Playfield overhaul

The damaged cables are now repaired. It wasn’t as bad as I first thought, there were just six cables to fix.
I have now also started to disassemble the playfield for cleaning and changing rubbers and lamps.
And while the ramps and other parts are removed from the playfield it’s possible to turn it upside down without damaging any playfield parts.
This gives great access to clean out the inserts and checking nuts and bolts to make sure everything is as it should. When turning the playfield upside down two metal posts fell right of. I found one stray nut when cleaning out the cabinet but since two posts fell off there must be at least one more nut somewhere, I’ll try to find it to make sure it doesn’t cause any problems. I also checked the shark flipper that didn’t work, the coil measures OK and the cabling is OK to the connector that attach to cable loom in the cabinet. Most likely the problem is at the flipper board located in the cabinet. Hopefully just a bad soldering or faulty fuse holder, I’ll have a look at this later on. Almost all controlled lamps at the playfield needs to be replaced. It looks like they are chrome plated at the inside and they doesn’t burn as bright as they should. This chrome plating effect is something that happens if a lamp isn’t supplied with the rated voltage and since the lamps in a pinball is run in a matrix, switched with a higher voltage, this is expected to happen.

There are still some parts left at the playfield that needs to be removed before cleaning, but this is enough to be able to turn it upside down. I do also wait for some spare parts for the playfield and there isn't much I can do there until I got those. So I'll focus at the underside for the moment. At the picture of the parts you can see how dirty the ramps are. The micro switch at the top of the ramp in the midle of the picture is broken and must be replaced.

I need to get the red return lane from the beach house out of the playfield to clean it at the inside. It’s full of dirt and if not cleaned the dirt will soon be brought back up to the playfield by the balls.

Playfield

The playfield are now out of the cabinet. There is quite a lot of cables and connectors in a game like this.

  

Two pictures of damaged cables. Note the switch in the corner of the playfield, there are no cables at all left at it. I think the game has been standing at its back and the rats have got inside the game through the holes for the cables to the top. I talked to a friend and he told me that this wasn’t an uncommon problem if a game has been stored for a while.

Sega Baywatch

I received a new project a couple of days ago, a Sega Baywatch.
This machine is in good shape except for a lot of dirt at the playfield, worn out rubbers and some missing parts. There are also quite a lot of lights and switches that does not work at the playfield and the shark fin flipper is dead. I think I found the reason for most of these problems when looking under the playfield, quite a lot of the cables in the wire loom to the top has been chewed off by rats. They have left their business cards at the bottom of the cabinet, a lot of rat droppings. First thing to do is to get the playfield out of the cabinet to get the wire loom up on to the work bench to find and repair all the damaged wires.

 

Spinner and drop targets

I don’t have any before pictures of the spinner, except for what can be seen at the before picture of the playfield at my first post. I sanded it down to the bare metal, primed it and sprayed it white. Then I made stickers for the spinner and also for the drop targets. I made the design in paint.net and printed it at a color laser. I then laminated the printout in a self-adhesive laminating pouch and cut out the stickers. I’m not sure how these stickers will last, the glue seems to be quite strong but maybe the paper between the front and back plastic from the laminating pouch will give up. To try to seal it in I sprayed the spinner with clear coat, but I didn’t do that to the drop targets to see if it made any change. The drop target stickers got a thin white line from the paper round the edges, I pained the edges red using a cotton swab.

 There were just three drop targets left in the game when I got it, two of them was original. I tried to find new replacements but quite quick I found out that they are no longer available. Instead I ordered the DataEast targets. They are a bit longer and the target is a bit wider. Since they are longer I need to put some spacers between the playfield and drop target mech when assembling the playfield. I didn’t find any red Data East targets, so I sprayed them red before attaching the stickers.

Cabinet

Some Internet p*rn for true pinheads...
The cabinet is in quite bad shape but I can't decide if it is bad enough to be repainted.

 

I don't think that I have the original legs for the game, there are marks from legs that seems to have been wider.