it was on my wishlist, so i brought home a "magic city" today... my first williams... stashyboy twisted my arm just hard enough to buy it... i love the artwork on this machine...

bg looks pretty nice... pf has a flipper gouge, left side... a bit of planking, not bad at all though... inserts are slightly cupped... very little apparent pf wear... inside of machine is FILTHY... all the stepper motors are gunked... various coil sleeves are broken... and so on...

this ought to be interesting... thanks to you guys, i've had a crash course in gottlieb over the last 6 months... hopefully you will school me in the ways of williams as well...

some pics...

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a few more...

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and a couple more...

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interesting how the belly board is laid out exactly the opposite from a gottlieb... where did all that REALLY fine dust come from?

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thanks to both...

LOL vid... i never even caught that, but maybe that's the subliminal message that makes me like the art so much....

thanks, yea, i just know that pop bumper is going to drive my buddy absolutely nuts when it power drains the ball...

what i really like about the art on this game (other than the subliminal message vid pointed out) is that not only is it exceptionally attractive, but it captures the early 60's really well with the big showy art, as well as with all the little details...

thanks lloyd... yea, i'm pleased with the condition, for sure...

although you haven't seen the cabinet yet...

ah, yea, that makes total sense... it's REALLY fine, so that would "fit" with that conclusion... it's like a sixteenth of an inch thick all over everything... almost looks like no one ever actually opened up the game...

cabinet pics coming up... and yes, i'm psyched, although once i start digging into it, you may regret the powers of your persuasion...

some cabinet pics... interestingly enough, as stashy pointed out to me, it gives the impression of having been in a damp environment, but the bottom is rock solid, and theres no rust anywhere... well... other than the legs... the legs are downright ugly with a capital U G L Y...

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and a few more...

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and a few more...

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gee, that sounds luscious... at least it wasn't "avocado"... one wonders sometimes just exactly what people are thinking when they do those repaints like that...

i may be talked into a repaint on this one when i gut it to clean out the inside... "cleaning" the outside it really isn't an option with all that paint missing, that old dry wood would suck up any moisture that came near it... which would only exacerbate the issue... one good thing, the cabinet only has a couple small gouges, so the prep work wouldn't be horribly bad...

thanks, i know they generally don't survive the process, but i do appreciate the thought...

nothing gets by ted... yea, that's the one... i offered 325 and he accepted... i think i got a fair enough deal...

sadly, my skills (or to be more correct, lack of skills) preclude that possibility...

but i'll do my best...

well, dig it out and work through it along with me... i know i could use the support...

pretty amazing how the art can completely sell a game to so many people... i'd want this even if it played like a turd, just so i could look at it...

i'm going to do the color changing led's as well, my mentor on this project strongly suggested them... he also suggested adding lighting in a few other areas of the bg, which i will likely do as well once i haul the light board out...

progress will be reported... hopefully, not too much "lack of progress" will be reported as well, but i know that you guys will get me through anything i get stuck on...

in my first post, i noted that this was my first williams... my experience thus far has been limited to gottlieb wedgeheads...

had my first "wtf" moment yesterday... i was staring at the lightboard, and thinking to myself "c'mon, there's gotta be a way to release this, short of unscrewing it, otherwise, it would royally suck to change bulbs"... saw the instruction card that said "slide levers forward..."... tried that, and nothing happened...

pm'd the mentor for the solution (hopefully he will not tire of me)... it NEVER occurred to me that you slide out the levers and then remove the backglass from the front to get at the light board... i completely misunderstood the directions...

the first, but highly unlikely the last, "damn, i should have been able to figure that out" moment...

i'll try the brake cleaner, thanks for the suggestion there...

i tried many things on other sets of really ugly legs, but the time it took me to get them to a state that was still unacceptable led me to simply order new ones from steve... i'm VERY patient when it comes to fixing stuff, but when it comes to cleaning stuff, not so much...

thanks...

hey, one baby step at a time... although if a "bon voyage" or "rocket iii" happens to show up cheap, i'll dip my toe into the bally waters...

the journey begins... time to get off my can and start making a parts list and take a few things apart... took the flippers off to start stripping the pf down to clean it...

i don't think i'll save these coil stops...

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not much left of the sleeve in this guy... the plunger is also stuck...

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i pulled the first assembly (every screw on coil stop mount and little ring mount on the other side of the coil beheaded itself)... went over to other one (sleeve is welded into the coil of that one), started to take it apart, and a little light bulb went on over my head...

what is wrong with this picture?

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i discovered the nut on the back side of the screws holding the coil stop in after pondering why the first screw was so recalcitrant.. according to the exploded view in the parts catalog, those are supposed to be there... when i was studying that part of the catalog last night, apparently those 2 nuts didn't penetrate my brain... i suppose i shouldn't ask why they did that...

the screws sheared because the person who screwed them in last must have been a close relative of the incredible hulk...

so nope, although i learned something new there... side note on screws, i see that williams didn't have "slotted screw religion" like gottlieb... bonus points for williams there!

i was looking at it, and mentally said, "great, the same pita flipper return spring as on the gottliebs"... then the light bulb went on... that spring shouldn't be there... and the spring that should be the flipper return isn't there... popped up the parts catalog, the bakelite link should be rounded on the pawl end, these aren't...

unless i'm off in left field here, it sure looks like somewhere along the line this "inherited" some gottlieb parts... on close inspection, you can see how the bakelite link was cut down... and it's entirely possible they didn't cut them down quite enough, which could have contributed to how wasted the coil stops and metal sleeves were (that's just a wag there)...

yup, that's kinda what i figured... that's what whoever did it had available in their parts bin... so they made do with what they had... it worked... for awhile, anyway... what's left of the coil sleeves are never coming out of there though... add 2 flipper coils to the list...

yupper... that was a good tip from you there... it makes life so much easier when i have an exploded view to look at...

yea, i hear that...

ok, score reel lubrication question... i started on the score reels last night... took one apart*, and set aside the parts to clean today... not only are they grungy, but it appears as if someone used "3 in 1" oil (or a similar "machine oil") on them...

while perusing the various pieces of documentation, they suggest lubricating many places in the assembly... no biggie, i can handle that...

however, you guys have taught me to NOT lubricate nylon parts, and most of the areas the suggest lubricating are either "nylon on nylon" or "nylon on metal"...

so the question is: is this a case where the "don't lube rule" doesn't apply?

* side note: i hope i don't live to regret saying this, but these are SO much easier to deal with than a decagon reel...

@pin-it...

thanks! what's a good source for the superlube aerosol? i only have a tube...

and i like the idea of the cardboard workbench...

4 sets of score reels would REALLY try my patience... i think i'll stick to single players...

one down, 3 to go... i cheated and used the lube in the tube VERY lightly...

first score reel cleaned up good... got the last dirt off it that shows in the pics... parts too...

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@pin-it... cool, thanks... a little saturday morning shopping while having coffee...

@bert... see what happens when you go out of town? stashyboy posted a link to this one in the "em's on ebay" thread... after a few pm's with him to make sure i wasn't gonna regret buying it, i popped the ebay guy an offer and he took it... it was down in newark, right next to the university of delaware campus, so only about an hour away...

my eyes are still peeled for "projects" for us though... something will pop up to make up for that deal we recently missed out on...

seller had bought it because he wanted a pin... he did enough research to know what to use on the pf (he had made an effort to clean it with novus), and he put new rubbers on it, but gave up when he couldn't get it to run (score motor runs forever)... judging from the way the inside looks, he didn't get very far, as i found no fingerprints in the thick layer of grime that is covering everything in there... i figure i'll just go through it and take apart/clean everything, and hopefully whatever the problems are will go away as a function of cleaning and fixing obvious issues...

side note 1: i thought the "jacks open" that i finally finished was dirty inside when i got it, but this one makes that one look clean... tying together an earlier post about the dust, stashy's response about it being fine metal/carbon dust, and that i am finding so many metal coil sleeves that are shot, i'm "guessing" that the metal sleeves contributed mightily to the grunge... most of it just dusts right off, but in places that were "lubed" with machine oil (like the score reels were) it stuck... caught a bit of a break there though, because while the entire "guts" of the score reel mechs were covered with a pretty thick layer of "gunk" (including the mounts) from where the oil splashed when the reels spun, the faces of the reels only got some oil on them in a couple places, so they cleaned up well without having to take a chance of rubbing off the numbers...

side note 2: why do people want to move these things without taking off the legs and head? when i was picking it up, i started to take the legs off, he said "why are you doing that? i just moved it in one piece."...