The Pinball Diaries

Medieval Madness Reassembly Complete!

geechorama — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:47:04 +0000

OMFGWTFBBQ! Reassembly of Medieval Madness is complete! I still have to adjust a couple roll-over switches that don’t always trigger, but everything is put back together, sparkly clean, with new rubber, new troll flaps, shiny star-posts, new flippers, all lamps/flashers/solenoids in working order, a new dot matrix display, and new ball trough! Huzzah! Need to post some before/after pictures when I get a chance.

It’s back in the line-up!

And it only took two years.

Medieval Madness Reassembly In Progress

geechorama — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:21:16 +0000

Medieval Maddness reassembly is actually progressing nicely, a little bit each day.

OK, Seriously This Time. Maybe.

geechorama — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:41:09 +0000

Poor Medieval Madness has been sitting in the basement 22 months, waiting for some reassembly love.

I mentioned a while back that I was starting to put it back together, but then I got distracted. So over the last few days the little man and I started to get back on it. We:

Checked all the switches attached to the playfield. Note to self: 54, 55, 65, 66 and 68 need a little adjustment. 61-64, and 67 couldn’t be tested ‘cause I have to reassemble the things they’re attached to. 75 appears busted.

Checked flashers, replaced a couple. Still need to check 17, 19, 21 and 23 on the ramps when they get reassembled.

Adjusted the drawbridge. In its upright position it was leaning pretty far forward, as you can see in this pre-disassembly photo:

So we loosened the set-screw and adjusted it back a bit. Now it’s good (although this picture is not):

Removed the old Troll flap decals and applied new ones. The old ones were getting pretty beat up as you can see here. Peeling them off left a fair amount of gunk behind, so I used a chisel to scrap it off, which actually worked really well. The little man took this action photo:

All scraped:

Decals applied:

Reassembled:

Much better. Compare that to the old versions:

Rad.

geechorama — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:49:02 +0000

Somebody made a see through pinball machine. That’s clever. Check out the photoset.

Thanks for the link Señor Terk

I Need To Start A Pinball Gang

geechorama — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:51:09 +0000

A friend of mine pointed me to this article about pinball in Portland.

Monster Bash Status

geechorama — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:44:16 +0000

Moved Monster Bash into place and got it running.

Some issues:

Lots of switches out
Lots of lights out

The lower pop-bumper is falling apart, along with the plastic that over-hangs the scoop (which is attached to the pop-bumper). Ball actually got stuck on a piece that fell into the playfield when I was testing the machine out.

Maybe A Ratchet Cable Hoist

geechorama — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 16:47:20 +0000

Reading the Wikipedia page on hoists I was thinking a ratchet cable hoist may be the way to go. Uses a lever to give you lifting power and and holds the lifted object between strokes of the lever.

Maybe one of these.

My Wife Helped Me Get It Up

geechorama — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:12:07 +0000

The old fashioned way. We both grabbed hold of it and put our backs into it.

Hoist Plan Update

geechorama — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:35:46 +0000

I’ve been wanting to get Monster Bash up and running in my (relatively) new house so I decided to give The Plan a try.

I drilled a little hole in the joist above the main support beam so I could feed through a little steel cable from Home Depot (which claimed that it could support 841 pounds) and wrap it around the beam. Here is an expertly framed photograph of me drilling the hole, taken by my 2 1/2 year-old son:

With the rope-hoist hooked up to the cable I figured I’d give it an easy test, so I grabbed one of my summer tires from the garage and hooked it on (using another steel cable wrapped around the tire).

That was pretty straight forward. So I took out the tire and put Monster Bash in position.

Sadly, the pulleys in the hoist did not provide nearly enough mechanical advantage. Which is a nice way of saying that I wasn’t strong enough to lift it for squat. Perhaps I should seek the mechanical engineering expertise of my father (and read the Wikipedia pages I just linked to). Although an easier solution would be to just throw my brother’s back out again.

My wife officially declared the entire operation a joke. She used the words “Mickey Mouse” and “Three Stooges” several times.

Troll Flap Decals

geechorama — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:34:45 +0000

Here are some pictures of the Troll flap decals. Pretty bad shape. They don’t really affect game play but are rather unsightly.

I ordered some replacement decals which I need to put on.