Mitch's next project.. Zaccaria Universe

[ddstoys]

Yes Mitch I agree with Tony we have missed you. 
I know your not that close to Newcastle but you should try to make down to a one of our pinball meets, Im sure a lot of us guy's would like to pick your brain and chat.

If you can make id down to Rollerballs meet would be great as i dont think ill make another one up there for a while

[Mr Pinbologist]

Yes Mitch I agree with Tony we have missed you. 
I know your not that close to Newcastle but you should try to make down to a one of our pinball meets, Im sure a lot of us guy's would like to pick your brain and chat.

If you can make id down to Rollerballs meet would be great as i dont think ill make another one up there for a while

Well its not outta the question for me to drive to Newcastle for a pinball meet. Definitely something for me to to keep in mind, all i need is a free weekend with no band gigs

[Mr Pinbologist]

Not much progress with this one today, due to Country Energy doing powerline work in my street so no power til late this afternoon. anyhow i dragged the playfield and bottom panel relay board out to the garage to start fitting the stepper discs. 2nd and 3rd pics just as a reminder as to what im replacing...

[Mr Pinbologist]

And heres what happened when I removed the wiper fingers off one of the stepper units. It fell apart in my hand!! AAARGH.. not good. These have plastic or nylon rivets holding them together and im not sure if they simply broke or if someone else had them apart before… because if you look at the last pic in the previous post, the top row of wires have all been moved over one tag to the left. So im guessing they dismantled the wiper fingers and moved them to suit the new wire positions!!!

This development had me worried for a while, but I decided it wasn’t too bad coz I had taken pics of each stepper unit prior to doing anything to them. So luckily I was able to work out (I hope!!!) how it all went together. Also luckily it was only the two middle fingers that fell out, the rest were held in place by the two halves of the broken rivets. Pics show me piecing it together temporarily til I decide how I can hold it back together.

[Mr Pinbologist]

more pics

[Mr Pinbologist]

well after THAT little disaster, i decided to  put it aside for now and drill and fit one of the stepper discs i made to one of the other stepper units just to see how it would fit. Pic below shows one fitted and adjusted, just the wires to be soldered on.

[daics3522]

Awesome work................

[Retropin]

Awesome work................

Couldnt agree more - awesome work.
 I have to admit, making a wiper board would have been put in the "too hard basket" for me and i like to pride myself that my basket is not too near.... nothing is impossible - many thanks for the inspiration.. this has to be the most interesting restore thread ive read for quite some time.

Keep it coming.. im REALLY enjoying this 

[Strangeways]

Very, very clever 

Following with great interest and awe !

[johnwartjr]

Very nice. Can't wait to see more!

[Mr Pinbologist]

G’day all

I’ve been working on rebuilding the stepper units on the playfield and thought I’d post some pics of the end results.

In my last posts I mentioned how one set of wiper fingers fell to bits when I removed it from the stepper unit. Well the pics in this post show how I repaired it. I bought a pack of M2 size machine screws from Dick Smith, these packs include various length screws, nuts, flat washers, spring and shake proof washers.. just the thing to repair this wiper arm I thought! I selected a couple of screws of appropriate length and fitted two short lengths of heatshrink tubing, just long enough to poke through the wiper arm screw holes… thus insulating the screws from the wiper fingers! I fitted the screws through the holes, the heatshrink made them a perfect fit, added a flat washer and a spring washer to each one, plus some loctite for good measure.

Pics show the results.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next I removed all of the moving parts from each stepper unit, cleaned all of the old oil and grease from the pivot points of the levers and arms. Notice one of these actuator arms has a nylon piece that slots into the solenoid plunger and is riveted to the metal piece that moves the stepper wheel… well the rivets had worked loose on ALL of these arms on each stepper. I was going to drill the rivets out and put bolts through them but decided to use a ball peen hammer to tighten the rivets up again instead. This seemed to tighten them up nicely. I cleaned everything up with metho and refitted everything, and putting a few drops of  3 in 1 oil on any metal to metal pivot points. Note also this game uses a lot of metal coil sleeves like most of the old Wms Ems did (these Zac games use a lot of Wms parts it seems), so I pulled the out and replaced them with nylon sleeves. ALL of the small coils had these metal sleeves, the larger coils had nylon sleeves already fitted but I put on new ones. I checked the operation of each stepper unit by hand and adjusted where necessary.

[goodolddays]

Absolutely Top Notch Work  
Like others have said .. can't wait for more updates .. you are truly proving that nothing is impossible.

Very Very Well done

Cheers
Dave

[Mr Pinbologist]

On one of the stepper units ( the last one I worked on)! There was one screw on one of the coils that just refused to move. Someone must’ve cross threaded it I think coz it was only half screwed in. and the slots were all burred up which didn’t help! At this point I thought some heat might help it move so out came my little Butane gas torch, this was something I bought from Dick Smith a year ago and have never used until now!! well it seemed to do the trick (1st pic)… that and a pair of side cutters on the screw to turn it and it came out with not too much effort. Some replacement screws were found on an old Wms Superstar playfield I have here using for parts.

The stepper disc on the last unit (2nd pic) was still in good nick so I simply sanded the traces smooth with some 400 wet/dry sandpaper and refitted the wiper arm. Last two pics show the repaired steppers with the new boards.

all i need to do now is replace one  stepper disc on the bottom panel relay board, and i'll put the pf and relay board back in the game and see if it works!!after that i'll clean and adjust score reels/relays etc and get it all up and running before i pull it all down again for a full restore

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi again just a quick update this time nothing too exciting. Spent the last couple of afternoons rebuilding the bottom relay panel steppers, no major dramas, just a broken coil stop that fell to bits when unscrewed (see 1st pic). Luckily my old Wms Superstar pf came to the rescue again, found a good coil stop on there.

Last night i fitted the bottom panel and pf back into the cabinet and guess what...

IT WORKED

well just a few issues that had to be dealt with.. mainly the fact that the ball in play unit wouldnt advance intermittently. I eventually worked out thre was a problem with the Index relay on the bottom board, or rather a switch on the score motor wasnt allowing it to latch properly.. when the outhole relay activated, it reset the ball index relay immediately instead of after a short delay. and the ball advance coil voltage is controlled by the index relay so the ball in play/player up wouldnt advance!! It took me the whole afternoon to work this one out

the score motor latch switch for this relay wasnt even on the schematic!! but now it works and i actually got to play a few games on it

I still have some work to do... the extra ball unit intermittently wont reset after each ball, and i still have the score reels and player unit to overhaul in the backbox.

2nd pic shows the pf lit up. Note also that NOTHING  has been done to this playfield as yet as far as cleaning etc in this pic.