Star trek, the next generation

To day i have cleaned all inserts and changed all hard to reach lamps at the lower side. The remaining lamps have been cleaned and tested and all lamp PCB's have been cleaned.

I have also rebuilt the three flipper assemblies. Both lower assemblies were missing a screw for the coil stop. The right one is missing the threads for the second screw completely. At the left one somebody have tried to drill out a broken screw but didn’t succeed, there were still bits of the screw in the hole. It isn’t possible to restore the threads so I had to use a nut and lock washer to properly secure the coil stop. It will hold the coil stop properly but will make it a bit more complicated to take it apart when it need service later on. There are new flipper bases to buy, but they are not cheap. I’ll leave it as this for now and maybe we will change the two flipper bases later on.

 

 

I have also sorted the problem with the stuck diverter. It wasn’t a too tight actuator arm as I first thought. Once I got the arm off the diverter was still stuck and the cause was that old grease at the shaft has solidified. When the goo had been cleaned of at both the shaft and inside the tubing the diverter worked fine again.

 

Star trek, the next generation

I have been working with the Star trek for a couple of days. This far I have disassembled most parts on the upper side of the playfield and a lot of parts from the lower side.

 

 There are a lot of mechanisms on the lower side of the playfield at this game and the most complicated part is the snake like ball guide. It has four inlets, three ball popper mechanisms for ejecting balls back at the playfield and two diverters to guide the ball to the ball popper where it is needed. The game stores balls by the poppers to have them ready to eject as soon as a ball drops in to the guide, this is to make it look like the ball travels with warp speed from one point of the playfield to another.

I do not think that the ball guide ever have been cleaned before, there is an awful lot of dirt inside it.

 

Before disassembling the game I played it quite a lot to see what kind of problems it had and while doing so I didn’t manage to get the ball in to the Borg ship and the cause was a stuck diverter. This one should be retracted when power is of, but it is stuck in the out position. So there was no way to get the ball in to the ship. I haven’t yet taken it apart so I’m not sure of the cause, but most likely the actuator arm is to tight against the bushing in the base plate.

 

 

In the deepest guts of the lower side I found a broken ball guide. It is the one below the Neutral zone hole. It has been repaired before with brass or bronze solder. A friend of mine helped me to repair it again, this time with silver solder which makes a more reliable solder joint.

 

The upside of the Neutral zone hole was a bit worn and to protect it I gave it a Cliffy protector. The ball guide at the underside was polished before reattached and the copper stand of the center target was polished as well.

 

 

Both lower flippers was cracked and more or less held together by the rubbers. I will replace these and also the third flipper. The new flippers will have super bands. These are quite tough to stretch when installing and it’s safer to install them while having the bat outside the playfield, this is to avoid damaging the flipper bushing.

 

I have also cleaned and polished the playfield and all targets. Now it’s ready for a first coat of wax and more reassembling.

Three new projects

I’ve got three new projects waiting to be taken care of. It’s a Star Trek, the next generation, Creature from the black lagoon and a Theatre of Magic. I’m looking forward to dig down in the faults and problem of these machines. Star trek will be the first one to take care of. I have already made a first fault finding of all three of them and ordered a lot of parts so it’s just full speed ahead.

Rock ola 473

Somebody has broken in to the cash box, from the inside of the jukebox. The cash box housing is broken and it’s not easy to find a replacement so I have to leave it as it is. The cause for the crime is probably that the key for the coin door was missing. The easiest way in would have been to remove the nut at the inside of the lock through the coin entry hole at the top of the cash box housing. This is what I did when replacing the lock. One odd thing though is that the lower coin chute is missing, this is the part that directs the coins coming from the coin rejector in to the cash box. I made a simple slide of aluminum as replacement, not too beautiful but it does it´s job.

One sad thing is that the plastic that should be behind the lower glass is missing. I’ve been told that it was cracked and a previous owner took it out and throw it away. I have tried to find a replacement but had no success, so for now I have to leave the glass as it is. On the other hand, it’s nice to see the mechanism working inside the juke box.

One problem with this is that there is a florescent tube just inside the glass and it has to be shielded a bit. I strolled round in the hardware store looking for something I could use and found a black plastic strip that should fit perfect. Next problem was how to attach the strip to the tube and I found something that looked to be possible to use. It was black plastic self-adhesive cable ties that after some modification became clips for attaching the plastic strip to the tube.

 

The credit accumulator in this machine is controlled by a microprocessor and does not support free play. Instead I added a micro switch to the coin reject arm and credits are added each time the reject button is pressed. In this way it is possible to get credits either by inserting a coin or by pressing reject. The micro switch can easily be taken out if the juke box should be coin operated only.

The lower glass rattled quite badly when playing a record, which is due to the missing plastic. The channel that holds the glass is wide enough to also house the plastic. I took the frame apart and added a rubber strip in the channel to lock the glass in place.

I made new title strips and repaired the strip holder. It was cracked in the top left corner. unfortunately som pieces was missing but I glued together what was still there.

The last thing was to adjust the landing position of the pick-up, it did miss the lead in at some records. After some minor cosmetic fixes and cleaning of the inside and outside it is now finally ready.