RIP Leon Borré

Can't find the words to describe how sad I am. Leon Borré of www.flipper-pinball-fan.be passed away this weekend.

Probably everyone in the pinball community knows him or has at least heard of him or his work. He was always happy with a positive attitude towards life, always making the best of it. It was always a pleasure seeing him at a show. He was very helpful and put many hours in helping everyone that emailed him, came to his house for repairs, ..
Since a few years we knew this day would come but tried not to think about it..

I remember the first day I came to his house with a broken Lectronamo cpu to repair. Was amazed by his collection of machines, his knowledge and ingenuity.
He taught me the basics of pinball repair, I explained him about homepages and translated the first articles he put online.

Just a few months ago I had to repair a Bally solenoid driver board and took out test-pcb I had made back then, like he had described on his site. Was amazed by the date I had printed the documentation about it - back in 2000.
12 years have passed so fast.

RIP Leon, thanks for all you have done and the good memories.
We miss you.

 

 

About the price of the Medieval Madness pinball machine

New article published yesterday:
http://www.flippers.be/basics/101_medieval_madness_prices.html

Some people always ask what makes Medieval Madness so special and why its price seems so high compared to other games. Here's the background history about MM prices and how it evolved over the years.

Just published the article, will probably add some things to it the next days, add some nice pictures, ..

Pinball competition

Got a message saturday afternoon to ask if I was available to play pinball competition that evening.
Sure, why not ? I'm not a competition player but enjoy playing some games.

The competition was organised by www.belgischeflippercompetitie.be

They organise competitions for a few years now. In the past I never entered as there is a lot of demand and when registration opens, it's usually filled in a few minutes (and I never bother to look when registration opens and try to enter).
Thsis years the rules have changed, and teams of 4 players are entered. It was one of these teams that was one player short, so therefor they asked me.

The competition saturday was held at the nice gameroom of http://www.pinbasement.com/
Two large rooms in the basement with a great collection of games, both old to new..
Some of the games I remember are WCS, Diner, Fire, BSD, MM, MB, Sopranos, Whitewater, World Poker Tour, CFTBL, ..

The competition took a while, about 5 hours.. it was always in blocks of 3 games. First played with 2 against 2 of another team. Then there was a zen-game with all players of both teams. Zen-pinball is playing with 2 players of one team, each player controls one flipper button.

Each game scores 5 - 3 - 1 - 0 points for 1st, 2nd, .. position.
We played average, we were happy each time that we didn't end last, on most games our team had 2nd and 3rd position.. unfortunately this wasn't well for the final ranking and we ended up last. Getting the highest score on a game got you 5 points and this is really needed to score points - so when you look at it strategic it's better to have one great player and one bad/average so you get 1st and last place (and thus get 5 points) then having 2 average/good players and end up with 2nd and 3rd place as this only gets you 4 points :-(

Anyway, who cares..
I had a great time, was in a good team, played some nice pinball machines, saw a lot of friends back and met some new people (and finally met people in real life I only knew online).

weak upkicker

Went back to repair the Dirty Harry from hell..
it's a game on location where a lot of kids come, the machine isn't in the best condition, and many kids flipping the flippers all the time... well, kids can break anything. really, anything.

If you don't believe me, take a look at this.. on two popbumpers the whole assembly was broken. On both rings, both screws/nuts had just broken off from the popbumper ring, and the metal and bakelite piece had also broken, parts were in the cabinet..

First problem was a wire broken off from the upkicker coil that brings the pinballs onto the ramp of the gun. All 4 pinballs were stuck in there..

Next problem was a melted flipper coil, replaced it with another, the flippers work fine. Adjusted the eos switches so they close halfway the stroke, but probably the kids will melt this new coil too.. just put kids for a few hours behind a pinball machine and let them flip all the time so the coils don't get time to cool off..

Next problem, a weak upkicker in the back. Disassembled the part and noticed why - part of the plunger that kicks the ball up the ramp had broken off. In the photo you see how little was left when with the plunger was raised, only about half a centimeter that extends the coil and tries to kick the ball in the air. Normally this part is 1,5 to 2 centimeter, so the pinball gets a good kick in the air.

I didn't have a replacement upkicker plunger with me, so this was a bit of a problem.
Tested it, but the pinball really didn't have enough power to get onto the ramp. This was a problem as pinballs get stuck there, or the coil can overheat or a fuse blow because the pinball machine continues to fire the coil over and over again in an attempt to kick out the pinball.

So, being creative was the only solution.. had to get this game playable, at least for a few days, until I could come back with the correct plunger.
Real operators would use wood screws but I don't want to damage a playfield :)
So wire straps were the best thing to use.. I just blocked the entrance so the ball couldn't get stuck.

Played a few games and it seems fine.
I do wonder how long it'll last.. not sure how strong these are because the flippers do kick the pinball quite powerful into them.
They're quite fun actually as the pinball is returned VERY fast, sort of a kicker on the latest Stern machines (like Iron Man) that also catapult the pinball back to the flippers, only this is my lowcost version ;-)

And this is not the only feature that's blocked on this game btw..

Another scoop had been blocked with clear packing tape, as pinballs got stuck there in the past.
Not the best solution, but hey, if it works for them, it works for me. At least that's one place where the pinballs won't get stuck anymore, so kids can continue playing pinball..

Happy new year

Happy new year everyone :-)