Theatre of magic

The underside of the playfield is now reassembled. The last thing to clean was the playfield support brackets.

 

 

Next up was the back box, which was as dirty as the cabinet. I had all boards out for inspection of the soldering of the connectors and checking of the fuse values. The driver board had seven fuses with the wrong value. All of them too high and they had to be replaced with the proper values. Someone had already done some job at the driver board and changed rectifiers and capacitors. The back box and playfield are now back in the cabinet and wired back together.

 

 

 

Next project will be the coin door. There are several cables cut so it might be some investigation to do to sort it out.

Theatre of magic

This week has been the cabinet week. Not much to write about cleaning so I let the pictures tell the story. 

 

 

I do not know why there always is a rubber ring hanging on the playfield stay arm.
But if there should be a rubber ring there, then it should be a new one.

When looking at the outside of the cabinet it actually looked quite clean, but when start cleaning it was obvious that this game have living it’s life in a very smoky environment (which I also could tell by the smell). This paper is from the first sweep of the cabinet.

The Lockbar lever guide assembly was quite dirty and needed some attention. The glass bead blaster took care of most of the dirt and some manual polishing removed the last. It’s not in top condition but far better than it was from the beginning. I do still miss one label for it, the Inspected by. The original label was half gone and so dirty it couldn’t be read. After some careful cleaning I could see the last four characters of the name, RSON. The only name I have seen before ending with these four characters is W. Anderson, so I will arrange a label with this name.

 

Theatre of magic

I have gone through all the lamps and inserts at the underside of the playfields. All lamps seem to have been replaced recently, they were all working and were very clean, but the inserts needed cleaning. It’s easy to see which ones I have cleaned in the picture below.

 

 

 Also the flipper mechanisms have been recently refurbished, but the base and the brackets was still dirty so I had to take them apart for cleaning. Also one flipper bushing were broken which was another reason to take it apart. Once disassembled I found that some of the screws used to attach the bushings were to short and all but two lock nuts was missing. I replaced the screws with correct length and added six new lock nuts, three at each mechanism. 

 

The flipper bats seem to be brand new as well. They just needed a little cleaning to get rid of the residue from the old flipper rubbers, while having the bats out of the playfield I attached the new super bands.

 

All mechanisms at the playfield underside has been disassembled and cleaned. Broken parts replaced by new ones and all coil sleeves have been replaced. 

 

The opto interrupter of the trunk mechanism was cracked and had been glued in place with silicone. This was a working fix, but I couldn’t take lower part of the mechanism apart for cleaning, so I had to order a new replacement interrupter.  The mechanism is now cleaned but not yet back at the playfield since I wanted to keep the upper side as empty as possible for the cleaning.

 

The playfield was quite clean at all exposed easy to reach areas but was very dirty in the hard to reach areas. I went through the playfield with Novus2 twice and then gave it a coat of wax.

 ´

Wax on, wax off...

 

While waithing for the wax to harden I polished some of the playfield hardware.

 

I also dissembled the back board to be able to clean it properly and found two lamp covers that had melted. They need to be replaced but I do not have these colors in stock so I need to order some more parts…

  

It’s soon time to put the playfield back in the cabinet to be able to check lamps and mechanisms while putting things back where they should be. But there is some job to be done to the cabinet first. The main problem is the cracked corner in the front and as soon as I had the leg and leg bracket of, the corner opened op even more, which is good since it allows for the glue to go in and fill up properly. I used ratchet straps to keep the corner properly closed while the glue hardened.

 

While waiting for the glue I took a look at the legs. The glass bead blaster managed to remove most of the rust and then I polished them with chrome polish compound. The casters were in quite bad shape, I will replace the two front casters and use the two best of the old one at the rear legs.

 

The cabinet inside is very dirty and it is not easy to clean the dirt out. The dirt has a tendency to stick to the wood and adding moisture of some kind just causes it to stick even worse. This far I have cleaned the cash box compartment and the bits and pieces mounted around it.