translite

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After being burnt out from pinball repair write ups and taking a bit of a break, I’m back with a new machine to cover. Corvette was released by Bally back in 1994 and had just over 5000 units made. The playfield is loaded with fun things that include 3 flippers, 3 ramps, a ball diverter, ball save kick back, a drag strip, pop bumpers, spinner, engine (that vibrates in play and interacts with the flipper buttons). Mix in good shots along with fun modes that include some great sounds and you’ve got yourself a fun game to play. I’m not a car person and have no interest in Corvette as a brand, but this is a fun game to play!

When the game first arrived for its rebuild, it wouldn’t boot and instead displayed the somewhat common “Check Fuses F114 and F115” error message. The owner told me the game had been booting, but then stopped one day after he moved it. Every other time I’ve hit this same error message, the fuses have been fine. This time was no exception as both fuses were removed, tested and found to be good. The game was switched back on and I observed the series of LED’s on the board indicating the presence of power along this part of the circuit. There is a lot of information out there for this error and a nice diagram of the circuit here:
http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#Check_fuses_F114_and_F115_message

The board isn’t getting its 12V. There’s not a lot to it. Following this back along the board, I quickly spotted a repair that had been done sometime in the past.

Corvette Pinball Repair
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Progress on Dr Who this week moved along really smoothly. Some weeks are like that, where everything comes together easily (which is a great counter to those weeks where nothing goes well at all). I wanted to start this update by giving the coin door a face lift. The coin door has metal panels over the three coin slots which will need to be removed. Because they are pop riveted to the door, I will need to drill them out and fill the holes. Overall the coin door isn’t in terrible condition, but has the usual scrapes and scratches from age. Replacing the old foreign pricing cards on the coin slots is on my to do list too. I spotted that the launch button isn’t correct. Notice the two small holes (one above, one below) the red button – there should be a larger button that slots in to them and so this needs to be replaced.

Dr Who Pinball Repair
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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.

Bride of Pinbot 2.0 Repair
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Now I feel like i’m getting back into the swing of pin updates 🙂 Progress on the Funhouse has been moving along smoothly this week, so I am keen to get another post up. For this update, I wanted to focus on the lower playfield area. In general, everything just needs a really good clean, although the sling shot plastics will be replaced. Some of the screws used on the clear posts are not correct and these will be replaced too. All up though, it’s a solid base to start with.

Funhouse Pinball
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The last few updates I’ve done have been rather small.. It’s time for a jumbo picture update. In this post, I’m turning my attention to the door of the headbox (something you don’t often see covered in restore threads, so I’m glad to be covering it). It requires a decent clean and there are a few issues I need to investigate (I’ll get into as I go along). I also want to sort out the translite and glass with the aim of getting the backglass installed too. The main thing I wanted to do though is clean the door and head to remove as much of the dust that had built up over the years. Once I started on this path though, it ended up being a bigger job than I had originally thought.

The starting point – the door.

Pinbot head door
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