restoration

All posts tagged restoration

After playing my Nugent a lot over the last two weeks, I decided it was time to make some improvements to the gameplay – this means giving some attention to the playfield. For now, I’m keeping it simple but in the long run I plan to use some Novus 2 and wax along with leveling the inserts to really improvement playfield.

First step was to get access to the playfield. To do this, I need to remove the lockdown bar which side across the end of the pinball table. Just inside the coin door – at the top right – is a handle. Pulling this to the left unlocks the lockdown bar.

Stern lockdown bar
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I received an early Christmas gift this year – completely unexpected, and it blew me away. My first pinball machine – a 1978 Stern “Nugent”. I was very happy to say the least. While the machine is in good condition, it is 35 years old so in need of some attention. For the last 3 years I have had my head inside arcade machines, so it will be refreshing to be involved with the servicing and restoring of a pinball machine. I still have Pole Position 2 to complete, but for now – i’ll be giving some attention to my new toy 🙂

Stern Nugent 1978
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Something I’ve wanted to get around to for awhile was giving some attention to the pedal assembly. I mentioned in an earlier post some issues I saw with it, and figured I would make the time to deal with it now while waiting for artwork and t-moulding to arrive.

When I tested the machine out before buying it, I did some light testing of the pedals (among other things). Both pressed OK, although could use some servicing. Trying them out in game, the accelerator worked fine as I could race around the track. The brake pedal seemed to be OK too as my car would slow down, although not as quickly as I expected. The machine was being sold as 100% working, so I left it at that, with the knowledge I’d need to give the pedals a clean and some grease/oil..

After getting it home and starting work on it, I eventually got my head into the back of the cockpit and began to inspect the machine much more closely. I decide to put the game into test mode (there is a handy switch for this inside the rear of the cockpit) and test out all the controls to see what they showed on the test mode.

The brake pedal gave no response.

Strange I thought – the car slows down when I shift my foot onto the brake and slows down when pressed. I stuck my head into the back of the cockpit once more to have a look at the rear of the pedal assembly, specifically the brake. It would appear the pot that connects to the brake pedal is no longer attached and had not been attached for some time. What I thought had been the brake slowing the car down was nothing more than me taking my foot off the accelerator (which explains the unresponsive feel of the slow down).

As you can see in the image below, the pot is not attached to the brake pedal.

Pedal Assembly Start
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One of the first issues I noted with the pole position machine was the condition of the screen acrylic and it’s lack of proper artwork. I wanted to address this as a priority, but it has taken a little bit of time to get around to it. This was the state of it when I first picked it up:

Screen artwork start
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When I first opened the back of the machine, this is the sight I was greeted with:

Blocked

A number of things bothered me:
1) The bottom left corner of the game board was physically resting on top of the switcher. This has actually left some marks across the top of the switcher and some discolouration on the side of the pcb.
2) The middle of the PCB is physically resting on top of the fuse switch. Not a big deal but I don’t like the fact the PCB is actually resting on components of the machine.
3) The pcb isn’t sitting properly due to a makeshift foot (see the top right pcb foot), which leaves it on an angle.
4) Loose power cable hanging across the PCB
5) The frame holding the PCB in place is attached to the base of the monitor panel. While the pcb itself doesn’t have much weight (and any it does have is currently resting on the switcher) I want to reposition it so it’s away from the monitor and not in the way of everything. There is no way to access the speakers, coin mech or steering wheel with this set up.
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