The Pinball Diaries

Cleaned auto-fire assembly. New sleeve (WMS #03-7067). Coil mounting position in the manual is wrong. Manual shows it like this:

Flip the coil front-to-back, then rotate 90 deg. so the terminals are facing down, and that’s how mine was mounted. If it were mounted as the manual has it the terminals would extend past the right edge of the playfield and scrape the cabinet.

Replaced sleeves on both Troll assemblies (WMS #03-7067-6). While reassembling the right Troll, I broke the head off the little bolt that attaches the Troll Carriage to the Armature. *$#%$! When this Troll needs work I will have a problem.

Cleaned both poppers (Merlin’s Magic & Moat). New sleeves for each (WMS #03-7067). Need to order more of these sleeves.

Cleaned the castle gate solenoid. New sleeve (WMS #03-7067-6).

Started cleaning stuff under the playfield.

Cleaned the right flipper.

• New stop bracket, old one was flattened (WMS #12390).

• New coil sleeve (WMS #03-7066-5).

Putting the coil back in the right flipper and double checking the solonoid wiring, I noticed the left flipper coil was mounted upside-down, and the red and orange wiring was reversed. Looking at my disassembly photos looks like I mounted it backwards when I cleaned it a few days ago.

Cleaned the left and right slingshot bumper assemblies. New coil sleeve for each (WMS #03-7066).

Cleaned the rest of the 555 bulbs under the playfield.

Replaced both moat flashers (#89). Why do these keep blowing?

Have the bottom half of the playfield clean now.

I also started cleaning the lightbulbs underneath the playfield by wiping them with a dry rag. Okay, check this out. Before and after. Same lightbulb.

Got my package from Marco Specialties.

Installed new bumper plug (WMS #23-6702), missing spring (WMS #10-392-1) and hairpin clip (WMS #12-6227) on right troll flap, and installed a new DMD (I still had 2 that I ordered a couple years ago, I think from Steve’s Pinball Resource.

Got started with the playfield cleaning. Wiped down the whole thing with a white rag to get the initial coating of dirt and grit off. Most of the light bulbs popping up through the playfield were coated with crud, so I took them out and wiped them clean with the rag.

Started in with the Millwax on the Magic Shield decal and the surrounding castles. Unbelievably dirty. I need to post some before and after pics when it’s done.

I decided to call it a night after getting woozy from the Millwax.

I noticed that the catapult coil was a little loose in its mounting. Disassembled, cleaned everything, new sleeve (WMS #03-7066).

The coil mounting bracket is not adjustable, so I tightened the coil up by putting some thick double-sided tape in-between the bracket and the coil.

Disassembled the left flipper to see why it was weak. As suspected, the bushing (WMS #03-7568) had cracked (again) [ FIXME – link ]. Put in a new one.

Not sure why the bushing keeps breaking, although I looked at the Flipper Stop Assembly (WMS #A-12390) and it had flattened out a bit. Maybe that’s allowing the Crank Link Assembly to travel too far and put stress on the bushing? Replaced the stop assembly since I have a bunch lying around, so we’ll see.

Replaced the coil sleeve (WMS #03-7066-5) with a freshy.

After I clean the playfield I’ll replace both flipper bats with new ones.

Ordered some parts from Marco Specialties:

• WMS #03-7067-5 sleeves
• Blue bumper plugs, WMS #23-6702
• The correct color pop bumper skirts (black), WMS #03-6035-7
• Troll flap springs, since the right troll is missing one, WMS #10-392-1

• Matching hairpin clip, WMS #12-6227

I declare the playfield disassembly complete. Playfield is ready for some major cleaning.

I installed the new ball trough without any trouble. Here you can see the old and the new side by side:

Note how the new design uses rails as ball guides instead of flanged metal. Hopefully they won’t be prone to divots like the old one. Here you can see the divots that developed on the old one, causing the balls to get stuck:

I thought this was the dirtiest coil sleeve I had ever replaced until I discovered that the original part (WMS #03-7067-5) is black:

That’s not to say that the entire assembly wasn’t filthy. The blue rubber bumper plug (WMS #23-6702) had developed a black flaky crust:

Also replaced the left troll carriage (WMS #04-10763.1) without any trouble. The bottom ring that attached to the armature had popped out a little bit. Just that little bit is enough to make the whole thing jam up against the housing and get stuck. Here you can see the new and the old side by side:

And the old one looking from the side:

It looks like the right-hand troll had the same problem at some point and somebody repaired it:

Perhaps I should make a ‘Non-doofus Previous Owners’ category.

Removed all 3 pop bumpers. The skirts are cracked and chipped and the entire playfield area is filthy. One of the purple caps has a chip out of it as well.

I hate working on pop bumpers. They’re such a pain. Plus you have to break the metal leads of the lamp socket to disassemble it. Who’s idea was it to take bare metal and staple it to the playfield and solder stuff to it?

Lest a few days go by without me placing an order…some stuff from Bay Area Amusements:

• A couple blank coin doors. Several of mine are all ratty and I wanna see how these blank ones look.
• Some Novus #1
• Some pop bumper skirts, WMS part #03-6035-7. I conveniently ordered the wrong color.
• Some pop bumper lamp sockets that have wire leads instead of bare metal straps.
• Purple pop bumper caps, WMS #03-8254-18

• Some bumper bodies (WMS #03-7443-5) and bases (WMS #03-6009-A5) ‘cause it never hurts to have some extra on hand, right?