Tag: pinball restoration
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Big Guns, COMPLETE!
I finally finished restoring this Big Guns pinball machine after over a year of effort. When i started I knew very little about pinball restoration and maintenance, and now I know a whole lot more! I wish i had more representative “before” photos, but hopefully some of these give an idea about where this started…
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More Taxi teardown
This afternoon I removed the flippers, slingshots, slingshot switches, and both drop target mechs on Taxi. Labeled all wires using the system I developed working on Big Guns. Still need to remove all three pop bumper mechs. May end up removing all mechs as many have rust and tons of grime on them.
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Sad sad Taxi playfield
A few really terrible areas on the playfield. Not even sure what I’m going to do with this playfield. Clean first and reassess.
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Rotisserie time for Taxi
Got Taxi mostly stripped down and up on the rotisserie. Encountered a ton of broken/stripped hardware that really slowed things down. This playfield is pretty horrible right now. Whoever put the yellow lacquer or varathane on it didn’t remove anything, so all the ball guides and posts are covered with it. I am not planning…
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Big Guns: assembly complete!
Joy of joys. It’s still not working, but it’s very very close – depends on how quickly I can get good advice from Pinside. I have problems with the kicker switches (which I must have gotten wrong) and the right canon switch (which appears to be missing a diode).
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Big Guns even closer
At this point i have everything back on the playfield with the exception of the flipper bats, large wireforms that catch the cannon blasts, and the lighted panel that goes behind in the back. It’s crazy that at this point i can write a list of things remaining to do and it fits in a…
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Repopulating is the fun part
Repopulating the playfield is very satisfying. It’s fun to see all the new and cleaned and polished parts go back on. I’ve got the entire first layer done with the exception of the back center. As usual, there were some difficulties here and there. The main issue was that I discovered a few playfield post…
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Big Guns board work
Replaced the blown TIP102 on the board and also fixed the backbox GI. Everything tested out good. The GI fix was a bit of a hack but I can make it right later (it’s not dangerous). Waxed the playfield twice, replaced topside light sockets, and put the remaining bulbs in. Touched up the apron and…
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Soldering night
Did a bunch of soldering on Big Guns. Both front flippers rebuilt and reinstalled, top side mechs rebuilt and reinstalled. Resoldered some bad connections on the topside GI as well. It’s basically ready to be repopulated.