I went into the first update with quite a bit of momentum, but that was slowed down somewhat for this second update. As is often the case, life enjoys serving up a combination of things like family events, illness and work all at once to get in the way. What I’ve taken to doing though is breaking all the bigger tasks down into many smaller tasks (and breaking them down even further into more smaller tasks) that can be done independently. That way even if I only have 20 minutes in a day to make some progress, I can select a handful of small tasks to do which helps keep progress happening. In this update I’ll be focusing on the middle section of the playfield. There’s a number of assemblies on both sides to look at which should fill this update up pretty quickly. Both sides have large plastic moulds that help decorate the playfield and bring it to life. There are also a few ramps and rails that will need to be removed at this point as they will be in the way. Time to get in to it.
VUK
All posts tagged VUK
Time to dig deeper into the Star Trek overhaul and look at the middle playfield section. This area is home to two banks of drop targets, a VUK and also a swinging target that moves during play. There is a large ramp that covers the sections of playfield I need to get to though, which will need to be removed. Once that’s off, it will remain off until I’ve finished working on the playfield as it’s a pain to get on and off again. There is also a subway ramp below the playfield that links up the top left and middle scoops to the VUK which can be removed in this update too.
Batman Forever has been cleaning up really nicely. The game is in excellent condition, which makes my task easier. In this update, i’m now going to work through the last of the playfield assemblies so I can begin getting everything back together for a proper test. That means for this progress report, I’ll be covering the top playfield section. This includes the VUK, ramp diverter and three pop bumper assemblies. I already covered the orbit rail, saucer assembly and upper left and right playfield / plastics in a previous update, so won’t need to worry about those now. There’s a large ramp and rail that will need to be removed first, but from there it should be smooth sailing.
Colour displays on pinball machines are awesome! That’s probably stating the obvious, but once you’re playing in colour, it’s hard to go back to boring old orange and be satisfied. The owner of this Apollo had been thinking of adding a colour display from ColorDMD and decided to go ahead with it. There are two versions of colour display you can get – LCD and LED. This one’s the LED version and comes with everything you need to get it installed – it’s designed to be simple to install. Let’s get that new Colour display installed and see how it looks!
What’s better then two progress updates on a pin repair & service in the same week? Another one to go with them of course 😉 This update rounds up the final assemblies I can get at from under the playfield (besides the pop bumpers), before I move on to stripping the playfield. To kick this update off, I’ll start with the mini shark fin flipper on the right side of the playfield. I see this and think JAWS could be a neat Pinball theme. Some fun trivia – there was an Italian conversion by Europlay of an EM pin called Jaws – with a digital display and sound card added. Linky: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5080. I’m thinking something more modern would be neat in terms of JAWS. Anyway, let’s service that flipper.
