Started on the hunt for a TZ and managed to succeed today. LONG day. Left the house at 615 AM. Picked up a traveling buddy and drove out around 2.5 ours past Allentown to get the game. Nice condition. Needs a good shop job, but runs and plays and has lived with the same home since approx 1998.

After we humped it up from the basement and into the truck, drove 2 hours to Lakewood and visited the JJP open house. Stuck around there for a bit. Then stopped home. Unloaded TZ. Moved BSD up and out. Drove half an hour and delivered BSD to its new location, then finally home. I'm pooped!

Game won't likely land on legs until tomorrow....

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Meh

Yeah...The last one was nice. This one is also going to be nice. Debating if I want to shop it and play it or potentially go nuts and get a new cabinet and playfield...I was eyeing the Mirco's at JJP's today.

The front of the cabinet had a "custom" lock bar drilled into it. Besides that, it's in really nice shape.

It's been a long time since I saw a machine with EVERY board original matching numbers. It's got almost no fade.

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Scoops are all in really nice shape. Playfield has the usual nastiness.

Subways...well, always fun to see how black they can really turn....

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The owner actually admitted it had not been cleaned in at least a decade. I appreciated that honesty. I was floored when he actually said he had changed the batteries. I was expecting the "what, there are batteries in there?" response.
Granted the ones in there expired in 2010, but they had not leaked at all, so made me a happy gecko!

Unfortunately the leg plates had stripped holes, but that's fine..replaced them before...

I just couldn't leave well enough alone. I have so many other things to do, but I had to at least make a nice clean spot...

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I'm always on the hunt, so you never know!

There is a very interesting story...I will share that later

OK folks...so here's the story on this one. I didn't even notice this until we had loaded the machine up...
At some point in it's life on location, someone hit this machine with a crowbar. Ripped through the front of the cabinet. This is actually touched up. So someone actually went to the time and effort to do a pretty darn good touchup. All done by hand, even tried to put the speckle stars in. Pretty impressive.

That said, I may leave it as-is as a machine with a war story..or who knows...

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I'm just not sure how to react to that

The gecko is a good driver...except that time a few years back when I got t-boned by a landscaping truck...

Nah. I thought about it, but if anything I will need to re-decal the entire cabinet..

Unfortunately the next gen decals have kind of a matte finish on them, but the originals are gloss. I did this on my last one and from 5' away it looked great, but closer inspection showed the different texture. I won't go through the effort of repairing and redoing the front of the cabinet just to have it less than perfect...so all or nothing on this!

Something really really helpful about having a dolly...what's missing in this picture?

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This machine has actually been sitting with the dolly underneath "just in case" since it came home.
Each back leg plate had issues and only one bolt each would thread in, and that didn't give me a really warm fuzzy.

One plate had a totally stripped hole and the other...well, here's a picture of when I pulled it off....

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Already replaced both plates.

Well folks, time to bring this one back to life.

It's been semi-dormant as I've been playing with my Medieval lately. Now that it's almost done, here's what we have missed on this...

Cabinet was stripped and given to Eric Bundy to replace his termite ridden one.
I did not include any kittens with the deal.

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Once the cabinet was gone, here is what the game was reduced to.

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New cabinet has been ordered and just waiting for it to come.

I somehow went from planning a shop job to going nuts on this.
So once I made the decision to get a new cabinet, well, it was time to start accumulating parts.
I picked up a new set of playfield rails from taylorVA at York.
Already picked up a new coin door and lockdown receiver. But what to do with the playfield...
The original playfield was in fantastic shape. But there is something about a clearcoated playfield that I love. So I was debating about sending mine out...

But this happened to come up. New Mirco set. Prepped for the third magnet. Which I would never have done on my own, but since it's already ready...

Also picked up the third magnet kit.

And a NOS set of plastics.

Quite the pile of parts.

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Playfield has been hanging out on the rotisserie waiting for me to get Medieval squared away.

Guess the pawprints tell the story of who has been visiting...

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Took a break from Medieval, so tonight was teardown.
Not sure if it's just because I've done this a few times, but this went pretty quickly. Well for me, quickly. Took a few hours.

Mini playfield...
Out.

Ramp...
Out. And being inspected.

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More stuff...out out out!

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So here's where I'm stopping for tonight.
All of the major topside stuff is out. Ball guides will be next. Posts are always last for me.

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It's like exposing tan lines...

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This was one REALLY broken slot machine plastic!

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Not the worst I've seen, but one of the nastier subways...

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Lots of headway last night. Pretty much everything on the topside is done. Just need to pull the posts and drop the switches. Then onto the bottom. Then onto the bottom. Man I hate the bottom side of these things. Always makes me think of a spaghetti monster

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Felt like getting a little bit done last night...
Pulled off all of the boards from the bottom. Dirty boys!

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Also pulled one of the wiring harnesses. Not sure if I'm going to remove the others separately, but this one was just ready, so off it came!

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It amazes me...with the boards removed, some of the wiring removed, and a few of the other bits and mechs pulled, it doesn't even look like I made a dent in this thing....

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