Fish tales

Finally ready for delivery. The last problem I found was the microswitch in the start button. Sometimes it didn’t make contact, even if it sounded and felt like it worked as I should.

Fish tales

The last parts arrived during the week and I have continued the assembly. I saw a picture on the net where they had used light blue rubbers at the entrance of the boat, and I thought it looked good, so I tested it at this game. I’m not sure of what the owner thinks about it… I also saw a picture of a Fish tales with green flipper rubbers. This looked really good together with the yellow flipper bats and the yellow/green plastics to the left and right of the flippers. Unfortunately I haven’t found anywhere to buy green flipper rubbers, except on Ebay, but they got extremely expensive with the freight from the states.

Fish tales

The disassembly and cleaning of the playfield are ready. It got a first coat of wax while disassembled, while it is easy to access all areas and it will have a second coat later on. I have also started the assembly but stopped at the point at the picture. I do still need the drive belt of the fishing reel and a lamp holder for the center bumper. I’ll wait with the installation of the boat until the lamp holder has been changed. It’s much easier to work with the bumper while having a hole in the playfield to stick the hand through.

All parts that have been taken out of the playfield have been cleaned and polished before putting them back.

 

 

The boat was disassembled and cleaned

 

The Stretch the truth meter has got five new lamp rubbers. The middle one was of another shade than the other four and to make sure they all look the same I changed all five. I also changed the flasher to a yellow one. I’m not sure what it will look like when playing, but it is easy to change it back to a clear one if it doesn’t look good.

 

The button at the fishing rod handle was lose so I took the handle apart to fasten it. At the same time I polished the handle.  The screws holding the two parts together were quite rusty so I repainted them satin black.

 

The plastic ramp is cleaned and polished. It is cracked by one of the screw holes, the right side of the upper left entrance. It was mounted using a pair of washers clamping the ramp in place. I will put it back I the same way since a new ramp is quite expensive.

 

 

 

Fish tales

I’m now almost ready with the disassembly of the playfield and there are a lot of parts to clean and polish at the workbench.

I found some new surprises today, the eject hole base are cracked and must be changed. Also the fish reel drive belt is a bit suspicious. The rubber material is quite thin at a little bit, to the left at the picture. I will change the belt to make sure not having to disassemble the reel unit once again in the near future.

 

Fish tales

I installed the external battery holder last week and to day I have started to disassemble the playfield for cleaning, it is very dirty… 

 

 

Before the disassembly I run through the solenoid test and found that the solenoid that should drop the target in front of the Casters club VUK didn’t do what it should. It was energized but didn’t drop the target. The reason turned out to a broken actuator, it should push the target when the solenoid is energized. I need to order a new one.   

 

 

Fish tales

There hasn’t been so much time to spend in the workshop the last days. But I have at least managed to disassemble the knocker unit, re solder the cable, glued back the loose wrapping paper, cleaning the coil sleeve and polished the plunger, it does now give a nice knock. While working with the knocker I added a cable clip to secure the two cables for the topper. Both to make sure they are not shorted in to something by accident and to relieve the strain at the knocker cables since they are tied in to the same cable loom. I have also prepared an external battery holder with a bracket to secure the batteries, getting it in to the game will be a job for another day.  

 

Fish tales

Yesterday I got a new project in to the workshop, a Fish tales with severe booting and rebooting problems. When powering it up it gave some intermittent noise and flashes for quite a while until it finally managed to boot. When then starting a game it rebooted almost immediately. Rectifier bridge BR2 and capacitor C5 has already been changed by another repairer. To my experience the most common cause for this kind of problem are the connector J101. When inspecting it I could see that it had been quite hot. I put the connector back at the board and now it booted properly but still rebooted during gameplay. I replaced the connector and now the game boots and plays as it should.

There is still some work to do at the machine. I will move the batteries from the CPU to an external battery holder, there is a lose cable at the knocker and I haven’t yet taken off the playfield glass to examine the playfields upper and underside. I also found two lose connectors that first worried me a bit, but they are for the animated fish topper, which is missing at this machine.