Mitch's next project.. Zaccaria Universe

[Strangeways]

Outstanding, Mitch 

[goodolddays]

Congrats Mitch .. no doubt a great sense of achievement on this one eh?

Interesting to see your game has the same bumper caps as my Zac Moonflight EM.

Cheers
Dave

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi guys… another bit of an update on the progress on Universe. Last weekend I sealed the backglass with Triple Thick to try and save the art from any more deterioration. First I carefully cleaned it with tissues and Windex.. well as much as I could do without doing any more damage. Then I gave it three coats.. one light mist coat, then two more heavier coats. There were a couple of sections lifting badly so I used the “cling wrap” trick to hole the peeling ink down while it dried. Next day I was able to remove the cling wrap, worked a treat!! There are sections of this glass I will repaint using the same techniques I used on my Stern Dracula backglass… but for now I’ll leave it as is.

[Mr Pinbologist]

For about the last week I’ve been doing the steppers and the score reel cleanups/repairs in the back box. Actually I’d been going back n forth between this game’s backglass, the backbox mechanics rebuild and Cam’s (big dog)’s Meteor that I’m repairing for him.

These few pics are of the player unit in the backbox, which was in dire need of a rebuild. First thing I did was remove the wiper disc and soak it in Prepsol overnight to remove any oil and grease in the contact pins. While the stepper disc was soaking dismantled/cleaned and rebuilt the rest of the player units mechanics.

Notice the crappy looking collapsed springs on the wiper unit in the 2nd pic. I had to replace these with new springs, some of them are already done in this pic(the narrower springs in the pics are replacement springs I used). The originals that were still in good shape were left alone. In order to remove the pins and springs I had to grind off the flattened ends of each pin (that holds them in place) to remove them. On each pair of pins I soldered a piece of wire to help get a better electrical contact between each pair (rather than rely on the contact between the pins, their bushings and the printed track on the disc), and the wire/solder doubles to keep the pins in place! (3rd pic).

Last pic is the player unit rebuilt. At the moment im half way through doing the score reels, i've had a couple of small issues to deal with in this area, and I came up with a couple of unusual but effective fixes that I’ll detail in the next update!!

[goodolddays]

Loving the progress updates Mitch 

Cheers
Dave

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi all, just another mini update. Been working on the score reels and the match unit. As mentioned in my last post had a couple of small issues doing the score reels, both the 3rd and 4th player reels are now done, just the 1st and 2nd player reels and the credit unit to go.

One problem I ran into with the 4th player tens score reel was a badly worn plunger nylon lever, the hole being slightly elongated and sloppy. Because of this I couldn’t get the reel to advance properly when actuated by hand when I put it all back together, the lever wasn’t pulling in quite far enough to click into the teeth on the reel, because of the wear. Well… heres how I fixed it..I heated the nylon with my heat gun while pushing the lever onto the edge of the workbench, thus closing up the hole slightly! I was careful to heat it just enough for the nylon to give, then I took the heat away immediately (1st pic). This worked a treat, actually too good, because I then had to open the hole slightly with a drill bit (2nd pic) to get the lever to fit cleanly onto the plunger roll pin. This completely fixed the reel and it now works like a charm. I wasn’t too worried about ruining the lever with the heat gun, as I  have and old Wms Superstar backbox in storage in Port Macquarie that I will be able to raid parts from if needed.

Last pic shows the bottom reels all back together and in place.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next I decided to rebuild the match unit. Notice in the 1st pic how crappy and worn the some of the reel numbers were. Only the ‘300, 400 and 800’ were badly affected luckily. I decided to make adhesive decals for the damaged numbers as it was the easiest fix I could think of. Now.. I just had to scan this circular object on my flatbed scanner!!! I remembered reading, I think it was one of  Daniels threads?? Hope I got that right?? Where he just rolled the reel down the scanner glass as it was scanning. So I thought id try the same thing. It took me several goes before I got it right, and I only scanned the damaged numbers anyway so it wasn’t too bad to do. Anyhow after I had some good scans of the numbers I needed to replace, and had fixed them up in photostudio, I printed them out onto clear adhesive A4 inkjet label material.

In the 2nd pic you can see my decals ready to be applied, the ‘400’is already stuck on in this pic. First though I cleaned the old numbering of with Prepsol and cloth, leaving just enough of the old number on there to help with aligning the decals.

Last two pics show the rebuilt match unit ready for the reel to be fitted.

[Mr Pinbologist]

And here is on of my stuffups.. this match unit has a solenoid activated lever that hides the match number when the game is being played. Well the lever was slightly obscuring the bottom of the match number so I had to do something about that. Someone had previously just twisted the lever so it the number could be seen but this looked crappy to me, so I straightened the lever and thought id just bend the  solenoid plunger rest stopper up a bit… well it just broke the spot weld and came off  Why did I try this?? Because im BLOODY STUPID that’s why  Anyway there was an easy fix.. there was already a hole close by so I just remounted the stopper to this hole.. panic over.. lol

And the 2nd pic.. what is with these f**kin Zac/Wms coil stops/brackets that they just have to break when you remove them??!!  I’ve had about three coil stops break on this game and now one of the reel coils decided to break. Luckily I have some of these on the old superstar backbox I have but its not here, so I just put it back together with the broken one so I can get the game going, and I’ll replace it later when I can get to Port Macq and get the bits I need from the Superstar backbox.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Here are some before and after pics of the match unit reel. Also I put some mylar over the reel to protect the numbering from further damage.

[big dog]

Yes Yes ,more good work . Looks great ,the numbers are touched up with brush or paint pen?

[Mr Pinbologist]

Yes Yes ,more good work . Looks great ,the numbers are touched up with brush or paint pen?

Neither, they are decals. I know its cheating a bit doing it that way, but that way im guaranteed to get good clean results

And thanks to everyone for the positive comments so far.. muchly appreciated

[Mr Pinbologist]

  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

[Mr Pinbologist]

I've been looking at the backglass on this one, and i've come to the conclusion that... its ROOTED. you can see it from the front, paint is lifting just about everywhere.so i've kinda lost interest in restoring this game now. i DID start, as i said re doing some of it yesterday, but the damage, especially in the man in the middle of the glass is going to be probably too hard to repair,especially as its backlit, and will look awful if not done right. and to be honest i think its beyond my abilities to repair.

And i reckon finding a replacement is going to be near impossible. so with that in mind its looking like this game wont be taken any further, im sorry to say.  Anyway it will be put on hold for now til i decide what to do with it.

I hate to say it but it may even be parted out, after doing all that work on the mechanicals.

dont know at this point what else to do with it.

[johnwartjr]

I'll chime in with what I hope can be some encouragement.

Every pin restored doesn't have to be perfectly mint. Sure, we always want our projects to look as nice as they can. Sometimes the factor is time, other times money, and even sometimes, as this time appears, unobtainable parts.

You've shown that you have the ability to make what you can't find. That's awesome! A backglass might be outside of your area of skill, that's something I can appreciate, I can fix dang near anything on my machines, but cosmetics are the area that challenges me. Sometimes I can hire someone to repair something cosmetically for me.

I faced a similar project over a year ago. I acquired a Terminator 2 pinball that was a pre-production sample machine. I love the sample and prototype machines, because they are different than production, and quite rare. The machine was completely trashed.

This project is one that I spent 50% more money on than it would've cost to just go buy a dead mint T2. And it still looks like a beat to death route T2. Seriously, I've never seen one this beat before.

It plays very well, and it's clean enough to eat off of now - but it's still ugly, and will always be ugly. It has lots of playfield wear to the wood, and the cabinet is beat up.

I started with this
http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/gallery/t2_sample_asrecd

And I ended up with this
http://gallery.myhomegameroom.com/gallery/sample_t2_fs

Parting out a survivor - especially one of this vintage and rarity - would be a crime against pinball. Be proud of your work. Enjoy it. And consider the fact that you've given life back to the machine.

Take some time away from it, if you need to - but please don't part it out!

[Mr Pinbologist]

the truth is that this game has been fighting me every step of the way!! I think i need a major break from it because this game is giving me an intense dislike for EMs!! and thats NOT good! I really DONT want to give up on this one, since i've put soooo much effort into it so far!

If worse come to worse, i can always just paint the back of the glass in red and pull out the bulbs.. much as i HATE people who do that, but at the moment im just stuck for ideas. You see, the area that has me stumped has lots of detail, (black and purple lines) if it were just solid colour id simply scrape out and spray in new colour, same as i did on my Dracula glass. I tried it on one section, but leaving in the detail lines, looked GREAT unlit but showed up BAD when backlit. If i can redraw (paint) in the detail i can fix it. the acrylic red i stared using was actually a really good match for the reds on the glass.

I've never given up on a restore yet... and dont want to start now