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All posts for the month May, 2014

There is quite a bit of work to be done in the top area. Two saucers, an upper ramp section, pop bumpers, messenger ball, gates, mylar and a few plastics. I decided to work on the right side of the play field first, and then work back around to the left. I’m waiting on parts for the pop bumpers to arrive before I can properly service them, so i’ll be skipping them for now.

First up is the ball saucers, which allows you to trap a ball. There are two on the play field, one on each side – which allows for a 3 ball multiball during game play.

Fireball saucer
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Fireball Classic has 3 mushroom bumpers on the play field. These are small ‘passive’ pop bumpers. No coil attached, and are simply hooked up to a switch below the play field. The yellow cap sits just high enough so the ball gets under it and lifts it up. That causes the switch below the play field to close. I had never seen them before, so was curious to pull one a part to see what it was made up of. Plus, there was one missing on my play field, so was going to have to track the parts down.

Fireball mushroom bumper
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With the removal of the mylar covering the play field, some paint was lifted around the edges of some inserts. I wanted to touch this up with some paint before I clear coat or wax.

During the week I went down to a local game/hobby shop and picked up some small enamel paints. I picked up these, along with a few variations in colour to try and match the blue, orange, yellow, red and white as best as possible.

Fireball paint
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With the lower play field given an initial clean and service, it is time to go over the middle area. The main feature of the middle play field area is a central “spinner” (or spinning disk) which rotates constantly during gameplay. It’s covered with a rubber pad used to grip the ball and fling it off (….like a fireball). I won’t be servicing this for now, but will return to it at a later date. The spinner works fine, but really could do with a service.

I will be removing the rest of the mylar up to the pop bumpers, along with servicing the rest of the play field components in that area.

The mylar in the middle section was not as bad as in the lower. But just as with the lower section, someone has attempted to remove parts of it, while leaving the goo and not really doing the best job.

Both sides contain one plastic each, along with some switches, mini mushroom bumpers and a saucer to trap a ball in. The right side also contains a gate which can allow the ball to either return to the shooter lane, or back into play.

(note I had removed the small mushroom bumper on the right side before the starting photo was taken).

Fireball mid play field left
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