I received an early Christmas gift this year – completely unexpected, and it blew me away. My first pinball machine – a 1978 Stern “Nugent”. I was very happy to say the least. While the machine is in good condition, it is 35 years old so in need of some attention. For the last 3 years I have had my head inside arcade machines, so it will be refreshing to be involved with the servicing and restoring of a pinball machine. I still have Pole Position 2 to complete, but for now – i’ll be giving some attention to my new toy 🙂
A shot of the LAI serial number plate:
It also came with a lot of orginal documentation and wiring diagrams, which will come in handy for any repairs I need to make.
Once I recovered from the shock of seeing, I gave it a bit of a look over and was happy to see it was in pretty decent condition given its age. I powered it up and it seemed to be OK – lights came on, ball was active and flippers worked.
Putting it into the dark makes it look impresive:
I checked the coin door out. It accepted 20c coins in the right hand mech, but the left hand mech was missing. This should be easy enough to replaced. There was a microswitch installed so it could be used to easily add credits to the machine. The coin mech on the right worked fine and accepted coins correctly.
I took the backglass off and had a look at the bulbs to see how many were working. Some were missing and there were a few broken ones too. There were also some missing black bezels for the lights.
A photo of the reverse side of the backglass bulbs:
The score display for player 4 seems to have an issue with the bottom row of all digits not functional. Players 1 through 3 are working correctly though.
Some photos of the MPU and sound boards:
I played a few games and it runs fine. It needs some servicing so I will investigate a few small things to start with. I have no experience yet with pinball machines, so there is going to be a bit of a learning curve. But for now at least, it’s awesome fun to play!