Making Up for Lost Time Streams

There's been a lot of rebuilding since the last post, but I would be remiss if I didn't ramble incoherently about pinball league. I've been playing in a league that's loosely affiliated to the main league, the Terrapin Pinball League. Basically, it occurs at Town Hall, a bar near the University of Maryland when the Terps play a home game. I really haven't enjoyed it... I don't like the fact that it's almost always on a Saturday, which puts a big dent in my day; it's never at a fixed time because the games are at different times; and it seems like most of the people are pre- and post-playing their rounds, so the number of people who actually show up has dwindled... yesterday it was just me. I had already decided not to do it again, but this was the final straw. Plus the fact that it was apparently Drunken Idiot Night at Town Hall really didn't make playing with myself any more fun. And because of the smallish field of players, I might end up in the as yet unscheduled playoffs. However, I might not even be here for the finals because...

In a little over a week I'm returning to the Old Country for my Dad's 90th birthday. While I'm out there, I plan to stop in at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the Musée Mechanique, and Pins and Needles. I wanted to go to Playland Not at the Beach, but they're only open on weekends and I'll only be in the Bay Area from Tuesday to Friday. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the PPM... they really seem to have their act together, which is a refreshing change from other museums I might have been involved with in the past. Oh, and in the interstice between my wife leaving on Saturday on me leaving on Tuesday, I'm going to head up to Hanover PA and check out the Timeline Arcade, which just opened this week (and they apparently have a Transformers, so I might see fit to take a couple of nut shots at Optimus Prime).

But the point of this blog is repairs, so let us talk about Doctor Who's cabinet swap, which is continuing apace. I ended up sending the CPU board to Rob Anthony, well-known and well-regarded repairer of boards. He did a great job, but sadly for me it was at a great price... but I also decided to have him fix the other CPU board I had, which did add significantly to the cost. But on the plus side, I now have what appears to be a 100% working board.

Everything that's going to be cleaned beforehand has been cleaned, and I've been slowly reassembling the playfield and testing it as I go. Jeez, I thought I'd written about a lot of this, but looking back at my last post I see that I've written next to nothing about this.

So let's discuss one particular event, the removal of the mini-playfield. I've never taken the mini-playfield out of my game because I could never get the screws out... the t-nuts that they were screwed into turned impotently rather than t-nutting in the t-nutty way they're supposed to. The Onlines indicated that somebody -- I'm guessing Williams -- might have glued the screws in. I tried holding the t-nuts with pliers, heating to break the glue, freezing to shrink the part, just all manner of things. Finally, I pretty much got fed up and cut the screw heads off with my wife's Dremel. This did the trick. I did go through 3 or 4 cutting tools (they sell them in 20-packs, so no surprise there), there were a lot more sparks than I expected, and after one broke and embedded in my ceiling I decided to wear eye protection, but man, it's so much easier to remove the screws without their heads. When I finally pulled a t-nut off the remainder of the screw, I could see residue of what was probably the glue in the threads. And two of the nut holes had a trough dug in them by the teeth of the nuts.

Luckily, I can just jump right to the end of the story. ^_^ I bought some replacement nuts at the hardware store -- for a change, it's a pretty common size, not some crazy obscure part that I have to get from Marco or something. Acting on the advice of the guy who wrote the book on the Mini-playfield, I filled the troughs with a mixture of carpenter's glue and sawdust (which he says is stronger than regular wood filler) and set the new t-nuts in place, being extremely careful not to get any glue into the business part of the nut. When the glue dried, I had a nice solidly placed set of t-nuts, ready to bear the weight of the freshly cleaned mini-playfield.

Well, that's it for tonight. There's more excitement to come, and a lot more shenanigans with the mini-playfield. So stay tuned.