81 replies to this topic

[edmontonguy]

i think its only used on high capacity days.

[Eric]

Why ? People are afraid

[edmontonguy]

don't know

[SkiBachelor]

I don't think people are affraid to ride a Yan HSQ. A lot of people can't even tell the difference between chairlifts and don't know there's more than one manufacturer of chairlifts. I'm guessing the reason why they don't run the Friendly Giant all the time is because there's already another HSQ right next to it and it's hard to get replacement parts and it's high maintenance to maintain. We figured that it costs $10,000 a month to run a HSQ, so you can figure that they save a lot of money not using it all the time.

[Allan]

YAN parts are still fairly easy to get.

[Eric]

really, Yan went out in Business in '96... now we're almost in 2004

[SkiBachelor]

That's true, because they are still making replacement parts such as sheaves and stuff, but I'm guessing no technical parts for a HSQ because there's only one left. Although the HSQ's at Sun Valley still have a lot of Yan parts.

[Eric]

Cameron, You mean that Yan still makes parts , even if they went out of business. The police is looking everywhere for him.

[vancouverguy]

Yan's company is long gone, it is probably another part supply company that makes them.

[KZ]

someone makes the parts, probably some private company. They obviously need new parts becasue there are still hundreds of yans sitting around north america

[coskibum]

you know its funny how 99% of skiers couldn't tell you at least 1 lift manufacturer!

[Bill]

One of the employees from YAN took over the supplying of YAN parts. I remember this coming up for discussion on the last forum, before the crash.

[Eric]

I found some of my parents old photos of Lake Louise. Those 2 are the Friendly Giant Express in January 1995. 11 months before the Quicksilver accident. The lift wasn't retrofit yet.


I was 9 years old that time and I remember riding it. A big different compare to last year.

Attached File(s)

•  Fr_Giant___95.JPG (126.97K)
  Number of downloads: 121

[Eric]

2

Note: That's still the old glacier chair on left

Attached File(s)

•  fr_giant.JPG (158.37K)
  Number of downloads: 107

[KZ]

I have a marshmallow spring :)

[liftmech]

altaskier, on Dec 9 2003, 03:28 PM, said:

Yans always had a very elegant design. Unfortunately, they also incorporated other engineering features in the quads that may have not been adequately tested.  First, they used 'marshmallow' springs for grip tensioning instead of the helical springs incorporated by other manufacturers. Another thing was the original grips were gravity assisted, in that the weight of the carrier (combined with the rubber springs) provided the gripping force. Theoretically, if the lift were to suddenly stop (as in the tragic case at Whistler) the resulting shift in weight as the chairs bounced up and down could cause a decrease in the gripping force, leading to slippage of the chair.

Still love that Yan chair design though, and have noted that the chair grips on Friendly Giant were retrofitted with a dual helical spring setup. I have no concerns riding it whenever I am at Louise.

The official conroner's report (which I believe you can find if you search the BC Ministry of Tranportation archives) placed at least part of the blame on the 'gravity-assist' aspect of the grip. Yan used the marshmallow rubber spring because it was cheaper and would not break at random (see my post on grip repair for shots of a broken helical spring). Rubber springs are, however, more prone to temperature-related issues such as shrinkage and cold-cracking. Look at the door seals on an old car for examples. A former Yan engineer spun off his own company and redesigned the Type 7 and Type 11 grips to eliminate the gravity assist, and replaced the rubber springs with helical.

[crazyskier91]

Does anyone know what manufacturer the olympic chair is and does anyone have pics???

[SkiBachelor]

Hey Crazyskier, you can find pictures at our old site Nw-Skilifts.com. I haven't had time to move all the pictures over to the new site yet.

http://canada.nw-ski...erblackcomb.htm

[liftmech]

NWS, on Dec 8 2003, 09:32 AM, said:

One of the employees from YAN took over the supplying of YAN parts.  I remember this coming up for discussion on the last forum, before the crash.

Les Okralcirk (not sure of the spelling) formed Pol-X West in the late 80s after leaving Lift Engineering. He redesigned the Type 7 as the 7-96 grip, and does all sorts of CAD stuff for engineering purposes. (in an earlier post I said that he also redesigned the Type 11- I was mistaken as there was only one lift with that grip and we all know what happened to it...) Ken Pearson still runs a parts and engineering supply company specialising in Yan lifts. I believe he will make new spare parts if you need them, especially things like brittle bars and sheaves. There is no shortage of old dead Yans in boneyards around the continent, either- Whistler's old Black Chair, for instance, was still sitting near its former bottom terminus when I was there last in 2002.