I connected up with fellow Pinsider jimw917 and got his Monte Carlo.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-bally-monte-carlo-project

One condition of the sale is that I post lots of pictures as I attempt to restore it, so here we go in this thread to document the restoration. Hopefully I will not let him down and I will provide entertainment along the way for everyone. This will be my first real attempt, so any inputs or criticisms of my ongoing work are always greatly appreciated. After I started working on Bon Voyage and then reading about all of the different restorations people have done, I got interested in the idea of really digging into one. There is no goal to make money or anything like that, this is all a fun hobby for me to work on in my spare time.

This machine is a good fit for me because it is a similar vintage as the first pinball machine I bought, which was the Bon Voyage. The Bon Voyage was all working and in good overall shape having been restored or shopped by someone previously, whereas this one needs some work. But I learned a lot poking around the Bon Voyage and it should help out quite a bit with the Monte Carlo, which has similar mechanics (but is a 4-player instead of 1-player).

Bon Voyage finds a friend:

The backglass is very good, it looks just about perfect from the front. It has some minor flaking on the very bottom in the back.

backglass 1.jpg
backglass-back-2-small.jpg

The cabinet paint is pretty good overall. There is a lot of wear around the flipper areas.
cabinet-right.jpg

The mechanics mostly seem to work after some manual testing. But everything is pretty dirty and grimy inside, there are a few wires suspiciously hanging loose, and all of the steppers are definitely sticky.

relay-board-1-small.jpg

The playfield has some issues. Its got planking, worn areas, a chewed up ball hole in the middle, etc. But all (or almost all) of the pieces are there.

playfield-1-small.jpg

My strategy is something like this:

1. Clean everything up (vacuum, etc.)
2. Check all the relays and clean switches.
3. Clean all the steppers.
4. Fix up all the loose wires.
5. Then, check all of the mechanical operations, and fix whatever needs fixing.
6. After everything is mechanically working, I will figure out how to attack the playfield.
7. Cabinet painting somewhere along the way.

Here goes nothing, wish me luck and I am open for any advice or tips.

Thanks for this advice already!

Wayout, I think its a good idea. I will go through and check all the operations and then directly fix what doesn't work first. So it will change slightly.

1. Clean everything up (vacuum, etc.)
2. Check all of the mechanical operations, and fix whatever needs fixing.
3. Check all the relays and clean switches.
4. Clean all the steppers.
5. Fix up all the loose wires.
6. After everything is mechanically working, I will figure out how to attack the playfield.
7. Cabinet painting somewhere along the way.

Schudel, I am sure to have some questions, too bad you are selling yours. From what I have read, this isn't a particularly popular machine, but that's OK because my main goal is to learn from it. I have the schematic, and I am pretty familiar with a lot of it already. Since I got the Bon Voyage I have spent a lot of time going through that schematic, attempting to understand how everything works, and this one is pretty similar. For example, it has the same tilt delay relay. But the MC does have a lot more in it than the BV, with the 4 players and such. It looks like it will be a challenge.

OK, stay tuned, there will be some stuff coming soon. I have had to do a lot of work on it and I have to go through it all so I can make some posts here. This one has quite a few problems with the mechanics. I have fixed a number of them, and still have some I haven't figured out yet.

CLEANING AND STARTING UP

Here we go with the Monte Carlo restore. Unlike my first pinball which was the Bon Voyage, this one was definitely not in working order, which is as I expected since it was sold that way. As I am getting into it, I am seeing that it is going to take some time to unravel everything. There are a lot of things that are a mess, often in odd ways as you will see. It is going to take some time since I only can work on this in my spare time. I look at some of the restoration projects here and I can't figure out how you guys can get so much done in such short times (assuming you have to work for a living too, have a family, other projects, etc).

The good thing is that I spent a lot of time working with the Bon Voyage, trying to figure out how it all works, and that is paying off here since the MC is very similar. The main difference is that MC is 4-player and BV is 1-player. So far, I have been able to fix various things without delving into the schematic just yet. Presumably this is how it goes with EM repair in general, after you get experience with it, you will naturally know how to fix things.

The first thing was to clean things up as best as possible. The starting point was pretty messy - lots of dirt, leaves, cigarette butts, various screws and washers laying around, etc. I got that cleaned and vacuumed, and happily I found the missing upper gate connector wire laying down in the bottom of the cabinet.
gate upper connector wire.jpg

I made a quick attempt to connect this back up, but darned if I can get it into position, even using the lower gate as a reference. It should connect to the relay on the bottom of the playfield and then to the gate, but I can't get it into position so it will clip on both ends. I set it aside and will address that later after more pressing problems are fixed. If anyone has any hints on putting that into place I would like to know.

I had done a bit of preliminary testing of the functions, but things deteriorated pretty quickly. So for the next step, I cleaned all of the stepper units. There are 5 main ones - the match, ball count, player control, coin, and credit units. I tested these by moving the solenoid plungers, and they all were definitely pretty gummed up. The cleaning was nothing magical - just cleaned the contact plate with alcohol, sanded the contacts a little bit with fine grit, then applied a super-thin layer of Teflon lube. This put the machine in a much better mood, and now it is able to start up and reset pretty reliably. Of the score motors seem to be doing pretty well as the score reset works good.

Next up I found that the outhole kicker was a mess. The coil was out and laying loose. Closer inspection showed that the coil stop bracket was completely gone. The 2 screws that were holding it in were sheared off.
outhole solenoid broken sm.jpg

I ordered a new coil stop from PBR (not cheap - $5 I think), but then got distracted when I started to disassemble things to fix that. I decided the lower apron and the various metal chutes needed to be cleaned. So out all of those came, for cleaning.

apron bottom lanes original sm.jpg

Here are some of those parts, cleaned up, done with the 3M pad on a drill.

lockbar metal parts cleaned.jpg
lockbar metal parts cleaned 3M pad sm.jpg

OUTHOLE SOLENOID AND VARIOUS REPAIRS

Here is the outhole solenoid kicker all reassembled with a new coil stop. It feels much happier now and everything works as it should.

outhole solenoid fixed sm.jpg

As I was testing I quickly found that the outhole switch wasn't working as expected. It wasn't to hard to figure out why. It was an unholy mess. Just all bent to heck in all sorts of directions. I don't know why someone would mangle this to such a degree, but unfortunately this is a theme that will repeat elsewhere in this machine.
outhole switch original sm.jpg

I was able to get the switch blades bent so that it works as it should, but it was so mangled it still looks pretty ugly. I may have to consider changing that whole switch assembly.

For the next step, I started up the game for one player, and started testing the playfield.

FIXED - Stuck 10 point switch. First up - something sticking and driving the 10-point chime crazy. This taught me the lesson of being slow and methodical when testing, rather than just rapidly hitting things willy-nilly. I was testing the 10-point switches and I had to figure out which one was bad. I shut it down and restarted, and went through it more carefully. Then, it was easy to find that the problem was in the lower left kickout bumper. Inspection underneath and comparison to the one on the other side showed that a switch needed adjustment. Done.

FIXED - Stuck down rollover buttons #1, 2, 7. The top of the playfield has all of these buttons that the ball rolls over to light up the numbers. Turns out, these are just basically riding on the switch blade underneath. I got these released from below, and they all seem to function as they should.
buttons rollover sm.jpg

FIXED - no 100 chime. All of the 100 targets advanced the 100 score reel as expected but there were no chimes. I checked the chime and everything seemed in order. I noted the color of the wire to the chime solenoid, then had a look at the 100 relay in the backbox. It was easy to find the switch with the same color wire, and it was also easy to see that the same switch had a much wider gap than the same position on the 10 or 1000 relay. By manually operating the relay, it was also easy to see that the switch wasn't closing when the relay activated. Finally a quick short of that switch immediately rang the chime. Therefore, a quick switch adjustment and this is fixed. If only everything were so easy.

NEEDS WORK - bottom gate. The top gate relay tested fine (activated by a mushroom bumper), although it doesn't actually open the gate because I haven't installed the wire yet as described above. When I tried the bottom gate, I was treated to a horrendous and grumpy buzzing noise. It seems the relay was not activating the gate wire in a friendly way. When I loosened up the assembly, the relay worked fine, off and on. So, somehow the positioning of the lower gate wire is not good either. Later I have to sort out how to get these 2 wires properly installed so they work as they should (pics will come). Again, any hints accepted.

Further testing of the playfield seemed to indicate that -almost- everything functions as it should. This includes all the targets, rollovers, the 2 ball kickouts, etc.

NEEDS FIXING - #7 Trip Relay. The "7" rollover lites up the 7 as it should, but there is no chime as with all the other numbers. After a bit of poking around, it was obvious that the problem is with the 7 trip replay. It is not locking down as low as all of the other trip relays. It is easy to test - just a slight push down and everything works as it should (switches are then being closed as they should). This isn't a great picture, but maybe you can see the problem is that the blade at the very bottom of the switch stack is installed upside down compared to all of the other relays. Obviously in this position it doesn't pull things down far enough when the relay is activated. It looks like this means I will need to pull that switch stack apart so I can get at that bottom blade and reverse it. I am not looking forward to that task, it looks like something that could really be botched.

relay trip 7 bad stack.jpg

The next phase is to test with more than one player. Here there are multiple problems which will be my next step.

NEEDS FIXING - multiplayer.

- It does seem to set up properly for 1, 2, 3, or 4 players when the credit button is pressed accordingly.

- But it never advances past player 1. I haven't figured out if this has to do with the player unit or the coin unit.

- Player up lite does not lite. This might be a clue that relates to the above problem.

- Ball in play lites do not lite. Not sure if this is related to the above problem.

ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK - RETURN OF RUST

Well, darn. I went to work on a bunch of that metal, and was really proud at how clean and shiny everything came out. Like this:

lockbar metal parts cleaned 2 sm.jpg

Not only did I clean and buff that, I also did actually apply a layer of paste wax.

Now a few days later, it looks like this:

lockbar metal parts return of rust sm.jpg

Just a few days, and it is almost covered in rust! I guess the solution it to clean this up with Evaporust again, and then apply a coat of sealant. I guess Krylon Crystal Clear is the stuff to use???

Thanks, I'll work on that relay and see what I can do. I knew it is the trip bank, did I call it the score motor somewhere? I can't see where I did that, and I want to make sure I correct it.

I've tried bending that bottom piece but with no luck so far. I might try bending it a bit more before I try to disassemble it. It is strange that that one trip relay is different than all the others. It seems the only way that is possible is if someone intentionally took that switch stack apart and then put it back together wrong. This is one of a number of strange things I have found so far.

As far as the rust - maybe it is because we are somewhat close to the coast? I don't know, I have read about others who have had no problems with rust, yet here it was an immediate problem. I have to sort this out before I start going crazy buffing on other metal parts. I did find the threads where this is discussed, and it looks like these are the 2 recommended solutions/ I'll probably go with the Everbrite ProtectaClear as it is simpler and less expensive. I don't think I have to go too overboard here, just get it clear coated to keep the rust off.

https://www.everbritecoatings.com/cart/protectaclear-coating-only-c-7.html

http://www.por15.com/GLISTEN-PC_p_45.html

EVERYTHING WORKS MECHANICALLY

I got all of the functions of the machine in full working order. It was a good experience as far as working on the machine. I don't know the history of this machine, but for sure it was sitting in an iffy environment, with all the crud and dust that was in there. Most of the things I fixed I would guess are normal for an old machine that has sat for a while - things like switches slightly out of alignment and such. But other things I found seemed odd - almost impossible unless someone intentionally decided to do something weird. Like the mangled outhole switch. I also found a really mangled-up 100,000 point trip relay on one of the score motors, all of the blades were out of the stack and bent at all odd angles.

Another example of that was the #7 trip replay that I discussed above. I don't know why someone would put than bottom piece in there upside down. It was brutal and nerve-racking, but I got it fixed by undoing that switch stack, keeping the long screws in to hold everything together, then getting hold of that bottom piece, taking it out from the stack, flipping it over, and then getting it all back together. I'm still not sure how I managed to do it, but once it was done, that relay worked perfectly.

trip motor relay 7 fixed.jpg

Next I looked at the lower ball gate relay that was buzzing, and I came to the conclusion that the connector wire had to be on there wrong. It seemed most logical that it should be fitted square onto the connector tab hole, like the photo shown below, rather than around on one side at an angle. I had to disassemble everything and then reassemble it to get it all together right, and sure enough the gate opening and closing worked like a treat after that. Then, I was able to put the top one back together and it worked perfectly also. I was trying to copy the bottom gate before when working on the top one and going crazy, because I assumed the bottom one was set up correctly, and that was a bad assumption.

gate lower connector wire installed on relay.jpg

Next was to figure out why the Ball in Play and Player Up lights were not lit. That was easy to trace on the schematic, right to a switch on the Game Over relay that just needed some adjusting.

I got everything working all the way through for a single player, but it would not ever advance to the next player for a multiplayer game. I uses a long jumper to start cutting off parts of that circuit, and sure enough everything worked, which meant that the stepper units were working fine. I kept moving the jumper until the only thing left as the 4B score motor switch. I really didn't want it to be that switch because it is buried in the bottom right in the middle of all of the score motor switches. But once it was narrowed down, it was easy to confirm that is where the problem was - I just got it going, then gave the #4 stack an extra push with my finger as the score motor rotated. Sure enough, it jumped to the next player. So the 4B switch had to be adjusted. It wasn't easy to get in there and do it, but eventually I was able to do it, and then everything worked great.

One thing I learned is that if you want to test this machine properly, you need to let the ball fall into the outhole and sit there until the machine is ready to kick it out. Just simulating that by momentarily closing the outhole switch won't work. This is because there is some timing that needs to go on for the bonus scoring, and it depends on the outhole switch being closed until everything is done.

Finally, here is another one of those weird things I came across while changing some lamps. This picture didn't focus right, but you should be able to see the wood screw wedged into the round lamp opening in the bottom of the playfield. How on earth could that get there? It couldn't possibly go in there by accident, someone had to put it there, but why??

mystery screw in lamp hole.jpg

PLAYFIELD POSTS - REQUEST FOR HELP

Can some of you Monte Carlo owners help me out by having a look at some of your playfield posts? There are two sizes of white posts that are used, the 1-3/16" versions which I will call the tall (or long) ones, and the 1" version which I will call the short ones. It looks like in the past someone took all the posts off and then was somewhat haphazard as far as getting them all back on. Some things just don't look right. There is no reference that I know of to tell me which sizes were originally used where, so I have to guess or get a close look at another machine.

First, for the 2 plastics that are near the flippers - the right one has all tall posts in it, and the left one has all short posts in it. It seems that they should be the same?

Right side - all tall posts.
flipper plastic right all tall posts.jpg

Left side - all short posts.
flipper plastic left all short posts.jpg

The round plastic above the middle outhole has 2 short posts and 1 long one, I am pretty sure they should all be the same. I'm not sure if they should be the short ones or tall ones though.

outhole plastic 2 short 1 long post.jpg

This 5-chip plastic on the left side has all tall posts, but it doesn't seem to fit right. The metal bell post on the plastic is dangling in the air. I think at least some of these should be short ones.
5-chip plastic all tall posts.jpg

The 4-chip plastic at the upper left as 2 tall posts and 1 short post. Its kind of hard to tell from the picture, but the short post is under the white chip, and it is causing the whole thing to lean downward to the right. It looks awkward, I don't think it should be this way?

4-chip plastic 2 long posts 1 short post.jpg

Finally, can you confirm if these 2 danglers in the middle of the playfield should be short posts as shown, or tall ones?
upper playfield posts both short.jpg

My hope is to do some work on the playfield to get it looking better. I am approaching the point where I will have to decide what to do about the playfield. Stay tuned.

Yes, good advice, thanks. I have been working my way through the playfield a bit at a time, cleaning and adjusting everything as I go. It seems that at one time someone took all of the posts off, then when it came time to put them back on, just randomly mixed up the talls and shorts with no logic whatsoever. Some of the plastics are installed backwards also.

Regarding the center hole plastic, yes, it is in pretty nice shape. Not sure if it might have been replaced at one time.

More pics will come when I get further progress.

SOME MONTE CARLO DOCS

Here are some of my custom-made docs for the Monte Carlo, made up while waiting for some parts.

Playfield Chart updated with a vector drawing for better resolution.

This one shows the plastics.
Monte Carlo Playfield Chart Plastics.pdf

Cabinet cleaning 101

I don't know how some of you guys get so much restoration work done in such a short time. With work and other obligations cutting into my hobby time, it seems like it takes forever for me to get stuff done.

First of all, stating the obvious, this stuff is the best $1.00 you can spend for pinball work.

Mean Green.jpg

When I first saw the Monte Carlo I thought maybe the cabinet was going to take some work. But it is really in pretty good shape, especially after going over it completely with the Mean Green. This before and after picture doesn't really do it justice, I think it looked a lot worse to start with and a lot better afterward. Of course all sorts of nasty-looking gunk came of on the paper towel. I just kept at it until it was clean.

left side cleaning.jpg

All of the cabinet looks pretty nice after cleaning. The only real trouble spot is just in front of the flipper buttons where the yellow paint is worn away on both sides. I will have to figure out something for that situation.

LEFT FLIPPER is sad and burned

When it came time to check out the flippers, it didn't take long to figure out the left one had problems. The small post that opens the EOS switch was missing. Probably for quite a long time considering how burned the coil is from having to carry the high current load constantly. The funny thing is, that flipper really worked strong, as did the other one.

flipper left missing EOS switch post small.jpg

I had an extra solenoid plunger with the post left over from a rebuild so I decided to put that in for now. That got both flippers working well, and later I can decide if I want to go for a flipper rebuild kit, and probably a new coil for the left one.

flipper left temp replaced plunger small.jpg

PLAYFIELD RUBBERS POSTS AND SCREWS

Next up I got all of the rubbers replaced, all of the post sorted out, and new screws all the way around. That put the playfield in full working order for some testing. Also got the playfield cleaned up and wiped with naphtha, so it probably looks about as good as it can look for now.

playfield new rubbers small.jpg

This document shows all of the posts as I finally set them up, along with all of the screws and the Boltdepot part numbers.Monte Carlo Playfield Chart Posts.pdf

BUT MORE BROKEN STUFF

After I inspected everything I thought I had it all working, but after some testing I realized that was some wishful thinking.

TILT - there is no tilt at all. It is a pretty simple circuit. The pendulum and the rolling ball seem to be wired correctly and working correctly. In this machine the Tilt relay is a trip relay and it is the last one in the reset bank, way in the back. Those trip relay coils are underneath the switch stacks and not accessible, so that is going to take some work to try to get at that and see what is going on with the coil.

BONUS - As I played some games, it didn't seem the bonus was tallying up right after a ball drain. A look at the schematic and a visual inspection found that problem easily enough - the 3-switch stack on the 6-10 Bonus trip relay is missing the actuator. The top leaf spring that holds it in place is snapped off. This is a typical example of some of the abuse this machine took on its internal parts somewhere along the line.

Bonus 6-10 trip relay missing actuator sm.jpg

Working on getting the parts from Pinball Resource, I hope they have them.

Great, that is good to know, I might need that. I have made a bunch of progress, updates will come here soon.

METAL LOCKBAR CLEANING - NO RUST THIS TIME

This is a follow-up from my post above, where I did some aggressive cleaning of metal parts (most likely removing the zinc coating) only to have it become coated with rust a few days later. This time I cleaned the metal up again and put on 2 coats of this Everbrite:

https://www.everbritecoatings.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=23&zenid=fc667344e4ce239b64f49b2da9dbc079

This seems to have done the trick, after several weeks the buffed-out metal still looks nice and shiny and no rust returned. Victory.

lockbar metal parts rust prevention sm.jpg

6-10 Bonus Trip Relay fixed

Thanks again to fellow Pinsider gottguy who fixed me up with the pieces I needed via the EM Seeking Parts thread. He sent me a used leaf spring and actuator, and these installed nicely onto the trip relay. After that fix, all of the bonus count-ups properly when the ball drains.

After some testing game play over the weekend, it looks like everything is working well as far as all functions, including for up to 4 players, except for the completely-missing Tilt function which I still have to figure out.

Bonus 6-10 trip relay actuator and leaf spring fixed.jpg

Looks the same on mine. Also, you probably will see that black and yellow "dangler wire" sticking out like in this pic. I believe this is normal too. There is an explanation for why a wire like that is there, but I forgot the details.
score motor 2 (resized).jpg