Another HUGE road-trip ahead....but o-so-sweet :)

[gyruss]

Çongrats andre, i have played the game at our local snack-bar when i was younger. I hope you and the fam will be able to play the game soon.

[level42]

Well Robin and I went to pick up some stuff from Eriks' temporary storage. Robin picked up his Vega and I brought home the Judge.

So......as you may remember I had to remove all the connectors (well almost all) to separate the back box from the main body and so, there was a sweet job waiting for me....reconnecting everything and if possible, the right plugs on the right connectors  

I didn't have time to mark any of them but I figured that with the keying and the color codes and the schematics I would get back the puzzle:

Oh, there were no leg-bolts with the machine so I couldn't set it "on it's feet" ! No clue where they went, but I hope to pick some up tomorrow.


First I fixed the backbox. The left pivot and bolt are gone too. Also ordered that. There's a temporary bolt in there now...

Moved all the wiring through the hole of the back box:




Already installed a couple here. I printed out the pages of all the PCB's in the backbox and went through each connector, checking them off on the paper once I found the correct one and connected it.


Well......it took quite some time but it worked out just fine. I also used the open back-box picture IPDB.org as a reference which was nice to have some "proof" besides the drawings.

Soooo I pulled up the playfield to reconnect the 2 or 3 connectors I had disconnected before (actually the guy before me had already done so) only to discover that there were quite a number of other connectors loose there !  



So more puzzling but I found most of them. I think I still have a couple (3 or 4) loose at this moment, but I wanted to give it a try....and......



Wahoo, it works !!!!

Of course there are some issues (crane not picking up balls (expected, it looks bent or something), Escape button in coin door doesn't work, I get 2 balls launched when I start a game and the right-top flipper is having some troubles, but in general the machine was playable as soon as I installed some fresh batteries !

The dead-world works fine and most other stuff and lights work fine !  Dot-matrix 100% too !

I've already located a new cover for the crane (which is broken) and I'll need some other small parts.

But a very very good start, I'm happy I bought it !

[Etienne MacGyver]

Congrats on putting the puzzle together !

Im not a big fan of pins, but it sure looks sweet !

[DarthNuno]

Of course there are some issues ...I get 2 balls launched when I start a game...

If I remember well, it's 'normal' when you select the super game mode 

See 

The player is greeted politely by Annita Mann at the start of a Super Game, and is told that they have the Drain Shield active for 10 seconds. The machine waits for a ball to be launched, and then launches a second one.

 

[level42]

Yeah, but it happens in "normal" mode. I'm not entirely sure if I have the 6 required balls in there are maybe only 5....

[baritonomarchetto]

Never played that pinball, but i must admit that the arts are great!

[ckong]

Great work today André, this kind of puzzle is much more fun than a Ravensburger one, isn't it.

[level42]

I hate Ravensburger Puzzles (or any other). No offense but only people who REALLY don't know what to do with their time do that IMHO

Since I was in Zeeland yesterday for the youth marching band, I drove a bit further afterwards to pick up some parts from Carl.

(http://www.cedermangameparts.be)

Funny thing is that I know Carl from the various Belgian fairs and pinball meetings but didn't buy anything from him up to now....

He's a very nice guy. Bought a complete new rubber kit, leg bolts, and of course a NOS crane cover from him. Also a 110 V ballast for the Ms.Pac TL lighting (finally found "locally", and for a good price).

I'll need more from him very soon though....the righ lower flipper stopped working and there's something that broke there and I need an original spacer for the crane cover too (they "modded" it a bit....)

Anyway, now it's SW cockpit focus 100% so I can move the pin to the gameroom ASAP....

[gyruss]

Looks cool, i like the eagle on top.

[level42]

Well....I did do some more work on the JD.

The thing is, this one is "ready to be worked on" right in the living room, where it's nice and warm.....

So: I investigated the crane. Turned out quite simply that the magnet was not working because of the connectors not being hooked up. Fixed that and it worked right away !!
I received the extra parts from Carl (of course, when I expect a "letter" the post strikes here for the first time since 1983.......) so I could now fix the NOS crane cover with exactly the right spacer/mounting thingy. Looks pretty cool !

Next I rebuilt the right top-most flipper that wasn't working (actually, I moved the working plunger to the lower right flipper so I could have at least some decent play on it). However, despite new spring, new sleeve, new plunger with link it's still not working....maybe the coil is damaged...will need to measure that....

I had also fixed the Escape button inside the coin door. It's very nasty to not have it work when you want to go through the menu's in set-up.
It turned out that the switch was defective, not making contact at all. Pretty rare that this happens ! Luckily it's a double-pole switch so I could use the other contact, which was still working. Had to do a little soldering but than it worked great.

Next, most irritating was the ball-trough not working (that is where the balls are "caught" and "stored" until being launched again. It turned out that one of the LED's was sometimes working, sometimes not. This caused the machine to be confused wether or not if there was still a ball on the playfield etc. etc.
Anyway, the PCB's are mounted directly on the trough on these machines and the mechanical stress (the balls dropping into it etc.) makes the solderings crack-up in the end.

So I re soldered the LED and the resistors and since then it works perfectly !

Now the only real problem still is the one flipper.

Further I need to do cleaning and replacing the essential parts on all the flippers. And of course replace lots of lamps