Pinball

Documenting my adventures into pinball repair and restoration

Twisted Pins – Avoid them! (updated 18/11/2015)

Posted by Andrew Burch on May 7, 2015
Posted in: Pinball. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 comment

Update – Decided to sticky this and also add direct links to threads on Aussie Arcade and Pinside highlighting the negative dealings people have had with Twisted Pins and Travis.

Thread on Aussie Arcade forums – Link

Thread on Pinside forums (Appended to an existing thread)- Link

Originally posted May 7th, 2015.

After a very poor experience with Twisted Pins over the last month, I’ve decided to write up the details for others as a warning. If you must order from them, be aware they don’t have the strongest reputation (as I’ve since heard and now experienced). In fact after some searching, I’ve found a number of people have a very negative view of Twisted Pins and the guy who runs it – Travis Brawley. No doubt people order from them without issue. But if there is an issue with your stencils (as I found with mine), you may not get any support – regardless of where the fault lay.
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Pinbot Restoration – Headbox repair & stenciling

Posted by Andrew Burch on March 5, 2015
Posted in: Pinbot - Williams (1986). Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

This update took much longer than I expected it would, but finally the headbox has been patched and repainted. Outside of some cosmetic damage, the headbox is in good condition. While the artwork was faded in parts and there was some minor damage to the wood, it was at least strong and stable. Unlike the Fireball Classic I recently restored, the Pinbot cabinet artwork is painted on with the use of stencils. A full set are available at TwistedPins and Santa managed to deliver a set to me during the Xmas period and it was time to put them to use.

I’m going to break the process up into two parts. Firstly i’ll do the headbox, which will then be followed by the cabinet. To begin with, I removed the stencils from the packaging and flattened them out. There are two stencils per side – one for the red/orange colour and the second for the yellow. It also comes with a set of instructions which are not complicated – just common sense really.

Pinbot pinball
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Pinball Parts – Crap Box #5

Posted by Andrew Burch on February 6, 2015
Posted in: Crap Boxes. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 5 comments

This time I’ve got a serious pile of second hand pinball parts to sort through. Some 40kgs+ of assorted bits and pieces from various machines and manufacturers. This is actually two lots joined together truth be told. I purchased both at the same time and when I collected them, they were all tipped into the same box to bring home. So instead of somehow splitting them up and doing two write ups, I’ve decided to just do single post covering everything. There really is a lot of stuff here to get through. The total cost for the box was around $35AU, which isn’t too bad considering the bulk of it all. There were some items I was specifically after but most of the content is a mystery. I can’t wait to see what’s actually in here 🙂

Pinball Parts
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Fireball Classic – Project completed

Posted by Andrew Burch on January 17, 2015
Posted in: Fireball Classic - Bally (1985). Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

It’s time to finish off my Fireball Classic restoration. When I started my Xmas / New Year holidays, I had the goal of finishing this off before I went back to work. Looks like I’ll get there with a day to spare. With the presentation of the machine completed in my last update, I wanted to address the last few operational issues with the machine. The first thing to look at is the MPU board. As mentioned a few times in earlier updates, the MPU board has suffered from corrosion. A battery left in way too long managed to spread damage all around the outer edges on three sides of the board and it had begun to work its way in at the components. Damage was also done to the J4 pins and even the female connector pins on this plug.

I was able to obtain a second hand original Bally MPU board in excellent condition with no corrosion damage at all. The male pins at J1, J2, J3 and J4 were all replaced, along with new 5101 RAM and a lithium battery to ensure there is no risk of battery damage in the future. This one came from a Baby Pacman machine I’m told. New game ROMs were also burned and installed.

Fireball Classic Pinball
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Pinball Parts – Crap Box #4

Posted by Andrew Burch on January 14, 2015
Posted in: Crap Boxes. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I’ve managed to build up a backlog of crap boxes to get through. I’ve been focusing on various projects and the spare parts boxes are a low priority. That means they have been sitting around collecting dust. I’ve stopped buying them now as I’ve got more spare parts than I know what to do with. The boxes have come in handy on recent projects, so purchasing them has been worth it. But with my shelves full, there is no need add to it. This post will cover crap box #4 which will be followed by #5 and #6 when I get to them. At a grand total of $21 for the content in this post, it makes the box the most expensive crap box to date, but there was one part here I really wanted. This box looks to have a nice mix of things in it too, so time to dig in 🙂

Pinball Parts
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