Well we joined the club yesterday!
There was an ad on Craigslist 4 hours away for a Comet for $150. My wife Chrissi jumped on it, and sent the seller a few messages saying that we were interested. The poor guy got inundated with calls and texts, and asked Chrissi if he was selling it too low.... thus all the calls. A back and forth went on for a while, and the seller agreed to sell it to us at a price where we'd both be happy.
2 days later I drove the 4 hours to pick it up at the seller's house. Apparently he'd been given this from another family member a year ago, and didn't know much of this machine's history. A short time after he got it one of the flippers broke, along with the drop target so he set it in the garage, and forgot about it.
So I got home late last night with it, and did a quick triage on it to see what it needed, and ordered some parts.
It's a complete machine that's actually in pretty good shape. The cabinet is nice, but has a few bumps and scrapes.
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Inside all of the boards look clean, as does the wiring.
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The backglass looks awesome!
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Here's why the flipper didn't work.
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And why the drop target didn't reset..
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The rest of the underside of the playfield looks nice!
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As does inside the cabinet..
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It had a free play button installed some time in it's past.
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It was removed, and set on free play. (Ya think they could've used a bigger F'in button???)
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The playfield is a little rough. Planking and ballswirls galore!
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I was able to remove some of it, but started removing artwork so I stopped. A little buffing with some compound, and I was able to get a shine on it.
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So.... I think I'm just going to make this a player's machine. Just shop it out, and make it play great. In the future we're thinking about getting a hardtop for it, and some new ramps, but for now we're just going to enjoy it.
When the parts get here in a few days I'll update the progress here.
When this is done it'll look great next to our Cyclone!
-Paul