During my initial inspection of the machine in the first update, I had noted down a few things to look at before I attempted powering it on for the first time. This update will focus on these items. First on my list is the fuse panel. Located just inside the coin door, there is a small panel which is home to 4 fuses. My understanding is that the fuse clips on Bally EM’s are crap and a common source of problems as they often break. One of the fuse holders has already been replaced, with the new fuse holder being installed over the old one. The fuse holder on the far right (8A line fuse) is missing one of the clip arms, so this will have to be replaced.
service
All posts tagged service
One of my favorite times has arrived again – it’s NEW project time! Just as good as NEW pin day in my book 🙂 This time around, I’ll be performing a repair and service on a 1971 Bally Mariner machine that has made it’s way here from Germany. I’m stepping outside the comfort zone I developed while working on solid state machines and diving into an EM project. All of my Pinball projects to date have been solid state machines that were built between 1979 to 1986. I’m pretty excited about this project as it’s a chance to look at something different and gain more experience with EM’s.
One of the last things I want to do on Space Orbit is give the playfield a good clean, followed by a polish and wax. The playfield layout on these older machines is quite simple, so removing just about everything from the top is not too difficult. The simplicity also makes it easier to get back on again without too many chances for mistakes. I started out by removing all the plastics, star posts, bulbs and lane guards. The pop bumpers, flippers and ball guides can stay though, i’ll clean around them.
My work on servicing Counterforce is now coming to an end. It’s great news because now I can actually play and enjoy it! This project has gone quite quickly compared to my others (just over 2 months in length). First task for this update was to clean the legs up a bit. They are old and have some rust, but I’ve certainly seen worse. I have a two options I can consider. First is to clean them up and the second is to clear off the rust as much as possible and spray them. I guess a third option is buy a new set – but these legs are still good and I think a clean will do. New legs on a machine with faded and scratched cabinet art won’t look right anyway. Each leg was placed onto my work horse to have the rust cleaned up. This was done mostly with a wire brush attachment for my drill.
Something that has been been on my to do list for awhile is to make a few adjustments to the chimes. Space Orbit has a 3 chime setup (10’s, 100’s and 1000’s). The chimes work fine, but most of the grommets holding the chimes in place have aged and need replacing. Some posts are missing the nylon washers that sit between the grommet and lock nut too and these need to be replaced.
