As far as simulator times are concerned mine was supposed to start at 1600 and finish at 2100. With all of the breakdowns we were in the simulator until 2400 on the 3 occasions that we did use it due to delays from the other 2 courses that were running in the day.
As far as the other failures were concerned, every time the instructor tried to show us some system failure it would not work cause the simulator was broken in that area.
The ground school was based around some 30 year old TV program which had been obviously copied because the quality was terrible.