Pachi Wars Episode IV (really Episode I) - A New Hope!
Been spending the last couple of weeks working on one of the machines from Arbys, the Crystella (cause you guys hate it!), not too hard, only 6 screw left over! You don't realize how many parts these have or how many of them have little tight spaces dirt can get into till you try to clean one. I've done one before - Fever Wide Powerful - one of mine, just because I wanted to see what it would look like in pristine condition (409'd, rinsed, exposed surfaces polished), and it wasn't too bad, mostly just smoke/tar and a few cigarette burns.
Now the Crystella, it's all clear panels (gotta be clean), RGB LED's and painted plastic (gold metal flake) - so it can't be polished too much. Everything was a mess (sorry, forgot a complete undone picture), you couldn't even see the LCD for the dirt. Nor the circuit boards. Removed the cel, disassembled/cleaned/reassembled the main door, shooters tray, then the main frame (shooter knob/overflow tray first), power supply, payout control board, then on to the payout section. Once I was sure everything was completely dry (ran my room a/c at 70 so the room was dryer), decided to try out the frame. Plugged it in to a transformer and all the power supply LEDs lit and the payout error LED said '1', meaning it couldn't communicate with the main control board - duh, no cel!
So I decided I needed to test this puppy! Removed the control board, LCD and video/audio control boards from the cel (Aquarion). The LCD was thoroughly coated with dirt, but none had gotten inside. Cleaned the outside first, opened it up and cleaned/dried the back-light, and carefully reassembled it. Then had to break the seals on the control board (I heard the sirens of the Pachi-Police, but they'll never take me alive!) and drill out the security screws on the video/audio board. A thorough cleaning of the boards, rudimentary cleaning of their cases, reinstalled them on the cel and installed the cel in the frame. For some reason I had on connector left over, thought 'maybe this game doesn't use this one'. Plugged the machine in and it starts yelling at me! I don't have the machine in it's frame yet (still on the porch to be scrubbed) so it was telling me the main door was open (Yoshimune pachislo does the same thing). All the animatronics did their thing (there's 4 of them, one kind of stuttered, so I pulled on it and it cycled), all the lights of the cel lit up and the LCD came on clear and bright! YEA!!! Scrambled to find some pachinko balls, dropped a few in the start pocket and it spun away! Works great! But the frame lights didn't work. The whole machine is framed by RGB LEDs. Turned it off, flipped it over (it's laying on my bed), opened the payout section and waddaya know, an empty socket! Connected the unknown connector, flipped it back over, turned it on and EVERYTHING lit up! Aside from the cel still being dirty, you wouldn't know it had been under water for several days!
Only major (minor?) problem is the plywood of the cel is coming apart. It's about an inch or so thick, the first 1/2" (from the cel face) seems fine, then a layer or two is warped (not all the way around), then the last layer or two is fine. My thought is to strip the cel down to the nails, squirt some carpenters glue in the openings and clamp the whole thing together. Will need to trim some the edge of the ply where some of the layers have protruded. I figure one advantage I have is with big LCD and animatronics, there isn't much plywood to have to fix.
So there is Hope!
In the pics below, the LCD looks dirty but it's clean, the rest of the cel is still dirty.
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幸運わんわん Luckydog or Yukiwanwan in Japanese 
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"I've stopped fighting my inner demons, we are on the same side now." 
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Originally Posted by YOSHImune23
