Vintage Machine Restoration and Modification
Hello all!
As a new person to the forum I appreciate all of the warm welcomes. It would seem as though you all may have some sort of secret ulterior desire to reel others into some sort of highly addictive cult of mechanical fun machines or something. Thank you. Apologies in advance if I use “newbie” terminology or ask questions that have been covered – I have not yet combed through the whole site yet. I am thrilled that I found a site specifically covering what I thought was an unusual (for the U.S.) form of game rarely seen unless they are stumbled upon as a junk sale curiosity or you are “in the know” and have owned them for decades.
I have a collection of 10 vintage machines; two I have owned for over 15 years and the others came as a windfall find and were practically given to me by a retired mechanical “Junque™” collector as he put it. He had collected them for restoration from a pinball machine owner that also had that very same idea – 25 years ago. Well that plan never happened until now, and he was happy about my excitement in restoring something “old”, so I paid for one and got a great deal. Fred, the super cool 70+ year old characterized “Junque™ guy” twisted my arm with a smile, and to my complete horror, forced me to take all of them. They are all in various states of disrepair and are in need of restoration.
I planed on searching the site extensively (A large thank you to Sid) to gain some information on restoration techniques, do’s and don’ts, etc (like WD-40). I have started in on the usual cleaning of bugs, debris and odd foreign objects. I have also started in on some of the rusty components. Some of the machines have some rather extensive water damage on the playfields and the chrome trim plated will have to be coated (using black Rino-Coat) as they are far to rust damaged and pitted to look good. Two have damaged or missing wiring components and bad bulbs, so I was going to convert them to LED’s to lower power consumption and eliminate the need to ever replace a bulb – This started an idea. I now plan to “modernize” a few of the machines, blending my love for mechanical things, tinkering with electronics and gravitation toward shiny flashy things.
The “Modernization” will consist of removing and servicing the mechanics, removing rust and dirt, but leaving them as is, so that the machines still function by way of gravity and without power. I want to remove the pins and run them in my polisher. The playfields will be recoated (maybe airbrushed) and I want to laminate theme images to the surface like Ghost In A Shell, Bubble Gum Crisis and alike. I also plan on drilling and flush mounting flat face LED’s into the game face with chaser and flasher circuits that will react to launcher draw, launcher release, idle, cup wins, flowers open, center win and alike. I’m buying some surplus game sound boards from AllElectronincs.com that I will experiment with adding electronic sound effects to the games.
I want to document these experiments on this forum extensively, to both give others ideas and receive suggestions so I don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” if, others have done this sort of thing.
I hope not to create a backlash from purists that like original “stock only” restorations. Some of these machines will never be “new like condition” and are in bad shape, so I thought it wise to use them as an experimentation platform.
I would like to ask some of my fellow PachiTalk members for help with identification of the specific machines. I don’t know if any of them are rare or hard to get and therefore should not be modified.
Thanks,
Shock
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