The Aussie Pinball Arcade
Aussie Pinball Forums => Restorations => Topic started by: FirePower on November 01, 2009, 07:17:44 PM
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A few week ago a Stern Disco EM turned up on ebay, Mark.c was the seller, I was the buyer.
Seemed to me to be a cheap, interesting EM project. Freight was a high percentage of the total cost, but that's the price to pay for living in Australia's premier city.
It arrived at the Sydney depot from where I picked it up. Was on a pallet, well packed in bubble wrap and encased in shrink wrap. A heart skip moment as I removed the plastic wrapping and lifted the head off - the BG had shifted and was half out of the head - luckily nothing broken.
Got it home for a closer look. Play field is in good condition, a bit dirty on the bright yellow bits but will clean up ok I think. Just one broken plastic and a few loose inserts. Apron is really nice. BG has a few scrapes and flakes and has been coated, the artwork is questionable, but it was the 70's. Cabinet ok, just the usual scrapes and bumps. No legs as advertised. Internally a fair layer of dirt and grime. Counter shows 47,369 games from 36,578 coins.
Set it up and before applying power I went through to check every fuse, appears the previous owner had a penchant for overly large fuses - all oversized, the most outrageous was 35 Amp! Next I operated all coils by actuating them with my finger, all moved freely and the contacts mostly appear to operated correctly. All the score reels moved freely. Measured all coil resistance - one burnt out and the chime box has suffered a fairly serious misadventure at some stage.
I don't yet have a schematic or manual, my hope that it might have been inside was in vain, but there was a score motor cam drawing and the labelling inside the pin is really good - every coil labelled, including part no and function. On that note the quality of the construction seems top notch. I've been reading the Marvin guides to EM repair and I reckon it might well be possible to fault find this without a schematic - I'm trying to get it but it might be possibly just by careful observation ...
Applied power and ... dead as a dodo, not a GI lamp, motor noise, relay click, spark, nothing, nada. First thought was a missed fuse somewhere, so got the meter out and checked the transformer - all ok, so gave the score motor a step by hand, reapplied power and it sprang to life. Ran around the playfield touching switches and a reasonable percentage of them work, a bit hard to tell exactly as the burnt coil is for a score unit. The bumpers and slings seem a bit sluggish.
Anyway, just a preliminary look for me, and a few pics. I'm happy with the purchase and think it will be fun to bring back to life, not sure of it's playability or keepability. I'll limit myself to one machine in bits at a time, so I'll do no more until I get my Gorgar back together, then I'll add to this thread.
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Crazy artwork - but it looks to be in great condition !
I've never seen one of these - so I look forward to your updates.
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Well im glad it went to a member i forgot all about the auction and forgot to put a higher bid when i was outbid on the other stuff i was bidding on. Good luck these old girls are great to work on. Check out the 101 threads if you get stuck anything else just ask ^^^
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Good on you for taking on that game ^^^
Yes, the art is a bit hows ya father. But it's a rare(ish) game, and i doubt there would be many in this country.
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Never seen one of those before!
Production looks low at 815, maybe that's why!
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Brand new score and instruction cards can be made now.
Thanks for the scans.
The file will be uploaded to my website at the end of the month.
No worry's mate, it will be here NOW! (see attachment)
Peter
www.inkochnito.nl
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One word.......Yuck!
Looks in good nick, enjoy the resto.
()
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So, with the mess of xmas out of the way I decided it was time to get on with learning to Disco.
I'd purchased the schematic from PSP - wow, it's over 1.5m long! Funny the construction of the machine seems really top notch, solid mountings everything clearly labelled and seemingly well thought out, harnesses really well run, mounted and loomed up. The schematic doesn't seem up to the same level, maybe just a reflection of the times, but essentially just a hand drawing / sketch - whilst all the coils and relays have identification numbers on the machine they are not referenced on the schematic. The number and type of contacts from a relay aren't indicated as they are with GTBs and to cap it off the wire colours don't line up with the drawing. Apart from these details, it's perfect %.%
So today I stripped the pf of all plastics and rubbers. The plastics are in good shape, just one minor break which I hope to be able to glue together. A bit of nifti removed a lot of the grime and I'll have a go with magic eraser and alcohol tomorrow on some of the ball swirl. There was no mylar on this and the pf still looks really bright. I've got new rubbers and have replace globes and cleaned up globe holders.
I've replaced a burnt out coil, still got to find a screw to fit the new coil to test. Cleaned all the score reel faces, they look so much brighter now, a big improvement.
So tomorrow finish cleaning the pf and reassemble. Then onto a problem where the ball count unit wont advance after the ball drains. I can manually advance it and it seems to roughly work. I think it's ether a motor contact or the ball drain switch and relay. Anyway a day of studying and playing around today should make it easier.
Some pics of progress.
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a few more
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WOW, great images.
You should upload these to the www.ipdb.org and get your name in the records. *%*
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Good looking pin. I haven't seen this one before. Looking forward to seeing the final pics.
GT
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Another day of Discoing today.
Lots of studying the schematic and head scratching, sometimes it seems like you are chasing your tail and that puff of smoke is not too far away. The circuits can be very co dependant, so you need to think through how the ball would play and the order of switches and coils being activated. One of the issues was adjustment to a relay contact set - must have been knocked out of alignment at some stage as almost all contacts were wrong. The picture shows before adjustment, glad I'd purchased a contact adjustment tool from PBR, makes it pretty easy to get right. I was making subtle adjustments of the stationary contact arm and then actuating the pull in plate with my finger. Then some close observation when it is driven by power.
Anyway not quite there yet - I can get the ball count unit to advance properly which was a problem yesterday, but now an issue with the outhole relay - the motor runs to collect bonuses etc, but the ball thrower does not throw. I'm pretty close I think.
So I did a bit of cleaning, some pictures below of before, during and after with magic eraser and alcohol. It never seems to do much by my eye, but the pictures suggest otherwise. Also gave the backbox a clean up too. I'm happy with progress, it's looking much brighter.
Hopefully tomorrow I will solve the remaining electrical issues and can wax the pf and reassemble.
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a few more pics
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Awesome stuff! Will clean up very well!
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Doin well so far. In the picture of the non correct contacts actually looks like the gap between the coil and the armature isnt far enough apart (I could be wrong) But check that the relay plate is sitting in the grove properly and that the spring still has tension ^^^
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Thanks Daniel, the seating looks ok and the spring has some tension, but there are some others that are gapped wider - but it all seems to function ok now !@#
Did some more work over the last couple of days and think I've finally sorted all the electrical issues. It came down to a zero position contact on the bonus unit not making reliably. It's hard to tell exactly how it should be other than as a change over pair of contacts one should be on when the other is off. The bit I'm not clear on is what position it should be zeroed on - I have made it so that zero is the lowest bonus light on - the only thing I could think is relevant is how SS machines give you the ball again if you score no points - but this machine would never have done that anyway.
More playfield cleaning and re-rubbering, it looks so much better just getting the dirt and grime off - so much more light is reflected and everything looks brighter. The plastics have come up really nicely with a polish of Novus 2. I've got one to repair.
The chime box needs a bit of work and I've got new sleeves put into the bumpers and slings, but that's for next year. Next year and the machine being finished are not that far away - think I'll go and have a beer to celebrate. It's been a good year for me - bought my first and a few other pins $#$ Have a good night all!
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Replaced a coil and immediately when powered up it chattered like a mad thing. I think I had two problems. First the coil wouldn't hold in, the gap was much larger than comparable coils, even though the replacement coil was exactly the same length as the original.
Even with the spring disconnected it would not latch in, to test I stuck an extra washer at the other end of the coil, this brought the gap down from 2mm to 1mm, which is the same as the other coils of this type. The picture shows the coil before adding the washer. After adding the washer the coil latches - sadly all the time which is why the first one burnt out.That's the second problem, but I'm chasing down the reason.
A question - should I be bending slightly the bass finger to hold the plate in closer tot eh coil - this will increase the spring tension, whereas putting in a washer does not change the spring tension. Any advise or comments appreciated. Thanks.
Also does anyone have any tips - the pun is intentional - on what to use as the nylon bits in the end of chime box plungers - mine have melted!
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Just a couple of ideas. Did you use brass screw and washer to secure the coil? Is the coil the exact replacement for the faulty unit? If you move the coil a bit closer with a washer and it latches permanently, try switching off the power and see if the relay stays latched.
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Thanks dj,
yep I used a brass screw and washer. The new coil was specified from the parts manual, which agreed with the little bit of cardboard (you can just see in the picture) stapled on the location of the coil in the headbox. It used a smaller attachment screw, which was inconvenient, but the coil was physically the same size. Electrically it measured the same as the other functional units of this type in the game, 10 ohms coil resistance.
I have now tracked the fault down to a relay contact not operating properly due to poor adjustment and this explains the failed coil in the machine as I purchased it. It was right up the back of the cab and hard to see, so I removed the pf and did a bit of cleaning vacuuming and went through and cleaned / checked / adjusted all contacts.
Now just about everything on the game is working and it's quite a fun player. I'll post some final pics when it is all set up.
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One of the great things to me about EMs is the racket they make when being played, so a functioning chime box is essential.
This afternoon's job was to strip, rebulid and install Disco's. There had been some sort of major trauma so a couple of coils had burnt out - so burnt that the nylon tips in the plungers had melted, way beyond being being usable in fact to being unrecognisable.
I stripped the chime box down and couldn't resist giving the striker plates a bit of a polish and they do look a lot better. I had bought replacement coils from PBR but stupidly forgot to include sleeves and plungers or tips. The exact parts aren't available locally as far as I can work out. PSP had some sleeves which whilst not quite as long as the originals looked like they'd do but I couldn't find replacement
plungers or nylon inserts locally. I wandered aimlessly around Bunnings looking for anything about the right size and made of nylon but couldn't find anything so I ended up using a cut down rawl plug. The plungers have an internal step machined into them and the blue plugs are a pretty tight fit. I ended up putting a small chamfer on the end going into the plunger and used a hammer to tap them into position. You can feel when they seat on the internal lip - I then tightened the small self tapper screw that I had started prior to installing the plug. This seemed to lock it all in place.
Soldered the new coils in, cleaned and reassembled everything and installed and was greeted with glorious sounds in the test game - not sure if the neighbours will be quite as enthusiastic.
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The finished unit.
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Very ingenious work-around there!
Well done, and you are right, pinball machines just aren't the same without the sound.
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more pics
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Just saw the bump on Bossninja's Sunday questionnaire thread and the picture of him frocked up in front of the Disco machine made me think I'd never posted the finished pics of my Disco project. It came up really well and has been running for months now and it's a pretty good game. Fairly generous with extra balls and replays and an ok rule set for an EM. Plenty to shoot for and fun to whack the ball through the two spinners.
Here's the pics.
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Wow that came up nice.. well done @@* @@* @@*
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Great read FP, has come up nice. @@*
Cheers
Dave
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That's come up really well thanks for the pics
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Very very well done Dave ^^^