park would invest more in to maintaining it. Unfortunately that did not happen over the rides lifespan.
If only maintaining Pirate Adventure's piping really was 'dead easy'. Take a look below here at some of the piping networks for the battle scene, and tell me that looks easy to work with....
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I’m fact it’s one of the key reasons so many of the effects ended up getting turned off. The pipes network were built in to and in between the sets, with larger pipes delivering air from the compressor to each scene, which then split up in to smaller pipes for the individual effects within the scene. It's quite clever how they were originally set up, but easy to mess up if tampered with.
Originally, when Pirate Adventure was maintained by Golding Leisure Design (and Space leisure) , they ensured that the pipes for individual effects and for scenes were as simple as possible to identify, even down to the pipes for both sides of the double acting cylinders being grouped with separate markings. this wasn’t the case later on as you can see in the picture above; they had been messed around with... a lot.
As I said previously, the pipes corroded, mainly due to the moisture (bear in mind the water contained a bromine solution) in the building. When the parks then maintenance team could not easily find a leakage, they turned the effects off instead of searching through piping to find the exact points of leakage. And in cases where there were problems with scenes, entire scenes would be turned off. Which is what happened with the tavern scene and parts of the burning town scene towards the end of the rides life. The cylinders were actually much easier and quicker to work with.
I don't believe this is the case. The cylinders were in good working order, and had been oiled, cleaned and serviced, with all the old manifolds and external valves replaced as well.
I would personally advise that it stays forgotten, It's not really necessary to discuss such things, or any kind of numbers
In an ideal world a compressor would be turned off and drained each night making it last years. We don't live in that world however, so you need to make accommodations for it. Operational staff used to routinely urinte into the rides water due to not being able to leave their positions at the top station or exist station, so no chance could they be trusted to empty a compressor and whatnot.
Interesting photo of the pipes but they have clearly been ripped out from their original application. That picture doesn't show how easy or hard it was to maintain the pipes as that's just a pile of scrap pipe not in its original setup. Slightly confused at how you base your argument on that photo.
The pipes never used to corrode to bad as they were mainly plastic based, as this made it easy to route everywhere. The leaks used to mainly come from rodents biting the pipes and the connections for the pipes. The piping was mainly easy to reach throughout the ride, easy to fix leaks as you could very quickly and easily hear the hissing sounds. The trouble was the park didn't provide the time and recourses needed to care for this system properly, which led to it declining.
I've spent ALOT of hours behind the scenes in that ride, I've done all nighters in there and had my hands on most things in there. I can tell you as a fact, almost all of the cylinders in the ride were in a really, really bad state, they very very rarely got any TLC as the Bryan's put maintence focuse else where.
The delay that you mention sounds like a worn out cylinder as
Euro Theme Park Archive mentions. Infact. I've probably had my hands on that very cylinder at some point in the past. I could be wrong but I dont recally any delayed cylinders like you mention. By the time the ride closed the majority of all mechanical cylinders and animations were in a really bad stage.
The compressor room was indeed big. Located at the back of the battle scene.
Also, why can't figures and numbers be discussed? There seems to be this wierd arora around Pirate Adventure where a few select people who have got photos, audio or whatever, seem believe they are in a superior position and act in some wierd way. Something I've noticed over the last few years, quite frankly it is laughable. No one in particular, just worth pointing out though. Sit down and calm down, the ride has been shut nearly a decade....
I remember one of the winters, can't remember the year, we spent a lot of time in Pirate Adventure, installing a new sound system throughout, with new amplifiers and zoning, in tandem with the contractors. We spent practically zero amount of that time looking at anything mechanical apart from the Mack ride system which was essential to get ADIPS certification allowing the ride to open to the public. Anything else such as animation, pneumatics and set presentation was ignored fully as it had been for many years.
We used to fire the compressor up and you could just walk around the ride finding the hissing sounds and fix accordingly, fairly easy to do. Easier when there was no water in the ride, but more than doable with the many backstage walk ways.
As someone who has maintained the ride however, the biggest cause of broken effects was without a doubt lack of maintenance to the animations themselves rather than the airlines. I would have loved to spend time giving the ride some TLC but I have to do as I am told and work where I am needed. The animations in that ride almost needed a full time compliment of maintenance staff to be fair, it did not have this, just staff who also had to work on the rest of the parks attractions. Which led to it's demise.
The other problem we used to get quite a bit was people jumping off boats and physically damaging sets and people throwing liquids and food onto the sets, which could sometimes cause problems if it happened in the middle of the day and wouldn't be picked up until much later. In some cases, days.
The one year, I had to fix one of the cannons on the castle. It had come off it's stand as was dangling down the castle by its airline.
Good times, good memories.
