AC/DC Pro

Next up is an AC/DC pro. It’s not broken but in need of cleaning, new rubbers, some playfield repairs and a couple of mods. The main problem where the two ramps, both were broken by the entrance and I suppose this isn’t uncommon since they miss protectors. My plan was to use protectors to rebuild the entrances.

 

 The protectors should be mounted by sliding on at the front of the ramp and then secured by a screw at the top. In this case there was no front left and instead I drilled holes for screws through the protectors and ramps, above where the ball will go. Maybe not the most beautiful solution, but it worked and saved the ramps.

 

 Another broken piece at the playfield was the mounting bracket for the center flash. This piece was essential for the project since I should add the LED flash mod. I couldn’t find this piece as a spare part but luckily I have a friend that is very good with the silver solder. You can hardly see it has been repaired and once back at the playfield with the flash mounted it’s not visible at all.

 

Angus had developed a nasty skin condition during the years of play but it was easily fixed with some Novus2 facial scrub. The rest of the playfield was equally dirty but became really nice after cleaning.

 

 

The mods added was the three LED flashes, the bell got a swinging ball and an AC/DC train. And to add some extra bling to the machine and at no extra cost I also added a MLP mod.

 

This is the MLP mod (My Little Pony), I’m quite sure I’m starting a new trend here, every pinball should have a pony. I do not know what the owner thinks about it though J

 

Custom score cards instead of the ugly yellow and black cards supplied by Stern and one of the old broken flashes became a custom key ring.

Theatre of magic

The last problem to solve was related to the GI. It’s divided in to five sections but two of them didn’t work. A previous owner had solved the problem by reconnecting the two non working GI strings to two that did work. The downside of this solution is that it doubled the load at these two sections and the CPU couldn’t control the GI as it should be able to. One of the sections was an easy fix, just a bad connection in the female J115 connector. The other one was a bit more tricky but it turned out that the triac was the cause of the fault.

 

 Four new balls, a couple of custom score cards and a key ring and the case is closed.

 

 

Theatre of magic

The coin door has been completely disassembled and all parts cleaned before reassembling and the cut wiring for the coin switches has been repaired.

 

The front of the cabinet had holes drilled for a lock bar which I covered with carriage bolts. Originally I painted all of them in gold but it didn’t look right to have gold bolts in the lower holes so I repainted those in flat black. The proper color to use would be octarine but I haven't found a spray can of that color. 

Once I had the trunk motor back in the playfield I noticed that it had some problems to rotate the trunk properly. It actually got the trunk to rotate but the motor had to run a bit longer than normal and it gave trunk error in test mode. This was caused by the drive shaft slipping against the drive gear inside the gear box. Luckily it is an easy fix, just tighten the screws holding the shaft to the gear. But I had to take the trunk mechanism out of the playfield and disassemble it again to get my hands on the gearbox.

 

This is the left curtain for the back board and it was quite bent when I took it out of the playfield. I have had it under pressure for a couple of weeks to straight it out. The paint has been worn out just where the lamps at the back board are, causing them to shine through in white. I replaced the five backboard lamps with red LED’s to get the right color of the light.

The trunk is in quite bad shape. The front is cracked and it is just a matter of time until the lower part falls of.

This is the current state of the game. All playfield parts has been cleaned and polished before reassembling. I have played a couple of games but there are still some things to do before it is finished.