I finally found some time to take a look at the Mars God of War I pulled out of a hurricane katrina-damaged house in New Orleans last year. The batteries on the MPU board had hosed the connectors as well as the main board and I am set to replace it with Pascal Janin’s PI80x4 board. In preparation for that, I have to re-pin some of the damaged connectors… as this video shows, things are never as easy as they seem…..
In some cases, playfield lights, like bonus and other lights that may be out are the result of poor contact on the bonus stepper unit. In this video I show why replacing a light bulb may not fix a light-out problem and where to look to remedy the situation, on a Gottlieb electro-mechanical pinball game “King Kool.”
This is another one of those video series where I thought to myself, “If I were smart I would edit this.” But then I thought, I can’t be the ultimate pinball repair guru and I’m not really trying. If I have some kind of “angle” it’s that I’m doing a FPS (First-Person-Shooter) perspective to the hobby, collecting and restoring. And often times when you’re in an FPS, you poke your head down the wrong hall and get fragged. This is kind of how this video series starts off but it takes part 3 to realize the plot twist…
Ok I’ll get off confusing metaphors and back to pinball repair..
The problem I had was when I got this Bally Mystic, one of the targets was broken. I had ordered replacement targets. I opted for the same style as the side targets even though on many Bally Mystics, for some reason, the front targets are bullseyes and the side targets have explosion graphics on them. Go figure? Anyway, after replacing the targets I discovered that two of them would often get stuck in the “up” position and would often not retract when hit. I knew the springs on some of the targets were old and had “lost their zest” (that’s an official technical term by the way). So I thought I’d make a video on replacing the springs, showing an alternate source for some of the components as well as a trick to make an old spring kinda new. Along the way I discovered the real reason why the drop targets weren’t resetting…
Funny story how I picked this game up… I was in Dallas at TPF and basically I noticed this odd machine in the back of the exhibit hall with a “for sale” sign on it. I knew the guy selling it, called him on the phone and made a quick deal. What’s funny is he picked up the game earlier in the day after some local saw a pinball machine in his truck, pulled off the road and said, “Hey you like pinball machines? I have one at my house about a mile away, want it?” And he went over, grabbed the game, threw it into the exhibit hall for a quick flip. It’s funny how these things turn out.
Today I finally got a chance to set up a game I purchased last year and brought back from Houston. A 1976 Williams “Space Mission” EM game, the theme centers around the Apollo-Soyuz link-up in 1975. This game exhibited a somewhat common problem, of the ball not advancing and being stuck on “ball one” over and over, so the game would never end. In this series of videos, I illustrate what causes this and how to fix it.
I had a great time in Dallas for the Texas Pinball Festival. This year it was held in the huge Hilton Anatole, which felt more like a college campus than a hotel/convention center. Here’s the video of a walk-through of the 2013 Texas Pinball Festival.
In Dallas, I got out to the 8am swap meet at the Texas Pinball Festival.. here’s a short video I shot:
There wasn’t a whole lot out there this year, and most of the games were older/EMs. The Royal Flush I passed on last year as back, and I hear the guy sold it this year for $400. Someone got a great machine. There was a non-working HyperBall that was listed for $225, and a Williams Full House for $200, and various other things. Not many parts-pieces. I picked up a Williams Police Force lower cabinet and playfield for $25 – this will be a donor cabinet for the EArthshaker project that you can find videos on on the site (and see why I need a new cabinet!)