Surgery

The parts I ordered came this week.

• New rubber pieces.
• A new lock.
• More #44 light bulbs.
• A new ball.
• A new flipper.
• A new flipper solenoid.

So today, I had some time to do repairs so I heated up the soldering iron and jumped in.

The dead flipper was my first task.

The underside of the flipper assembly. I thought for sure this solenoid was dead, as it looked burnt.

I went thru pulling it off the play field and noticed that the ground wire had snapped off at some point. I cleared some insulation from the wire and connected it again, flipper moved. So I soldered it and now I have an extra flipper solenoid for the future. Also, the new flipper is slightly thinner in design…

I ordered new rubber pieces for the whole game as they were very dried and rotten.

Here is a kicker switch with the cover removed. I had to adjust the bump switches on either side of the kicker leg. Notice the rectangle piece of metal that is outside of the rubber ring? That had to move to the inside of the kicker assembly. Now when a ball hits any piece of that leading rubber edge, the ball gets launched away by the kicker.

Here’s the play field with new rubber.

The machine’s sounds are produced by an electro-mechanical chime box.

I noticed that there were 4 chimes that play “call to the post” when you hit the start button. The lowest key never plays.

This solenoid controls the lowest note on the chime box. It was so fried that the inside of the shaft expanded and caused the plunger to bind. I’ll need to order one of these.

The backbox was where I found the first fried circuits. Its basically the brain of the machine.

These boards control Lighting, Processing and Memory, Electrical Routing, and Switch/Solenoid operation. This is what’s behind the scoreboard.

After I did this maintenance, The game was repaired enough to play it. I had to adjust a few switches and things to work out the kinks, but now it basically works.

I have a few more issues to deal with that I’m going to have to wait to get to:

The “Ball Display” needs cleaned inside the lenses. There is dirt and soot under these lenses from the lights burning. It should clean up with some alcohol.

There’s a weak capacitor somewhere, as when the bumpers are hit the lights on the game dim. It could also be fixed by replacing the #45 lights with #47 as they are far more efficient.

The plasma in the scoreboard flickers.

Also, if you put 1 quarter in, you’re supposed to get 1 credit. Right now it gives you 20. When I was a kid at the arcade, I would have killed for that ability.