On some other errands, I stopped in at the pool place with the Pirates machine to see if they'd gotten it fixed, and it was replace with Red & Ted's Road Show, which is actually one of the games they used to have when they had four pins in the back. I played a couple of games and it was in reasonable shape. Yay!
Saturday was Pinball Road Trip day. I had to pick up the DW parts machine at the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse in The Lebanon, PA. Post-auction communication was a little difficult as the guy running their auctions is a "one question per email" guy... if you put two questions in (in this case, hours on Saturday and location), he only answers the first one because apparently the rest of your email is unimportant. So I had to send a second email to verify the location. -_-*
Since the path to The Lebanon led past Gettysburg, I offered to drop my wife off so she could spend the day with my daughter doing historical reenactment crafts (mostly hand-sewing a hem on my daughter's antebellum dress) while I get the game. Aside from leaving a bit late, that worked out just fine. The drive up was pleasant, and the GPS came to my aid again, allowing me to not follow its directions and avoid the PA Turnpike... since it recalculates as soon as you make what it considers a wrong turn, I can just steer in the direction I think is best and eventually it all works out.
The Lebanon looks like an old industrial town that has seen better days. Down the street from the warehouse, there was an awesome old marble bank building that was built in 1915. The warehouse itself was kind of a dump... an old storefront that was probably some nice downtown store when downtown Lebanon was actually nice. It was crammed with arcade games, mostly in good condition from what I saw, but all way too expensive for my taste.
As I suspected/feared, security was somewhat lax. The guy (not the one who runs the auctions) asked me what game I was here to pick up and if I'd paid for it. So for all he knew, I could be any yahoo that pops in and says he bought a game online. After a couple of trips in the creepy freight elevator, we got the game down and loaded into my car and I drove back to Gettysburg.
My wife and daughter were still involved in the hemming of garments, so I went over to Pizza House and found that NASCAR was running.
I totally spanked the game... I got the #4 high score and the grand champion score, knocking off machine default Pat Lawlor. And that was even though the ball release would fail sporadically. I ended up playing for about an hour on my $2. After an extremely collegiate meal at the dining hall and waiting for them to finish hemming, we drove home.The game is in about as good shape as I might expect. I'll post some pictures soon, but it's nice that in addition to the nicer cabinet and Dalek, it also has actual door and playfield glass switches (so I don't have to short the wires) and a couple of nuts that I'm pretty sure I need.
It came with a translite, and since a DW translite had just sold a few days before for a (to me) ludicrous price of $171, I wanted to post the spare while the disappointed bidders were still unsatisfied. I put it up Sunday night, and it's already up to $76. Ideally I'd like to pay the $200 I spent on the game via parts, so we'll see how that works out. Strangely enough, the current high bidder is the guy who won the last auction... I'm not sure what his story is.
I also got a second DMD from pinballchuck. It had one line out, but since my current one (that I bought brand new!!!) has several lines out, this is definitely a step up. It was only $32, and it works just fine.
While I was testing the DMD, I plugged in the speaker panel (which doesn't have the plastic facing but does have the lamps) from the new game and found that light 7 doesn't work on that, either. I wonder if it's a wiring issue. I was thinking about connecting up the Dalek, but it's not easy to disconnect and didn't feel like running wires over to it.
I came up with a bright idea while I was sitting around at work yesterday... I figured that there was probably a game setting to shut off the mini-playfield. I checked the manual and it turns out there is, so I shut it off... playing the game is a lot easier when the ball doesn't get stuck in the gap (which, I discovered, is caused by the lower end of the mini-playfield being loose... and it doesn't screw in properly, so something is wrong down there. Another thing to look into, yay!). I WD-40'd the outhole, so now that delivers balls nicely. So really, the only things keeping me from playing a decent game are the sticking flipper (not that bad lately) and the Tardis popper switch that doesn't register reliably. I've played several games and both had fun AND not burst a blood vessel in frustration. I actually did a couple of WHO loops, got multiball once, and successfully completed a video mode.
Finally, having the parts game allows me to experiment with secret techniques... last night I tried out dishwasher ramp cleaning from TOP #3. The under-playfield ramp in the new game was not attached and amazingly filthy. So, following Shaggy's advice, 
I put it in the top rack of the dishwasher and a broken slightshot plastic in with the silverware. I selected normal wash and the energy saver air dry. As you can see from the pics, it worked really well. There is still a line of dirt in the ball trails, but it's a huge improvement! I'm a little concerned about how stickers fare in this... this ramp just has a warning sticker, but playfield ramps are a different story. Washing didn't help the plastic so much, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment