Comet V end door

[Olton Hall]

I finally got to ride on a C5 the other week. I noticed the gap at the end doors was extra large at high platforms. Is floor piece between the upper and lower door supposed to slide out of the way leaving this large gap or was something wrong with this car? IIRC corectly from the old forum, these doors operate different than the C4's.

[nick11a]

Yes, the Comet 5's doors are unique. Based on what I read in your post, it sounds like to me that the yellow "floor extender" wich is exosed on the exterior side of the door did not stay in place. On a few Comet 5s, you'll see this problem. You see this problem somewhat more on the Comet 2 rebuilds though. The main difference in the door design between the 2s and the 5s is that the floor extender "lives" inside of the door while on the 5s it lives on the outside of the door.

[Jtgshu]

the C5 design is very simple and works very well, its just that there is a little tab on the inside of the car, just below where the trap sits and this is attached to a latch, so when the trap is down, it pushed down on the latch, and it grabs the outside threshold (yellow sliding thing) When its a low level stop, the latch isn't pushed down so it lets the outside thing slide with the door.

But the problem is the little plastic thing that is on the bottom of the trap and the little lever on the wall which passes through the wall to the outside to hold the trap don't really make good contact. There is a very small surface area that the spacer actually hits on the wall thing, and someitmes, if the trap is out of adjustment, it misses the whole thing and the "outside slider thing" goes with the door when opening for a high level. The little thing on the wall should be slightly bigger, adn this problem would be solved quite easily.

There are times when the slider thing doesn't latch but slides over as if it did. If you were to step on it, it would slide (because its not latched) ive almost slipped a couple of times because of it.....but for the most part, they work pretty good

[nick11a]

^Fascinating. I've seen the tab but I didn't realize the tab when depressed actually "grabs" the "sliding door thingy" aka "floor extender."

Yeah, I've seen times at high level stops when the "yellow slidey thingy" isn't latched but it looks like it almost is. As a rule of thumb, I never step on anything besides the trap and the station platform when boarding or leaving a Comet 2M, 3, 4 or 5. Those things don't look that sturdy to me. The 3s and 4s seem pretty safe but as for the 2Ms and 5s, I wouldn't put my weight of 200 lbs (I am quite tall) on those rinky dink things. Especially the Comet 2M floor extenders! When I see people step on those things, they bend (not a whole lot, but enough nonetheless.)

[mb]

In September at Long Branch, I step on that damn thing (Comet 2) and it slipped from underneath me causing my right leg to fall between the train and the platform. My leg was bruised, but I lived . Good ol transit tried to cover themselves and attempted to bring charges up against me stating that I was unaware of where I was stepping. (Idiots)