Devil Riders almost done

Well, it’s been a long time, but finally here’s a new post. I’ve moved house and my pinball projects have been on hold for months now. Anyway, here’s an update pre-move.

I got a replacement coil for the popbumper that had the wrong type installed, so I installed that first.

Correct bumper coil installed.

The I went to work on the ramp that I finally got back from the blacksmith. He charged me a lot of money for the repair, I guess he doesn’t want my “little” repairs anymore. To be fair, it was probably not difficult work, but it may have taken a while.

Back from the blacksmith. Not pretty, but functional.

So I cleaned it, installed it and finished the shooter lane and apron install.

Playfield done.

I’m waiting for new flipper bats and then the playfield will be done.

As I was in a cleaning mood, I disassembled the door and cleaned that too. Installed a new lock, etc.

The Devil Riders door before cleaning.

The Devil Riders door much shinyer, but still with an ugly hole in it...

It still has the ugly hole, but for now, I can live with that.

So next up are the legs and there is also a new shooter knob that needs to be ordered. After that, back to the bad CPU board. If any one has a spare, let me know!

 


Metal parts

Well, I’ve done most of the metal parts yesterday. I started off cleaning the two ramps and then polishing them using the chrome polish I use for my motor cycle. The result was two very shiny ramps!

The two ramps polished and reinstalled. Shiny!

Next up where the four metal guides that sit on the edge of the playfield. Bad news there, the chrome plating has started to peal off. I took away as much of it as I needed to so it won’t come loose while playing, but these parts will have to be stripped of all their chrome and rechromed at some point. I’ll wait until I have more so I can send off a whole batch of stuff at once and keep the cost down.

The chrome coating has come off of these guides.

Then I started the whole apron/outhole setup. Everything was in rather good shape, so it was just cleaning, polishing and reinstalling. I haven’t put the shooter lane back yet, since I still need to get a new diverter or fix the old one. So all in all I had a very fruitfull afternoon yesterday and this is the result:

Allmost all metal parts cleaned and reinstalled.


Bad day at the office

Well, everything started off promisingly enough. I had already cleaned the popbumpers, so all I had to do was reinstall them. Or so I thought.

I had bought new mylar trim platters to replace the dirty and desintegrated old ones, so I started with cutting to of them to size. They need to have a corner cut out to fit around some posts that are really close to the bumper. Then I started installing the first popbumper. The base plate first, then the switch and then the popbumper body with the new mylar trim. Not good…

The mylar trim plate doesn't sit right

You can clearly see that the trim is lifted up about half a centimeter. Now way that’s right… So I dismantled the body again and had a close look at it all.

The holes for the baseplate rod guides are to small

So the holes in the trim are too small. I should have noticed that earlier. I checked on the website of the place where I had bought them but since they only had one-size-fits-all, there’s nothing much I can do. So happy I just bought a new multi=tool!

Leeloo Dallas multi-tool 😀

So with a bit of finesse I managed to widen the hole and now the trim fits perfectly.

Fits like a charm

Rince and repeate three times and finally the popbumpers are installed.

All popbumpers finally reseated.

That took a lot longer than expected and since I only had about 20 minutes left before I had to go, I thought to quickly install the new outhole switch. I soldered a diode over the appropriate contacts and went to get the bracket to fix it to the bottom of the playfield.

The bracket was no where to be found! Where did I put it. Where could it be. Then I remembered that I checked the bracket on the playfield to see which were the correct holes last time I worked it and I might have left it there when I left. And today while turning the playfield over to get tot the popbumpers it might have fallen off. After 5 minutes of sitting on my knees, clearing out my toolbox bit by bit, I still hadn’t found it. Finally I noticed something weird with one of the flipper assemblies, there was a piece of metal sticking out that shouldn’t be there. Sure enough it was the bracket that got lodged between the playfield and the flipper assembly. I had found it!

So I started screwing it in place only to notice one of the screws and bolts for the microswitch itself was missing. Where was it? Still on the old switch! So into the trashcan I went. Luckily I hadn’t emptied the trash yet, so it was still in there and I could recuperate the screw and bolt. With the new switch finally installed I soldered the leads to it and now the bottom part of the playfield is done.

New outhole switch finally installed

So with all that bad luck and stupid mistakes, an hours worth of work took me over three hours to do. Bad day at the office indeed!


More cleaning

I’ve received the new fuse clamps and quickly installed them on the Devil Riders’ power board. No more fiddling with the fuse.

New fuse clips installed

Then I took out the sunken inserts.

All sunken inserts removed

After a close inspection I saw that the 3000 hole is in the worst shape. It will need some wood filler and paint touch up.

This one is in the worst shape

I’ve reseated the inserts with some superglue, they shouldn’t move anymore.

Inserts reseated, still need to fill the wood and touch up the paint

I also took apart all the targets at the end of the playfield, cleaned them and reinstalled them. Fortunately, the print on them is still in good condition, so I don’t have to replace any of them.

Targets cleaned and adjusted

With that done, I started on the popbumpers. They were dirty and one is using a wrong coil that didn’t fit very well and was missing some screws.

Rebuilding the popbumper coil assembly

Rebuilding the popbumper

All the popbumpers are now clean and ready to be reinstalled. I kept the one with the wrong coil as I’m still looking for a replacement coil.

I also took apart the outhole kicker, cleaned it and reinstalled it. I noticed that the wrong coil used in the popbumper is the same coil that is used for the outhole kicker. So if I ever find a new popbumper coil, I’ll have a spare outhole kicker coil.

Outhole kicker cleaned and reinstalled

Next up the metal parts and the plastics. Then we can start to reassemble!

Oh and my dad came by for a game on the Pinball Champ…

Dad came by for a game on the Pinball Champ '82


More problems solved and the start of cleaning

I went back to the power supply board today for two reasons; I still had that little POWER FAIL circuit to fix and I had trouble finding the reason why my controlled playfield lights weren’t lighting up. So I found that the 5V was missing from CN2.

After some testing I found that it was the fuse and fuseholder were oxidised. Some cleaning took care of that and now the 5V is back.

It occured to me that now that this 5V was back, the POWER FAIL circuit had to be revisited, and low and behold, the POWER FAIL signal is gone. So the circuit wasn’t failing, I had a missing voltage and had completely missed it. DOH! /facepalm

I reconnected the POWER FAIL signal on the CN9 connector on the CPU board and everything still boots up 🙂

After that was all over with, I started disassembling the playfield, documenting everything with a lot of photo’s since I want to be able to put it all back together again too…

Dismantling

Once I removed everything from the top of the playfield, I flipped it over and got to work on the top drop target bank.

Out with the old...

I removed the broken drop target, replaced it with the one I got from David from zaccaria-pinball.com (see my links) and flipped the playfield over again.

The CHAMP is back!

So with that done, I started cleaning. I haven’t done a lot yet, but here’s a picture for you to see how much difference it makes already.

Started cleaning

And notice the working lights, what a big difference 5V makes 🙂


Parts incoming!

Although I’m in Sweden this week and the next, I haven’t forgotten about my pinball machine…

I’ve been franticly searching the Internet looking for those elusive parts that I so dearly need to get the machine back to pristine condition and I think I’ve done it.

From the Multigame site (see the links section) I’ve ordered a rubber set, a new pinball, a doorlock and some more small parts, together with some cleaning materials.

David, from www.zaccaria-pinball.com has sold me a spare “H” target and a replica door sticker and they are on the way.

The "H" target

David's spare "H"

And then the two memory chips… The 6514J-0 was relatively easy to find. A search on ebay found three vendors in the US, so I ordered one and it’s on the way. The 2114L was an alltogether different story. No hits on ebay or anywhere else.

It was even hard to find the correct datasheets for this memory chip, but after going through dozens of datasheets, I finally found the correct one. I’ve put it up here in the datasheets section on the right, so you don’t have to go through that experience yourself.

I found out that Texas Instruments made the same memory at different speeds, after looking up those datasheets and checking the TI speeds with the ones from Intersil, I started looking for a TMS2114L-45NL. Again, no luck 🙁

Then I noticed that the top of the Texas Instruments datasheets state “Previously Called TMS40L45”, so I searched for a TMS40L45-45NL on ebay and BINGO, there’s one on the way 🙂

According to the datasheets it should work, but I guess you never know until you put it in the CPU board and run the test.

Since I spend a lot of time looking for datasheets, I’ve decided to put them up here for anyone else that might be restoring a similar machine…


While I’m waiting…

I took apart the cabinet door. It was in a sorry state and needed a good clean.

I noticed a couple of things: first, the door is German. With that I mean that the coin price tags are for 1, 2 and 5 DM (Deutsch Mark). Unfortunately, inside there are only two coin acceptors, one for 5 Belgain francs and one for 1 DM, and only two microswitches to count the coins dropping, one of which did not test well and needs to be replaced. This explains why two of the coin slots had screws in them. All the wires to the microswitches have been cut and since I don’t have a wiring diagram for the door, I’m waiting until the electronics are fixed so I can start measuring out which lead goes where.

Once I took apart the door, I noticed that the door itself is deformed (bashed in) and that is the reason it doesn’t open and close smoothly anymore. I tried to straighten it out a bit, but as you know, once metal is bent, it’s almost impossible to get it straight again. Atleast it’s out of my skill set (if you have any tips, leave a comment). Anyway, I managed to get it to fit in the frame much better and although still bent, it looks better.

I cleaned off al the little parts and started putting them together again. I do still need to find a replacement coin eject button and preferably a new coin return lid as they are both very rusty. I’ve also removed the old lock and ordered a new one.

Here are some pictures before and after:

Cabinet door

The cabinet door is a mess

Clean cabinet door

The cleaned door looking much better

Once that was done, I started on the ball shooter assembly. The rubber at the end was completely dead, a new one is on the way together with all the other rubbers needed for the pinball machine. The rod is in OK condition, but I’ve ordered new springs too. The nice chromed ones. As with my motorcycle, you can never have too much chrome! 🙂

The ball shooter

The cleaned up ball shooter.

I cleaned the front plate and noticed that some of the chrome is gone. I might send this off to rechrome later on, together with the coin entry casing on the door which is in an even poorer state.