Funhouse repair

Fixed my Funhouse a few weeks ago already, only now have time to move pictures from the camera I keep in the gameroom and blog about this repair.

When I bought this Funhouse pinball machine it didn't work completely, Rudys mouth didn't stay open.
The mouth would open and close correctly during gameplay, as Rudy speaks to you when playing a game. But when you're in multiball then the mouth would not stay open. You couldn't lock your 3rd ball to start multiball. And there's no fun in the Funhouse if you can't start multiball !

I noticed a few teeth of the gear were stripped. When I bought the machine I thought this was the cause of the problem - the stripped teeth made the mouth close again. Replaced it with a new gear I had around.
To my amazement this did not solve the problem. When you lock 3 pinballs, Rudys mouth still closes again.
Did the selftests but didn't immediately notice anything wrong. During selftest the mouth opens and closes correct ?

Started to think about it (and thanks to a reply on RGP) it finally hit me - there's also a small pcb underneath the playfield which is involved in controlling the motor and its direction. That had to be the culprit.

Took out the pcb, measured every component, transistor, and all looked ok.
There was however a jumper wire connected on the input pins which shouldn't be there.
2 pins were jumpered together ? According to the schematics these were individual input pins.
Removed this extra wire. This was probably the source of my problem and why the gear had stripped - because of it the motor always ran in one direction ?

Put the pcb back in, suddenly it didn't work at all anymore. The mouth stayed closed.
What could it be ? I knew it was working before so the pcb should be ok.

Looked again at the pcb. Tested parts.. spent too much time measuring every transistor and resistor on it again. Looking to the solder side of the pcb it was obvious repairs had been done to it and a few components had been changed - but as far as I could measure these were now working well.

Checked the schematics, thought about this extra wire.. suddenly I noticed on the connector that went to the pcb, there was a wire missing !

You can see it in the below picture: at the very left side, one blue wire is bent backwards and it's end is nicely tucked away with some electric tape:



I attached the wire again to the connector and now Rudy works completely like he has to !

In the photo it's easy to spot, but that's because the pcb is hanging loose.
Normally it's attached in the very back at the bottom of the playfield. Because the playfield only rotates up (and doesn't slide forward like on more recent WPC machines) you really have to bend inside the cabinet to see it, and this wires are half hidden by other wires and parts at the bottom of the playfield..


The weird thing is I don't understand the history of this repair.

I can only think that several repair persons worked on this, one more skilled than the other.
Maybe first the transistor or something else failed on the pcb which made the mouth run all the time or only in 1 direction.
To solve this (maybe a quick fix on location ?) the blue wire controlling this was removed from the connector.

Later another tech who's more skilled worked on this game ? (or the same one, but he had forgotten what he had done before ?) He takes out the pcb, repairs the broken components, installs it and it doesn't work. He misses the removed wire because it's well hidden underneath the playfield, but does notice he needs some input to the board on that pin. So he attaches a jumper wire from one pin to the other.
Does selftests, mouth opens and closes correctly, problem solved.
(Except for when you want to start multiball, the mouth doesn't stay open, which is something you don't immediately notice)

The weird thing is the person I bought this game from had it over a year. As far as I know no tech worked on it in his house. This means all this time he never had a completely working game and could never start multiball ?? Unless by accident - if are lucky you can shoot a ball in Rudys mouth just when he is talking.

Never had such a weird fix. The board was already repaired, just 1 wire needed to be connected again. Easy for me (although I wasted too much time until I noticed it).
but at least I can enjoy Funhouse like it is meant !

(fixing the plungers for the eyes is something I'll to later when I have time to shop the game completely).

41 million points on Funhouse

Finally started to playi Funhouse more often. I bought it a few months ago, fixed it a while ago, but it only got a few occasional plays. Not that I don't like it, I really love it, but I'm now fixing games inside the gameroom (a Medieval Madness now came in to restore) and working on some projects, so my time is spent on those and not on long sessions playing pinball.

2 days ago my daughter wanted to play Funhouse but I had to teach her how to start multiball (she really likes to start multiball on any pinball machine, and already knows she can get a lot of points for it).
So with her sitting on a high chair in front of the game and I standing behind her (looking over her shoulder because else I couldn't see the flippers) I played a game.. and improved my highscore from 15million to 17 million. Not bad :)
The game didn't last very long, only started multiball once but was able to shoot a lot of jackpots.

Yesterday afternoon I was baking a cake, it was in the oven and I thought I have about 10 minutes left, time for a quick game of pinball.
Started to play FH and had the best game I ever had on any Funhouse pinball machine.

Was able to start multiball 3 times. When I had locked 2 balls for the 3rd time I remembered about the cake so I quickly ran inside the house to turn off the oven.. and then get back to shoot the ball into Rudys mouth :)
Final score, a bit over 41 million. Nice.
I really love the music when you've gotten a highscore and can enter your initials..

Funhouse is back

Sunday evening I finally was able to buy a Funhouse pinball machine again !
It's my Christmas gift for my wife :-)

This is already the third Funhouse game we have since we started with pinball machines.. the first one we had bought back in 2001 I think.. sold it after about a year to make room for more games. We were new to pinball machines and bought and sold a lot of different titles as we didn't know yet which ones we would enjoy more.

Then we missed it (it's one of the only games we really missed after having sold it), looked around for a nice example (most are played to death, have major playfield damage, inserts that raise above the playfield wood, ..).
As that machine was going to be a keeper we looked around for about a year until we found one that I really liked and was in good condition. I wanted it to have a reasonable good cabinet (this was before new cabinet decals were available) and a good playfield. If I remember correct it had a bit of playfield wear but not much (only the traditional wear below the kickout on the right and a bit between the bumpers). It did not have a playfield mylar on it, so the blue paint had not been discolored.
I think we kept that machine for 3 years. About 3 years ago we had a dip in collecting pinball machines and sold off a few games, we let this one go.

Last month my wife said she really missed her Funhouse. About a week later I found this machine for sale.. what a coincidence ! and a good excuse to buy a Funhouse pinball again (as it really is a great game) ! The price was reasonable (certainly not a steal, but its condition was good enough to consider it.
Now the gameroom is really full again.

The machine is in quite good condition. Cabinet is faded (maybe I'll ever buy new cabinet decals for it) but has no scratches, .. There are some technical issues, but I'm able to fix them. It needs a new battery holder and a new gear for Rudys jaw. Some teeth are broken off, his jaw does not stay open so you cannot start multiball (making the game no fun to play at all).
One coil also didn't work well but I already fixed it, maybe I'll need to replace the coil later if the problem comes back.
Finally the eyes don't work well. The eyelids don't close completely, and the eyes don't move left or right at all. I already peeked in his head and noticed some parts are completely missing (like the metal wire that connects both eyes) :-(
Hope I'll be able to find the missing parts as not all are common..
But that's for later, when I ever shop the game completely then I'll disassemble Rudys head.
The metal lampsign near the diverter that illuminates the trapdoor is also completely missing :(

The playfield itself is in rather good condition. This game probably has less games on it than most average Funhouse machines you find..
The playfield has mylar installed, which is still in good condition. The clock inserts are still level, the mylar only has a few small bubbles above them.

Amazingly there is no wear at the right kickout or between the bumpers ?!
There is only some wear in the clear red color at the very left side of the game, where the pinball drops out of the steps ramp onto the playfield.
That's something I can touch up later.

Finally the ramps are also in good condition, a few have a small crack at the entrance but no pieces have broken off. After cleaning, flamepolishing and installing Cliffy protectors, they will probably look brand new.

That goes for the whole machine.. it looks already good enough as it is now, and should I ever decide (and find time) to do a complete restoration of it, it will probably look very good.

I found Rudy from Funhouse pinball

A picture I made yesterday at the Open Air Jukebox show in Rosmalen..
I'm sure this is Rudy from the Funhouse pinball machine..

Sure he looks a bit older and clearly had a bad hair day.. but it's really him !
:-)

some changes

It's been a while since I posted. As always I was busy with a lot of things..

We made some important decisions and changes.. as we put too much time in pinball and everything related we're stopping with some of these things.

Don't worry though - our pinball website will remain.
New articles will still be posted, especially in the newbie / technical / modification sections. (feel free to email me if you want to submit an article, ie if you made an interesting mod to one of your pinball machines).

Articles about new shows may be less updated.. Even from shows in 2007 I haven't put a lot of pictures online as some shows always have the same exhibitors as the past year. Not a lot of use me posting pictures of exhibitors at a show that were there too the year before and the year before and the year before.. you really should know what to expect now at a show..

What is stopped however is technical support by email. In the past I often got emails from people with a problem, and we tried to help them by email. We don't have time for this anymore. Only email me if you do have some pinball repair skills and need help troubleshooting something. But don't expect me to learn you how to use a dmm, how to solder and how to fix your pin by email..

I also had on my website that people in Belgium could email me to get contact information of someone in their neighbourhood that could maybe help them with a repair. Again no more time to answer all these emails - I put some links to official repair people in Belgium on my site that you can contact direct. Only if you're in my area (Antwerp) I may be able to help you.

Finally we won't have any 'open days' at our house anymore.
Our gameroom and collection is now private.. the past years there have been an immense growth of pinball collectors in Belgium. That's a good thing of course, but the disadvantage is that everyone wanted to come. If we announced that people could come for an afternoon of pinball, a few hours later we had already reached out maximum amount of people.. so 2/3rd of the people that asked we had to turn down, which sometimes also made us feel bad as there were good friends that couldn't come..
we just know too many people ? :( So as to not disappoint anyone anymore or have people think that we prefer person X over person Y, it's easier for us not to invite anyone over anymore, instead of worrying if someone is going to be mad at us because he wasn't welcome..

We're also selling part of our pinball collection. Maybe I will regret this, maybe I won't.. we'll see. We have for instance a beautiful Twilight Zone (it almost looks as new, is in our personal collection for +7 years now) but my wife or I haven't played it in years. We both have our favorite games, and some other games are just standing there, only to be played by guests. The gameroom is full, games are crammed against each other (I know it's only 2 months since we rearranged everything), so we decided to only keep those games that we really love and play often, and rearrange the interior. Some people don't understand this (most collectors want as many games as possible and always try to fit an extra game in their house) but that's their problem. We always bought games because we wanted them, for ourselves. Not because a game was a 'must have in a collection'.

Our promo plastics collection is for sale on ebay.be right now, and many spare parts I have collected in the past years will follow. If you need anything, feel free to email me, as I have a lot of spare parts, NOS and from parted games.

I'm also parting out a Funhouse. If you need pcbs (displays, sound board, ..) or playfield parts (plastics, assemblies) then let me know..

New article - DVD ready - BBB delivered

Added a new article yesterday, check the funhouse prototype guide.

It explains the differences on Funhouse pinball machines that were done during the production run, how to recognise a real proto and sample game from a regular production game.

DVD 3 is also ready ! It's of the Collector Fantasies show and the belgian pinball championship.
See site for details and to order.

News: the american Big Bang Bars are ready !
Last year 12 were already delivered to Europe, to be delivered befor ROHS laws became active.
Now the rest of the rerun is finished.
Here is the page of a dutch owner who just received his new BBB earlier this week. He didn't order one 2 years ago (and thus wasn't by the inital 12 european BBBs) but was able to buy a 'left over' one from Gene because someone cancelled his order.