Progress on the Whirlwind service has been quite good so far and it’s cleaning up nicely. There have been a few small surprises along the way, but nothing scary or too troublesome. On the bright side, the surprises keep things interesting and is a constant reminder that no two machines are the same. There is always something different to solve, making it a rewarding feeling to work on each machine. I’ll continue to work my way up the playfield in this update, performing some general cleaning and servicing more assemblies along the way. The first one to receive attention in this update is the top right flipper.
rubber
All posts tagged rubber
Following on from my previous update, it’s now time to get everything else back onto the playfield. The plastics are being cleaned and polished as I go. I started out with the sling shots and then began moving up the playfield. As part of the first pass I also reinstalled some of the clean plastic pieces towards the top of the playfield, along with the plastic around the bonus kicker. All new rubber is going on, along with new white star posts.
Time to report in with the progress made on servicing the Mariner. It’s a been a little slow lately with other things taking priority, but I’m getting back into the swing of it now. First on the hit list for this update is the shooter rod. It’s in dire need of a clean as the rod sticks when pulled back, preventing it from returning to it’s normal position and applying any force to the ball. I’m keen to reuse as many of the parts as possible after servicing it since I’m not performing a restore. It doesn’t have to look “as new” since the cabinet is not being repainted – I’ll be happy with it cleaned and operating correctly.
The Counterforce project is now on the home straight. Not much more to do and i’ll consider it a another project completed. I’m looking forward to actually playing it. First (and biggest) task to look at for this update is rebuilding the lower set of flippers. The flipper bats are dirty and will need a good clean. The others came up nicely, so I expect these will too. The rubber is long gone but easy enough to replace. The playfield area around here also needs a good clean, which I’ll do once the bats are removed.
It feels like forever since I was last working on Pinbot (in truth it’s been about 4 weeks). A project I started last year and then set aside for 10 months while Pinball took over my life needed to be completed in November. That was successfully done and now it’s time to turn my attention back to my beloved Pinbot machine and continue its rise to awesomeness. The last part of the playfield to do is the flippers. To be more specific, rebuilding both and sorting out the right flipper (which does not work).
So the starting point. Normally Pinbot has white flipper bats. This machine came with some ribbed blue bats. They don’t really do anything for me, so i’ll be looking to replace them. The rubber is dead (and I’ve since removed it) so that will be replaced also. As mentioned, the right flipper does not work, but the left is fine. There is some playfield damage in this area, but it’s not an issue since the whole playfield be will replaced shortly.
