OT but related... Ball bowler

[ddstoys]

Very very jelous vin. Would kill for one of these I'd even give up a few Pinballs to make room...  ( dodging rock throwing )

[ktm450]

Very nice mate, cool machine 

[vinito]

Well as usual, things go in fits and spurts.
I didn't know it had been so long since I first piddled with the bowler.
I bought a few parts it needed and after putting them in, let the thing sit for a while before breaking it back down due to it taking up so much space. It's a long walk when you need to get to the other end and behind one of these things.

The family will be gathering at Mom's house for Christmas and she asked me if I could bring the game over for the kids (of all ages) to play. I thought maybe it was possible to get it fully working so pulled it back out and started putting it together. I cleaned a few steppers and got the flash motor de-gummed and working.

short detour: "Flash" is one of six games you can choose to play on this machine and reportedly one of the funnest. I don't really get it yet, but it seems kind of cool. It has a continuous motor which scrolls lights across the lane and you need to time the lights with your shots and if you get a strike or spare, you get big points. Pretty cool what they were able to do with motors and relays back in the day.

So I have been cleaning up steppers and score reels and such and checking out wires and switches. The more I dig into it the more I realize it's in pretty good shape for a 1961 game !! The biggest issue on the thing is simply dirt and sludge. Any lube has turned to syrup and cleaning off the dingy makes it darned sparkly. I'm stoked. I have maybe a half dozen stepper mechs to clean up and about 20 more score reels to go through. It's a lot of cleaning but if I spread it out a little every day it won't break my back.

So long story short, I fully expect the thing to be fully working and delivered at Mom's house by Christmas. I ordered and should be receiving new replacement pins by the end of the week or Monday at the latest. They'll only take 15 minutes to install. I just now ordered a bunch of bulbs and they may not be here by then, but the game will work OK with some of the bulbs off. There must be 500 bulbs on the damned thing (exaggerating, but still...).

If I have time I'll try to shoot a short movie and show off a bit. We puffy Americans love to do that.

More later.

[shedpinball]

For those that requested pictures, here's a couple quick snaps:

that is one of the coolest toys i have ever seen thanx for the pics, stick those photos on aussie arcade those guys will love it !!

[nath2099]

I WANT ONE! This is awesome!

[goodolddays]

Great to hear she is almost done 

Sure hope you have some muscle to help you move it for Xmas day 

[Tank01]

Looks like a great game, Christmas day will be a blast for kids young  and old. Well done for bringing it back to life.

[vinito]

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.

[ddstoys]

Hopefully I'm adding one to my collection soon real soon

[guyricho]

Very cool 

All you need now is one of those curved bowling bench seats to sit in front of it. 

[vinito]

Well holy crap. I went through and cleaned up all the score reels. 24 of them I can't tell you how glad I am that is finished.
Knocked off most of the rest of the list too since I last posted.
Yaaaaay!
Of course as you do stuff like this you discover any other problems that exist. True to form, I found that the pin mechanisms have this little plastic gear thing and two of them have broken teeth. I don't know if I can dream up a hack to fix it by Christmas. If not, I'll just go with what I've got and it will be fun enough to play I guess. It still has a lighted pin indicator on the lower backglass, so even if it doesn't show the real pins below, the display will show what's going on.
I also found an electrical glitch. When it's on the third player the "ones" relay sends the correct pulse to player 3's "ones" score reel but also sends a weak pulse to player 1's "ones" score reel as well. Sometimes it increments player 1 and sometimes not. The opposite does not happen. In fact, everything else seems to be gold. Got to be some kind of mild short in there somewhere. Probably one of the screws I couldn't find settled in over some solder joints or something  .  I'm not good at reading these old schematics for EM machines. It's confusing to even follow continuity and the labels are kind of cryptic for me. Funny thing is I can read SS schematics much better. Hmmmm. Anyway, if I can't fix that we'll just try to play two players or just deal with screwy scoring for player 1. It will still be fun even if it isn't 100%

By the way, according to the tracking, the bulbs I ordered are somewhere in town so I'll probably receive them later today. Having all good bulbs will be very nice.
Yaaaaay again.

[vinito]

OK I may have kludged the thing to work. I used some good epoxy putty to rebuild the broken teeth after roughing up the base plastic to build on. I just used one of the good gears and meshed it into the soft putty to form the gear teeth. I figger I can't screw it up if it's broken already. The proof will be in game play, but it looks like it might just make it through Christmas anyway.

Got all the bulbs working now too. The dang 1961 sockets are flaky of course so I expect several of them to decide to sleep once a little vibration happens, but oh well.

Cleaned up a half-dozen more steppers and I think that wraps up all the innards. The only things left are installing the new pins, digging up a couple missing bolts and another general cleanup. Then it's off to Mom's basement and commencing family fun times.

The only problems is that I've been spending all my time on this machine so I haven't done any Christmas errands or running at all. So the crunch is still on, it's just over to the left a tad.

[vinito]

Well alrighty then.
The machine is 100% functional. Woohooo!
That 1st/3rd/ player scoring thing isn't really figured out, but I got it to work anyway. What I mean is that with the player 1 "ones" score reel installed normally it does the screwy thing, but when I slipped it out of the slot it worked as it was supposed to ! So it seems to be some kind of grounding issue. To make it work, I simply installed it back into position with some strips of mylar to insulate the reel from the mount and screwed it in  place with nylon screws so it stays isolated from the rest. So I don't know what's going on there but it works OK with the hack. Good enough for now.
The broken gear tooth thing seems to be working OK for now. I played over 75 frames last night and it's still OK as the pins are still raising and lowering as it's supposed to.
All the bulbs are working.... What else....
Games appear to score properly...
All the sections are properly bolted together....
Basically, it's a GO for Christmas day. So today I'll be hauling it over there and setting it up. I'll try to make a short movie of it in operation and upload it.

[ktm450]

Sounds good mate, hope it was a winner on Christmas day