What better way to spend a rainy Sunday than to do some work on a loved pinball machine 🙂
Despite being slowed down a little as I build up funds for the next bulk parts order, there is still plenty of things to do meanwhile. They’re not always exciting, but it’s always forward motion to the end goal – getting this machine 100% and looking great. Today I wanted to look at the shooter.
Time to get my hands dirty and do some rebuilding on Pinbot. Funds have dried up a little for now with the recent purchase of a CPR gold Pinbot playfield. I had not planned to purchase a new playfield, but couldn’t resist. Pinbot is a keeper so I will have it for a long time to come, making the extra outlay worth it in the long run.
Since I had the machine powered up successfully, the language sorted out and battery save mod completed – it was time to start pulling a section of the machine to bits and rebuilding it. I decided to work in a similar fashion to how I did on my Fireball Classic – start from the bottom up and work through areas of the machine until complete. So, time to lift the apron and see what lurks beneath.
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.
I’ve been a bit quiet on my Nugent lately – more playing than tinkering.
I’ve got a batch of parts arriving in a week or so to fix up a few more things, so will hopefully have more work to report shortly.
I have been meaning to get under the apron for awhile and check it out, so decided to do it last night.
The apron itself isn’t in bad shape. There are a few marks across the “for amusement only” text and some very minor scratches around the edges. But overall it’s clean, solid and the artwork clear.
Today, I finally completed the project. After having the machine split in 2 (thus unplayable) for so many months, I put the finishing touches on the front half today and joined it all back up for a game.
The first step was to remove the existing decals from both the left and right front panels. As it was, some of the decals had already come off. In some places there were chips missing from the side panels and even what look like burn marks (assuming cigarette).
