Williams Firepower 1980

[deadlydave]

Display board was in pretty good nick, same as the sound board so I opted to keep it original, stripped it all down and gave a good clean with Nifti. Cleaned all the light sockets with Iso and replaced all globes with No47's. Spent a bit of time getting the mounting/hinging right, I wanted the displays to line up with backglass and the lightboard to sit so as not to stick out and possibly scratch the backglass. I had one display flickering and another with a couple of burnt segments, once again stole some bits from Gorgar and will either pick up a couple of displays down the track or convert gorgar to an LED setup.

[ddstoys]

Awsome work Dave looking great.  Sadly my firepower is getting furter down te cue but hopefully one day it will look alf tis good.   

[deadlydave]

I checked earthing resistance from the lead plug earth to all exposed metal, (especially the metal on/off 240vac switch!) got some high readings on some coin door trim which I will rectify, powered up main board and checked voltages before plugging everything in, all voltages looked good. Plugged the other boards in, as well as sound board/coin door plug and powered it all up, straight to audit mode then a quick off/on and she booted up 
Pretty happy with this as I thought with all my work on the boards I was sure to cock something up..
Got into game adjustment mode and was able to register a couple of credits from coin door with the knocker responding.
Tested sound from the sound card test switch, the synth sounds are excellent but i thought the speech sounded distorted, I swapped out speech and sound boards with Gorgar with same result, got Ken to burn me some new speech Eproms but has not made a difference, have made a recording which I sent on to Ken to get his opinion, just does not sound as clear as Gorgar or BK to me, if anyone wants a listen shoot me a pm.
Playfield is the next job, bloody tempted to just throw it in and have a game but i will resist the urge 

[deadlydave]

Cheers Daniel, you've got too many machines! I dont know how you keep up with them all.
Im sure your FP will be finished soon, yours is a lot harder restore given what you started with.
Cheers
Dave

[Retropin]

I restored the PF on the Fp i sold..... looks like it could be a bastard, but its actually an easy PF to restore... enjoyed doing that one.

Which reminds me... must ring up the buyer and go service it, so bloody busy though!!

[goodolddays]

just does not sound as clear as Gorgar or BK to me,

Gday Dave .. the speech and sound is much clearer on my FP after I replaced the original speaker with the Pinball Pro one .. maybe you could try swapping the speaker from Gorgar and see if there is any difference ?

[deadlydave]

Time for a long overdue update 

Received my new PF from CPR about a month ago but had been pretty busy stripping down the old PF and getting everything ready for the rebuild. I picked up a cheap tumbler from the local gun shop and gave it a good work out.
Here is a pic of the ball eject and sling parts ready for assembly.




The old vynal covered rails were a bit tatty and the pine was split on some ends, I decided to replace with American Oak which I finished with a clear lacquer.



I was very happy with the finish, should look good against the black cab sides.



All new lamp sockets/ground wire and tee nuts under the PF.

[deadlydave]

I had some parts that sit on the PF chromed, as they were too far gone to be polished. I have made new wires for the ball gates and some trough switches out of stainless TIG wire, they came up nice seem to be very tensile and won't rust.





Spent a heap of time polishing all the stainless guides on my buffer, decided to go for a mirror finish as opposed to re-graining. Looking at the original side guides you can see a clear polished line where the ball runs across the grain, thought I'd give this a go as the mark from the ball might not be as obvious on the polished guides.
 

[deadlydave]

I had a handfull of insert lamp holders that had really loose tags, no easy way to fix that I could see so thought it best to replace the lot. I could not find a replacement three tag holder as per the original so ended up getting two tag isolated types. I did not realize until I got them that the bracket is not isolated from the socket, so thought about it a bit and figured it would be ok as long as I was careful not to mount any brackets close to the GI braid. With this type of holder one tag is the tit, the other tag is isolated and the bracket is connected to holder. I riveted the third tag onto the bracket with spring washer. Not sure if I explained this well but here's a pic..

[deadlydave]

I spent an eternity building up the courage to drill the counter sinks for the pop bumpers 
I could picture the drill bit getting away from me and just feeding straight down through the PF, lol.
I mucked about with some scrap timber to get a feel and ended up going about it as follows..
First scored the hole with a sharp 8mm Brad bit and then used an 8mm bit I had ground down fairly flat to finish, all done with batt drill, low speed and very little pressure.

[goodolddays]

Great job so far Dave  .
You've definitely set the bar on this one I reckon.
I think the mirror finish on the stainless ball guides looks heaps better than the factory grained look . 

I am scared about drilling into the PF  .

Hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions when I get around to doing mine .

Can't wait too see how yours turns out .

[Strangeways]

Very very nice Dave. Tumbling and polishing makes a HUGE difference and it will match the playfield. Excellent work !

[ktm450]

Very nice 

[pinnies4me]

Very inspiring stuff!! 

[chris288]

Yeah, pretty impressive work you've done there. I would hate to think how much time you've spent on it.

Im sure when its all done its gonna look so good, that you wont want to muck it up by actually putting a ball on there and playing a game