Sharkey’s shootout

This machine has been sitting in the workshop for a long time, like a patient friend waiting for its turn. And finally, it was its turn to be taken care of. The reason for being set aside was that the CPU was ruined beyond repair by battery leakage while the game was in storage. When I first got it there was no replacement CPU’s to find anywhere but a little while ago Todd at TNT mentioned in one of his videos that Stern had produced a batch of new CPU’s and K’s arcade had one to sell. It was delivered with the latest software for the game and most important, an external battery holder.

But first thing first, the reason for being put in to storage was that it broke down and smelled burnt. The problem was easy to spot at the little auxiliary transistor board at the left side in the back box. One transistor had exploded and one was shorted. These transistor controls the pop-up posts in the outlanes and the center post between the flippers. The center post coil was shorted and also one of the outlane post coils was shorted as well. I didn’t expect two coils to be shorted at the same time when feed through the same fuse.  Maybe the coil connected to the exploded transistor shorted first then a new fuse was applied and later also the second transistor and coil shorted, I do not know for sure. But it doesn’t matter, two new transistors and two new coils and this part was fine again.

 

 

Next step was to install the new CPU and fire up the machine and this didn’t go as smooth as I hoped. I got some odd text message at the display which went black after a couple of seconds and the singe drop target in the right orbit jumped up and down continuously.  Expecting the worst, faulty CPU, I started fault finding but it turned out to be not as bad as I first thought. The display problem was due to battery leakage that had dropped from the CPU down to the ribbon cable connector at the DMD driver board and the jumping drop target was due to the coil stop for the reset coil was missing. So the CPU tried to raise the target but it didn’t manage all the way up and it fell down and the reset cycle started again. I found the coil stop in the bottom of the cabinet but the threads for the screws to hold it was dammaged and I had to mount it using slightly longer screws and lock nuts.

Once these two problems were fixed the game booted properly and worked fine. The only remaining electrical problem was a blown GI fuse which was caused by a short at the back side of the cabinet light board.

Then it was time to disassemble the playfield for cleaning and new rubbers.

 

 

Once the playfield was disassembled it was carefully cleaned and it got two coats of wax while it was easy to reach all areas.  There was a couple of wear spots above the two upper pop bumpers. At the left one the wear was in a black area so I touched it up and protected the area with a mylar patch. The wear at the right bumper was in a yellow area and I do not think that I would be able to mix the paint and make it look better than what it is now so I just protected it with a mylar patch to stop it from getting worse.

 

 

 

 

All visible screws and nuts was hand polished during the reassembly process and all other parts cleaned and polished. The drop targets got new decals and the bumpers were rebuilt with new skirts and bodies. Also the flippers were rebuilt with new sleeves, links and bats.

 

 

 

 

One remaining problem at the playfield was the wear by the VUK hole. I tried to find a Cliffy protector to cover it but it was nowhere to be found. I have seen pictures of Sharkey's with protectors and some web stores lists it, so it does exist,  but none of the stores had it in stock.  Instead I touched up the wear and protected it with mylar.

 

Once reassembled it became a very nice looking playfield.

  

 

The last thing to do was cleaning the cabinet inside and out, removing the lock bar brackets at the front and give the shooter a new barrel spring. I also gave the game a matching keyring.