Finished

Today I finished the overhaul of the Baywatch. The playfield was dropped back in the cabinet and connected to the cabinet and the circuitboards in the top box. A last polish of the playfield, just in case there was some dust at it before dropping back the balls in the game. I printed out new instruction and score cards from the IPDB at the color laser and laminated them in a plastic pouch before cutting them out. I fired the game up and went through the switch, lamp, flasher and coil tests. Everything passed without problems except for two lamps that didn’t light. Fortunately they were easy to access, it was the start button and the red light at the top of the ‘Search and rescue’ sign. When playing a few balls I noticed that the innermost of the two in lanes at the right side had some problems with the switch, if the ball came rolling with low speed it didn’t manage to push down the wire arch and instead got stuck against it. When inspecting the switch it looked like the wire arch was a bit higher than other switches. I made a 2.5 mm spacer by a piece of Lexan and put it between the switch bracket and the playfield. This lowered the wire arch enough to allow the ball to push it down and close the switch even when rolling really slowly. This game plays very well and is certainly a keeper, but unfortunately it’s not mine and the owner has already sold it to a buyer who is waiting to get the game delivered. I haven’t counted the time I spent together with this machine, I would estimate it to something between 25-30 hours. It was absolutely worth all the work to get it in to the best possible shape. Now I’m looking forward to the next project. The Coney Island machine will have to wait for a while, instead I’ll have a look at a Gameplan Star trip that has been standing here for quite some time.

The quality control team is checking the quality of the job done.