The Snowball Effect

So, I was playing a friends 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' game the other day, and noticed how easy the 'Picard' shot was.  It got me looking at mine, and I thought my upper flipper might need a little adjustment.

I dug in, did my adjusting and then noticed that my lower right flipper might need a little tweak as well.  I adjusted it, but thought... ah... that flipper is a little discolored, I might as well see if I have a spare new flipper on hand.  Sure enough, swapped it out, and saw the real different between a nice, fresh new flipper, and a 20 year old, beat to heck flipper... You can see the difference as well in the above photo.

Then I figured, well... while I'm here, I might as well swap the left flipper out too...

I just played a game with my new flippers, and they look great.  More interestingly, they FEEL better.  Why?  Well, the old flippers were actually cracked!  They both had small, but long cracks along the tips of the flippers.  I don't know if this really made a difference, but the game sure feels differently.  I still need to go back in and swap out the upper right flipper, but she's on her way...

And while I was in there I gave the Borg entry and Borg lock switches a tap in Test Mode to turn off the alarm (it's been a LOOOOONG time since I've hit those shots, and the game noticed!)...  Hey!  I never claimed to be a GOOD player! *cough*

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In similar news, I met a couple engineers/pinheads locally recently, and they really got me to nut up a bit and try some tougher fixes.  To step out of my comfort zone a little bit.  I'm taking baby steps, but I'm actually trying to narrow down board issues now.  And thinking a bit more outside of my usual box.  It feels great...

What's going on in your pinworld right now?

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ALSO... new pins on the Albuquerque Pinball Map!  Go check it out and see if you have some new pins in your area...

'Medieval Madness' Madness!

A friend of mine recently purchased a Medieval Madness machine. It's in pretty good shape, except that the castle didn't work! Well, as anyone who has played MM knows, the castle is the biggest toy in the game. The previous owner included a replacement gate/drawbridge assembly. I looked up instructions on how to replace the assembly online, and was shocked to find that the instructions were over 20 pages long! (Here's a link to the tutorial.)

 So, with a stack of instructions in hand, I set out to swap the gate assemblies. Besides shopping an entire game, this is one of the largets projects I've worked on. I figured it would take about 5 hours, and I was right on. That included time to install Cliffy protectors and plastic protectors, and clean anything I came across. Besides stalling out while testing the gate. It did take about 4.5 hours. Unlike the instructions, I opted to unsolder the optos, and that only took a moment. I assume its much faster to unsolder and resolder the optos, than to pull all the wires out, one by one, but both methods work.

Here's a few photos I snapped along the way:

Here you see the old mech in the foreground, and the new mech behind it. The silver disc on the drawbridge is a weight that was added to allow the drawbridge to drop. I'm not sure why this was needed, the only issue seemed to be the obviously broken gate (in the top photo you see that it snapped clear in half!). A little adjustment of the set screws and switches on the drawbridge link allows you to properly raise or lower the bridge. I also found shards of soda cans taped to the underside of the gate. Someone needed shims and got creative! We've all been there...

Here's a shot underneath the game, with the mech and moat removed. It's a pretty large hole.

This is a shot with the exploding castle mech removed, as well as the stone pathway into the castle. In order to install the Cliffy around the sinkhole here, I had to remove the catapult and left ramp, as well as much of this area. I removed much more for the Cliffy than I did to actually replace the gate mech! I love seeing that clean, untouched wood though... niiiice... 

It was fun, and I learned a bit about MM. Namely, DON'T TRUST TEST MODE. I was able to get each item to work in test mode, but not all together in order to pass the test. I finally got fed up and just played a game, and it worked perfectly in game mode! We played about a dozen games, and it worked great every time! Don't be afraid to dig into your pins. Most were made with operators in mind, and are somewhat easy to pull apart. If you don't trust yourself, take lots of photos! Every time I have to mess with soldering, I take lots of photos to be certain and get all the different colored wires in the correct spot. Mixing wires leads to more repairs! Now onto that playfield swap....

A Tale of Two Pin*Bots

So... last October or so, I bought a Pin*Bot. PB has long been one of my favorite pins. It's brutal left outlanes make me weep like a baby girl, but I love the backglass art, I love the cabinet art, I love the sounds and speech, I love the playfield art, I love the helmet toy, I love the miniplayfield, etc. I LOVE Pin*Bot. I found one in pretty rough shape, but its PIN*BOT, so I bought it anyway. It was part of a group of pins, so the actual price for it wasn't bad at all, and it's better off in my garage than in a barn, right?

Fast forward to February. I bought ANOTHER Pin*Bot. Again, another group of pins, and this PB was in much better shape than the earlier purchase (which was still sitting, untouched, in my garage). Well, I got home, and packed it away. Didn't even turn it on... until today...

The plan is to fix up both machines, and donate one to the church across the street, and keep the other for my collection. The 'worser' PB works ok. I've turned it on and played a quick, unleveled, game here and there, but the cabinet is trashed. I'm not a big cabinet guy, but I'd love to try repainting it and restoring it. That's always been my plan. Here's a photo of the bad cabinet, but it looks even worse in person...


So, tonight I fired them both up. The better-looking-but-allegedly-far-more-broken PB fires up right away. Looks pretty great too! It's sitting on the floor, but I try a game... The balls don't kick out into the shooter lane. The drop target bank doesn't rise. The visor doesn't close. The eyes don't pop out. Hmmmm... could it just be a bad fuse?

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YES! It is, just a bad fuse. Swap fuses and everything works great! Or, everything works great for just powering it on for five minutes. I turned it off and will dig deeper soon, it was getting dark.

Then I turn to the dirty, ugly game. Power it on. Half the backglass doesn't light up. The alphanumeric displays are very very very broken. It looks like the alien from 'Sphere' (15-year-old spoiler alert) is trying to communicate with me during attract mode. I switch it off. Looks like I'm in for the long haul on each...


I'll keep you posted, and with a little luck we'll all be able to play one, or both, of the 'Bots later this month at the second Duke City Pinball Open House!

TOTAN LEDing

In an effort to maintain interest, I have decided to include all my mundane pinball goings-on in this blog. I originally set it up for specific DUKE CITY PINBALL entries, but we haven't really had many yet, and it just looks like an outdated, dead, boring site in the meantime! Hopefully a league will start soon, and we can post photos and weekly rankings!

Today, I cannibalized a few other LED kits from Cointaker.com to begin preparing my 'Tales of the Arabian Nights' for the DCP open house, later this month.


Due to a shipping error, I was left with a bag full of high power, warm white 44's that came with my 'World Cup Soccer 94' for the GI. Unfortunately, WCS94 uses 555's for its GI. Luckily, TOTAN uses 44s! On top of that, a friend gave me their unused 'Fish Tales' LED kit, so I stole a few bulbs here and there to add a little color to TOTAN.

This is the first pin I've done with high power LEDs in the GI lamps. I've outfitted a half dozen pins or so with LEDs, but the High power bulbs are very different. Overall, I'm pleased with the results. It's definitely brighter, without the obvious change in tone that the cool bulbs offer.


I placed a few colored bulbs below the lamp, and in the saucers, but they really need flex LEDs for the proper effect. I was also wishing to add just a little more color. The kit for the playfield inserts is on it's way, so maybe that will be enough color to add a 'pop' without changing the feel of the game. We added a ton of color to a 'Congo' recently, totally changed the look of the game'. Here's a pic if you're curious.

More photos of today's project are available here.