nightjar nightjar@ wrote:

carriage. John put the track on top of an estate car and the bits inside. He
can probably tell you more about the actual problems of transporting and
installing it. You will only need a long load marker if it overhangs the
rear by more than 1 metre, but then it should be a proper triangular symbol,
rather than just a piece of rag.

Transporting was actually pretty straight forward. The track was
actually no longer than SWMBOs car (we let it overhang the back a little
so as to get the supporting point a bit closer to the centre of the track)

It was held on with a couple of ratchet straps. Support was a couple of
roof bars that were mounted on the permanent roof rails of the car.
Total weight was well inside the limits for the car and rails. The whole
lot was very firmly fixed (and seemed to have no objections to a 100+
mile romp at less than legal speeds ;-)

Sorting out power for the beastie took a few hours on arrival (as did
lunch and stuff), we then spent about six hours in total fitting (this
included a couple of unfitting operations to tweak things like track
position (when we worked out the chair was in danger of stripping the
wallpaper when sent up or down unloaded!)

In the case of the minivator the track was simple enough to fix, just by
screwing the mounting brackets to the steps (I had anticipated removing
the carpet under each bracket, but on seeing how it was installed on top
originally I skipped that bit - handy since we moved them more than
once). Getting the chair back on the track was not too difficult,
although as Colin said, did require a fair bit of knob twiddling. Wiring
up was easy enough once you worked out that the numbering in the circus
diagram did not actually match that silk screened on the PCB (well at
one end at least, since it was different at both!). A bit of buzzing out
with a DMM sorted that. Shortly after a large test load (me) was
dispatched for the maiden ascent.

Went back a few weeks later to fit some extra brackets to the track,
because it was proving a little too flexible for its new (one presumes
heavier) user. Full marks to minivator for still stocking (or more
correctly making to order) spare brackets for a non current design.
Deduct marks for wanting 25 quid a shot for them!

All in all one happy bunny of an end user!


--
Cheers,

John.

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