Thanks guys. This game is pretty fun just to work on, let alone eventually playing the thing.
I had to take another little detour today. The trough in the back where the ball ends up after you throw it needed some attention. It takes a beating so that's not much of a surprise. It's not that bad really - mostly just loose bolts and crumbly foam bumpers. A sheet metal piece had several spidery cracks radiating from the head of the bolts, but I work with metal anyway so I just tig welded that back sturdy again earlier today. Tomorrow I'll be gluing some new silicone foam strips in to replace the old, then it will work good as new. Nice and quiet, or at least not bang & clanky.
I already received the new replacement pins today. Holy crap that was fast! Looks like they'll fit like a glove. More shiny happening. They are just the inexpensive ones off eBay so the logo isn't an exact match to the original, but I don't care about that. The ones sold by Doc Doom (bigballbowler.com) are probably better but cost 2x higher. Maybe I'll get some of those after these start to break, hehe.
Had insomnia last night and was exhausted today so I ended up sleeping through my score reel cleaning time. That's OK, I'll just do twice as much tomorrow.
I'm actually pretty close to getting it functional. Short list to go.
1) clean score reels (4-5 hours)
2) re-glue a couple cabinet pieces that pulled loose (1/2 hr)
3) clean the strikes/spares stepper units (6x) (2 hrs)
4) clean the lane switches (1 hr)
5) replace a few miscellaneous nuts & bolts (1/2 hr)
6) replace more burned out bulbs. (1/2 hr)
That should about cover it other than a final cleaning. I still have 5 or 6 days so that should be easily doable. I'm shooting for Saturday night actually.
What a fun project! I should have done this years ago. All I needed was a deadline.
