One of the first things I had planned to do was a complete flipper rebuild. The flippers were not as bad as the ones on my Nugent, but I felt it was worth giving them a rebuild anyway given the state of other assemblies on the machine.
Still working my way through the assemblies located under the apron. This time I’ll be focusing on the ball trough and ball eject assemblies. I also need to sort out an issue with the ball trough where the ball bounces back down into the drain hole.
First up though, time to pull the ball trough apart and give it a really good clean. Even at a first glance, you can see how much dirt has built up.
With the sound issue issue covered, and the ball serve issue to look at, I wanted a bit of a break from problem solving to exploring the different assemblies on the machine and giving them a clean. The problem was – where do I begin? I want to cover the entire machine. In the end I figured I start from the bottom of the play field and work my way up.
So to begin with, I’d remove the apron and see what lurks below.
The apron on these early Bally machines are secured by two small metal brackets at the front and two screws at the back. The last person to work on the machine didn’t secure the apron to the brackets at the front and as a result it was lose (which isn’t good when you go to lift the play field by it…)
I have to say the two screws at the back don’t feel like the most sturdy attachment for the apron. I may be that due to age, it has just seen better days – but I don’t trust lifting the play field via the apron like I do on my Nugent and Space Orbit machines..
The shooter rod on the Fireball Classic was in pretty good condition. It still operated fine, but was in need of a good clean and service. The shooter rod is fixed to the cabinet by 2 bolts that are part of the face plate. Once removed you can just pull the shooter back away from the cabinet. I found that I needed to remove the rubber first though to get it through the cabinet hole.
The first issue I wanted to look at was the lack of sound. Although I could play a game on the machine, I got no sound at all in most cases. When I could hear sound it was very very quiet or distorted.
I went into maintenance mode using the switch inside the coin door and to the sound test mode. I couldn’t hear anything.
There is a volume control inside the coin door which I adjusted. Again no sound.
Next up I wanted to check the plugs and sound board in the head box.
