Score reels and the backbox steppers are done… WOW that was a PAINFUL exercise, the one part of EM restores I definitely do lot like. lol. Was a major pain rebuilding all those score reels but it was worth it in the end, as the game fired up and they worked pretty much first go, just a couple of switches that needed adjusting.
One problem I had with the reels after rebuilding was that a few of them were overrunning.. ie not stopping in the correct position. The 2nd pic shows what I mean..i hope..lol. notice the tooth on the reel that should come to rest in the position shown by the red arrow, on top of the coil plunger’s nylon lever, but ends up going past the lever as shown by the yellow arrow. On removing the offending reels from the game I noticed a lot of sideways movement of the reel on its shaft. So the tooth on the reel was barely catching on the plunger lever and was sometimes going slipping past, I believe because of the excessive sideways movement of the reel. I found the easiest fix was to use a slightly thicker washer on the reel, to replace the original thin washer (3rd pic). This fixed the problem completely. I just had to make sure that the reel still spun freely. (hope all of this made sense.. lol)
The game is now fully functional, apart from some minor pf switch adjustments needed. I’ll now play it for a while, then pull it all down for the cab repaint and playfield restore.
Also I’ve made a start on the backglass.. coming along nicely… will post pics in a day or two when I have something worthwhile to report.. cheers for now
