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Post by nondescript spice on Oct 3, 2013 10:37:14 GMT -5
you win. but it's impressive all the same. have you and your brother always been into this? i was thinking of the older models, how difficult it could be to update them. that picture of that one board looks so small! i'd go blind trying to focus on them. before we got a newer transmitter for the radio station, we were constantly having to replace tubes at great expense. we also have an old radio from 1946 (the year the station went on the air) that used to work (came from a yard sale, but the owner took good care of it), but once it blew a tube that was it. we looked into it and it was pretty expensive to replace them. is it hard to find the parts you need for the older machines you come across? i guess that is part of it, searching for those elusive pieces.
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Post by Mod City on Oct 3, 2013 15:10:33 GMT -5
We both grew up around arcade games from family trips and that kind of thing, and I can still remember thinking how cool it would be to own one someday. When I bought my first one, my brother was the one who helped diagnose and repair the first problem. He was one of those car stereo guys in high school and is still highly knowledgeable when dealing with wire, voltages and electricity in general. He picked up soldering very quickly when we started doing this.
Basically, I do the research on the hardware, explain it to him, and he does a lot of the actual physical work. We kind of teach each other by listening to/watching the other guy. They're all technically my machines so I pay for stuff like replacement parts and new equipment. We like working together on this kind of stuff, it's just hard to find time to do it as regularly as we'd like.
And yeah, there are both video games and pinball machines with almost impossible-to-find parts, depending on how old they are or who the manufacturer is. Some guys do a boutique-style business online making reproduction parts for some of the more notable machines with scarce parts. The problem is, enough people have to want to purchase them so they can have them made in bulk to make it cost effective. Therefore, a lot of the rarest parts don't get reproduced.
It's hard to believe tube tech in general isn't completely dead now. I think there's only one company on the planet still making CRTs.
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Post by Mod City on Jan 23, 2014 12:15:43 GMT -5
The Bram Stoker's Dracula shop job has begun! We're about two weeks in, taking our time, and trying to keep track of all the dang parts. Lord, there are a lot of parts on this machine. We've got about as much of the top stripped as we're going to do, and tonight we'll be doing an evening of work on the underside. Been taking lots of pictures, but this is the only one I have access to here at work. You can see we've taken much of the upper half of the top apart. We've done some pre-cleaning so far, and it's coming out quite nice. After we finish the underside work we'll go back to the top and do a final, hard core cleaning. We've already identified what we think are the solutions to a couple of problems, and we're gearing up for another parts order. Will try to get some better pics up at some point.
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Post by nondescript spice on Jan 30, 2014 20:15:08 GMT -5
wow, those images on the machine are impressive. i'm glad i saw the movie, or else i wouldn't have known that was gary oldman that winona was...on.
how's it going with it? you're keeping it when it's done, right?
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Post by Mod City on Jan 30, 2014 23:10:22 GMT -5
It's going pretty well. We kind of work on a week on, week off schedule. We did a lot of work on the underside and fixed (we believe) several mechanical and electronic issues. We won't know for sure until we get it back in and turn the power on. Otherwise, a fresh box of parts just arrived and I put another in with another vendor, so we should be ready for the next phase next week. The big fun/challenge will be thoroughly cleaning and reassembling the playfield stuff. The artwork is pretty cool, but it's considered middle-of-the-road, if that, as far as good pinball art goes. And yeah, Winona and Gary seem to be having an...ecstatic...time. The backglass is really quite nice, especially with the flashers working great behind it, but I don't have a good picture of it handy. I'm surprised how many people have seen the machine and said they had no recollection at all of the movie. It's pretty good for what it is, and a damn sight better than that freaking Twilight nonsense. We've taken a lot of pictures not with my camera, so I only have a few to share, but here are a few. Here's a plastic that's been warped by heat and weight. It's also broken toward the back, if you look carefully. These are originally and have not been reproduced to my knowledge. That means we'll make due unless I can find someone with an old one they want to sell. The warping can be corrected by using a heat gun, the kind that you use to activate shrink wrap and the like. Place the plastic on a flat pizza stone, and slowly heat it up with the gun. It twists and warps with the heat and then lies flat. Let cool. Makes a big difference in appearance. Looking up the playfield. We'll be replacing the two yellow and one red target at the center of the picture. They work, but are beat to hell. So we're working on it. I'm excited to start on the playfield cleaning in earnest. That's the biggest thing you notice when it's all back together and working.
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Post by Mod City on Feb 20, 2014 16:22:08 GMT -5
Ok, going to do a bunch of "before" pictures until the "after" shots are ready. Here we go. A general shot of the lower playfield before doing much of anything. You can tell where hands couldn't reach on previous cleanings behind the coffin. For a machine that didn't look that dirty, there was a lot of dirt behind the scenes. A look at the Mystery hole. Very little wear, but we have put a protector there. A dirty ramp. Here you can see the effects of using a little metal polish on some of the posts. We like to use Brasso on stuff that's visible to the eye. Really glad we decided to clean the habitrails. They collect a crazy amount of dirt and I'm sure the work we did here will help keep most of it from coming back on top. Here you can see just how grimy the area around the flippers was. It's almost hard to see the edges around the Mist and Coffin multiball indicators. You can see the polish cleans up the metal pretty nicely. Tried to get this comparison shot from the same angle but it didn't quite come out right. I could have sworn the underside of the slings were cleaner than this. It's amazing what you don't see or can ignore sometimes. The Rat Hole. Again, not much damage compared to some of the horror pics I've seen from other machines. We put a Cliffy on this and it was surprisingly difficult. The top lip also doesn't lie perfectly flat. We may try to adjust that before we close up the shop out. Some of the upper portion after an initial cleaning. Also polished the pop rings, which greatly improved their appearance. The lower portion after a bit of cleaning. We worked a lot of the black stuff off the slingshot arms. This is also before we replaced the thin posts with star posts. We decided we needed new center targets after we got an up close and personal view of the old ones. Of course, everyone that's played Drac knows those targets take a pounding. The new ones look really nice, but for how long? Guess we'll find out. We're pushing ourselves to make good progress. It's kind of tiring, but we have most of it put back together already. Will update as soon as possible.
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Post by nondescript spice on Feb 20, 2014 19:51:07 GMT -5
wow, you guys have made a lot of progress. where was this thing before you rescued it?
have you and your brother ever thought about doing this kind of thing professionally, or is it just a hobby? there's got to be a market for this kind of thing. how much longer do you think it will take before you're finished?
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Post by Mod City on Feb 20, 2014 23:47:42 GMT -5
It had been in a very nice basement in a very nice home about an hour away from where I live (which is like walking across the street where I live). They were big vampire fans and had a large portion of their basement filled with DVDs and other collectibles. They said they had had it for about five years, which seems about right since the date on the operator license sticker inside the machine suggested it had last been on location somewhere about five years earlier. I really got lucky and they gave me a nice deal on it. It would be considered a pretty nice example as these things go. To be fair, a lot of the dirt and whatnot is very likely from me and my friends playing it the last couple of years. If you don't clean regularly it builds up, it's just a fact of life with these machines. We've cleaned it before but you can't get everywhere unless you take it apart like we have, and then we put off regular cleanings for longer than usual when we decided we were going to tear it apart. It's almost all back together. Hopefully will have it back in the cabinet next week. Gotta call a couple of friends to help drag it back up the stairs. It's heavy. Still no plans to go pro, but there are only 1,300 people in this town, so it's hard to be pro in anything.
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Post by nondescript spice on Feb 21, 2014 10:49:00 GMT -5
i am trying to remember if we cleaned our machine - ever. i would say it probably never occurred to us, but i know my dad would have known better. i remember a couple of times he had to take the plastic top off - it could have been to clean parts or maybe fix something. i just remember because us kids got a kick out of making the silver ball go in all the extra points places and get enormous scores - all while my dad was yelling at us to give him space so he could finish.
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Post by Mod City on Mar 6, 2014 20:18:55 GMT -5
Dracula lives We have wrapped up our shop out and once again have a fully-working, very clean Bram Stoker’s Dracula ready for play. We got the playfield back in two nights ago, and with taking our time and sipping a few beverages, it took us about three hours. When we finally flipped the switch, it kicked on without any problems, a considerable change from what happened when we turned on our other machine after our first shopout. Needless to say, we were super happy nothing started on fire. There was just a little dialing in that we had to do that night and last night, but now it seems to be working at 99.99 percent. It’s playing extremely fast and extremely smooth – fast and smooth enough to get me actually frustrated trying to play a decent game last night. That’s BSD for you, though, right? Here are a few pictures. Now, I was hoping to have more of the playfield after some cleaning, but what I have here are just some pictures we took while we were getting it back in the cabinet and after. I was hoping to have some more closeup “after” pictures of the playfield (like the new center targets installed), but we weren’t using my camera so I’m using what I’ve been able to get. If I can get some of those other shots that I know are out there, I’ll post them as well. Also – next time I will remember to do a final dusting before taking pictures. We did afterward, but you can still see some dust particles in some of these photos. Let’s start with this, the slide mechanism! In order to get the playfield back on the rails, so to speak, we had to spread the entry point a bit, as it had been crushed somehow the first time we tried to use it. With a helper on each side, we slid the playfield back into cabinet and threaded the rails back onto the pegs. Finally, we heard a very satisfying “click!” as it locked in and we had a working slide mechanism again! This still feels like a huge deal to us. Overall shot of the playfield back in. Now for a few quick shots of it lit up. New lamps make such a big different. Here you can see the left ramp lit up from underneath. I don’t think those bulbs have ever worked since I’ve owned the machine. Replaced those with some warm frosted white LEDs so we don’t have to worry about them burning out again. They look good, but they do look a tad brighter than the incandescent lamps. Still, it’s great to see that ramp lit properly for the first time. Really brightens it up over there. Here you can see the DRACULA fan and the working “A.” It fires perfectly every time now. That’s another thing that rarely, if ever, worked before. The scepter lights are also working nicely. Thanks, solder reflow! Incidentally, the photo makes it look a bit cloudy below the DRACULA fan, but it looks quite nice in person. If I had been more patient, I might have thrown another coat of wax on, but we were trying to maintain a pace. A reverse angle shot, and yes, we realize now we need to level out the flippers. Didn’t pick up on it until we saw this photo, actually. Another reverse angle shot. Can’t get enough of the working “A.” Kind of a funky exposure here, but still captures the beauty. I’ve seen people who have the blue pop caps and it looks great, but I’m still all for the red original. Back in service A few other quick notes: * We also cleaned the back of the translite with some Simple Green and it really brightened it up quite a bit. * When we tested our flashers last night, there was one (Right Ramp/Logo) that didn’t seem to fire. We had already put the playfield up and down about a dozen times by that point, so we didn’t lift it again, but we were wondering where the heck that flasher is. The manual labels it as #23 and has is right at the tip of the wall separating the coffin ramp from the video ramp, but there are no lights there. Will have to take a look at that. * One other problem did arise – we got a few resets over the course of the two nights. We’ve put off repining the J101 connector as well as a few other spots, so we might finally have to do that. Got my pin order in from GPE and may get started on that sooner rather than later. * A good guy over on pinside.com is sending me one of those broken plastics I need. Not sure when exactly I’ll get it on, but will be great to have one without having to buy a whole darn set! That’s about all I can think of right off hand. Will try to post a few more pics if I can get my hands on them.
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Post by nondescript spice on Mar 7, 2014 12:18:57 GMT -5
great job, mod. those pics are cool - maybe because i never look at the "innards" of a pinball machine, but at first glance, those pics looked like either a futuristic world or the floor of a casino. i bet playing that first game after you finish a job like that is a total blast.
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Post by Mod City on Mar 7, 2014 17:19:45 GMT -5
great job, mod. those pics are cool - maybe because i never look at the "innards" of a pinball machine, but at first glance, those pics looked like either a futuristic world or the floor of a casino. i bet playing that first game after you finish a job like that is a total blast. Thanks, spice. It's quite a moment turning it back on for the first time. Lots of tension and then tension release as you see everything working like it should. As for playing, yeah, it's great, but difficult! Cleaned, waxed and tightened down it plays very different than it did. Faster, mostly. That's why these machines have lots and lots of replace value.
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Post by Crowfan on Mar 7, 2014 18:08:00 GMT -5
Man, those pinball machines are totally awesome. I used to play those all the time in arcades when I was a kid. I wish I had one, but maybe when I win that really big lottery....
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Post by Mod City on Mar 7, 2014 20:03:00 GMT -5
I'm with you, crowfan, I think they're awesome and fascinating machines. I learned to love them in the arcade, too. I guess they don't really qualify as cheap, but you can find many under $1,000 if you shop around a bit - and especially if you can buy one that's not working fully and fix it yourself.
These were all built as commercial grade machines, so the manufacturing quality is extremely good. And despite the collectors pushing prices up in general, you can still buy most for less than they were originally sold for back in the day. If I had to guess, my Rollergames probably retailed for between $3,000 and $4,000 new. I got it for about $800 and have less than $100 in parts in it.
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Post by nondescript spice on May 8, 2014 11:24:27 GMT -5
hey mod! here's an early (or late) birthday present! i must insist that you get this. then i'll come over every day after school to play it until my mom calls and makes me come home for dinner.
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