Just before I was finishing up the previous Bride of Pinbot post, an important parcel arrived from the USA. It contained the BoP ramp entry protector set from Cliffy! Due to the issues with the heart beat ramp, I was in some ways forced to replace the ramp (or leave the various hacks that had been put in place for it). I had no intention of putting the new ramp in until the protectors arrived – so I was glad to see these.
leds
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Welcome to a new Repair & Service log series. I’m still working away on machines for other people, but it feels good to also be making time to work on a game of my own again. This time I’ll be going through a Bride of Pinbot, which has the 2.0 upgrade kit from Dutch Pinball installed. Originally released by Williams in early 1991 and over 8000 machines made, it’s a game I’ve been wanting to own for awhile. The kit from Dutch Pinball was released in late 2014 and updates the machine to a colour display with an entirely new rule set. It also allows you to switch to the original game rule set too – which basically means it’s two games in one. It runs the original game under emulation though and as a result there is some sound quality issues on a couple of the original speech sounds. I’m told this is due to the quality of the original speech clips being played out of the updated sound system. All up though both games are a hell of a lot of fun to play. I plan to do my usual clean and rebuild of the game, with additional plans in the future for a playfield swap (game came with a clear coated playfield) and new cabinet decals (to be purchased later). For now I’m keen to tackle it in small doses to keep the game in a playable state as much as possible.
Time to wrap up the servicing on my X-Files machine – I’ve missed not being able to play it. At the end of the last update, I was working my way through getting everything back onto the playfield. I had already made good progress getting the lower playfield area done and was chipping away at the upper sections. All the posts had been installed, so the next bits to go back onto the machine were the plastics. All plastics were cleaned (both sides) and polished before being installed again. The right side of the playfield came together first.
Just when I say I’m not doing anything extra to one of my machines, I decide on an additional something to fiddle with. I’ve been keen to add lighted flipper buttons on a machine for a little while and I’d really like to do it on Pinbot. I’m going to use LAH as the guinea pig and give it some flashy looking buttons. I’ve seen people discuss kits online, but it’s much more fun to try it yourself (and pretty cheap too). To start with the buttons need to be transparent – I have transparent red ones on LAH already, so will run with those.
Well it didn’t take long. Only a few weeks into owning a machine that I didn’t plan to do any work on, and am going to strip the playfield for a solid clean. Having had a much closer inspection now, there is a lot of dust and dirt at the top of the playfield, along the ramps and on the plastics located up there too. I really want to get it into a clean state – a base line – that I can reference to know when the machine was last given a service and deep clean. Since I’ve already worked through a number of the assemblies below the playfield, I want to give the playfield itself similar attention. While I’m doing that, I can clean the individual parts on the playfield and get fresh rubber all over it. Naturally, that means I won’t be able to play it for about a week – but it’s task well worth doing.
