Anyone who reads my posts is probably aware that my area of interest is Williams SS pins, I have a few and these were the pins I recall from my youth and I'd always fancied a Flash - a good player and with some historical significance. Continuous background sound (music if you're being generous!), first to have adjustability through coin door, Steve Ritchies' first design for WMS said to have put the company on solid financial footing and so on. Some knock the artwork as being primitive, but I quite like it.
I'd had my eye out for one for a while and had looked at a few, the usual overpriced rubbish - oops I mean gems on ebay and a few that fell through, anyway it was a very popular machine with many made so they pop up often and not so long ago a project turned up on ebay. It had decent pictures, was accurately described and was being sold by Illawarra_Steelers. I'd read his posts when he was active on this forum and had heard enough people speak well of him to not hesitate grabbing it. He is a nice bloke and was really easy to deal with and I wouldn't hesitate recommending him to anyone or buying again from him.
It was sold as non working project and so I'll tell what I'm doing with it. I don't and can't aim for the highest quality of work as is commonly being seen around here but I seek to achieve a clean working, reliable machine that wont deteriorate further. It's a pretty good base to start with, initial condition report;
- cab ok a bit battered around but not too bad, worst thing was some nong had mounted a power point on the side - why do people do such stupid things as this? The rear panel of the cab is a bit stuffed and the chip board is breaking up. Grubby with some scratches and wear. Coin door ok with coin mechs and legs chromed but very rust speckled.
- some misadventure to the wiring harness around the line filter. Looks like it has been in flames at some stage, with burnt wood and patches and tape on the harness itself.
- play field ok. Some wear about 10c piece size to wood around the Super Flash lamp and a bit of a scrape near the end of the upper flipper. A few inserts loose and the Super Flash was scratched and mildly dished. Wear to wood around the lower bumper. Had been covered in contact - I think it's contact because it's softer than mylar and comes off a bit easier. Some tearing and wear above the three inline star rollovers and under the eject hole. The contact seems to have taken some colour from some of the inserts, was lifting in a few spots and had some grubbiness around the edges. The contact has done a good job of protecting the play field - in those sections where the pf is not covered the paint is cracking and flaking a bit.
- the usual broken lane guides and cracked plastic bits and missing the top left corner plastic - please let me know if anybody has one? An array of wrong coloured roll overs were in place and all the posts were red - this didn't look right to me but after some web surfing it seems quite a few Flash's have red posts rather than the blue I would have thought.
- under the play field some obvious dramas to some burnt coils on the drops which were not moving freely. Some missing coil diodes and butchered switches and a dodgy bit of welding / bodging to the bumper ring rod.
- boards - wasn't running when I got it and clearly has some issues. The mpu is a sys 4 with some minor corrosion and the driver has at least one blown final driver transistor. The display units are popping off the circuit boards in a few cases.
- Back Glass is good, some mild fade in the red but pretty solid and better than most.
All up a pretty good base to begin with. I didn't try to get it going before fixing up because I thought I'd play it too much so it was straight into stripping it down.
A few pictures as received and I'll update progess as I go.
