Fireball

All posts tagged Fireball

I’ve put the top right plastic issues to the side once again as I haven’t managed to get anywhere with it.

I decided instead to install the clear plastic in the top right and fire the game up to actually play it! I haven’t had the machine in a playable state since the first few nights it came home. Once I started to clean parts, I didn’t want to play it and spread all the dirt, dust and goo around the cleaned areas – so have held off playing.

It was great to actually -finally- play it. The small play session doubled as a good shakedown on the machine to see what sort of issues still remained and what required some fine tuning.

A few things turned up.

Firstly the ball save kicker was unreliable. Sometimes it would save the ball, other times it would kick out, but not make good contact with the ball. My first thought was the switch – perhaps not being sensitive enough. So I tested the switch, but that came up fine and was very sensitive. I removed the apron to have a look at the assembly. I found the coil was actually loose. The reason for this is there are two small screws which to the coil bracket and lock it in place. I had made the mistake of putting these on the outside when I reinstalled it after servicing it. The screws should sit inside. There is no thread on small metal bracket – only on the large assembly frame, so they have to be screwed in from the inside. Thankfully this was a nice easy fix.

Fireball Classic ball save screws wrong
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I fixed up two of the large inserts on the lower play field last night.

When I picked up the machine there was already some damage to some of the inserts. One of the worst hit was the right side “when flashing” inserts. It looks like a decent chunk of the plastic has been ripped up with the mylar that was removed from that area in the past. Some of the other inserts have suffered the same fate, but this was the worst hit.

Fireball classic inserts
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One of the final parts of the play field to get some attention is the pop bumpers. The main reason I had left these for so long was due to waiting on parts arriving from the US. There were some immediate issues I noticed with the pop bumpers. Firstly, the lower of the three should have a Medusa cap and not the “1000 when lit” instructions. The “1000 when lit” and “3000 when flashing” apply to the top two bumpers. These are activated by achieving one of the two skill shots on the upper area.

Fireball classic pop bumpers
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The keys for the head box had been lost somewhere in the past and the previous owner had drilled out the lock in the head box. While searching around in the cabinet when I first got the machine home, I found the left overs along with the hook which locks the head box door in place.

Fireball classic missing headbox lock
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Time to do some work on the coin door on my Fireball machine. On arrival it had 3 coin mechs hooked up, with some sort of modified pricing plates installed. It also contained a delightful sticker warning about the terrible content of the game.

I don’t plan to do too much with the coin door as it’s not in bad condition, but a few improvements can be made.

Fireball classic coin door start
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