I intend to log all repairs I do to my games here, no matter how small they are..
writing down all repairs is a good thing to do if you own a few games, as you can't remember all details of what you did in the past, and sometimes it's very useful to know you had a similar problem before with the specific game (see my MM / AFM cpu problems).
A few operators I know keep a repairlog in each game that notes what had to be repaired. (especially when more than one person repairs the games this is a very good thing to do, to keep track of the specific issues and weak points of a machine).
Anyway, my repair of this week was replacing a yellow standup target on my Cirqus Voltaire pinball machine.
The yellow standup target left of the ringmaster was broken, the yellow plastic tab had just broken off, clean right above the playfield.
It's the first time I have a broken target on any of my pinball machines..
Some games I bought with broken targets and I can imagine that in commercial use they get a lot of abuse, but never had one break at my house.
I don't know when or who did it, we had a pinball party a few weeks ago, and later a few friends have also come over and played the game..
no-one had notified me of the broken plastic :-(
Only when I cleaned and waxed the playfields of all my pinball machines I noticed this damage.
Easy thing to replace you'd think ? Just unsolder 2 wired, remove 2 screws, and replace the target with a new one.
Well, that was the plan. In reality it wasn't that simple.
Being so close to the ringmaster assembly, the whole metal cage of the ringmaster was in the way. I really didn't want to remove this huge assembly, so had to be a bit creative (and had to use a very short nut driver).
Desoldering 2 wires ? No, 5 wires. Seems both yellow standup targets are wired up parallel, one tab had 2 wire and the other 3. So desoldering and resoldering was a bit more tricky..
Finally I wanted to screw the new target back in place. Aaaaargh.. even though I'm pretty sure it's a NOS Williams standup target, screw holes were just a little bit smaller than on the broken target. The thick screws didn't fit very well, I had to force them into the metal tab first, and only then screw the whole part into the wood of the playfield.
What I thought would take 15 minutes took about 3 times as long in the end..
Friday, October 8, 2010
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