Just picked up an Indianapolis 500 from a local dealer for seems to me to be a great deal.

The bad:
The back of the backbox has some water damage and will need some work.
Missing the dot matrix display board
Has a couple burned pins on one of the driver board connectors
It trips the circuit breaker when plugged in
Typical cabinet fade on one side and the front of the machine
It is very dirty from being in storage for years
Typical mass quantity of burned out bulbs

The good:
The playfield and plastics are in great shape - a little cleaning and this baby will shine!
The "tripping the circuit breaker" problem turned out to be a melted and corroded power cord and socket at the back of the machine. Spare parts from an old PC power supply and I'm back in business!
The machine starts up and plays!
The turbo and race car motors work!
All solenoids and circuits seem to be working!
The machine included the factory "goody bags" and manuals.

I replaced all the playfield bulbs but ran out of 555 bulbs so I can't replace all the bad bulbs in the back box yet.

The right flipper is weaker that the left so I will have to look into that.

Pictures to follow.

Some pictures of my baby!

IMG_0765.jpg

IMG_0754.jpg

and from her good side (the other side is faded)...

IMG_0759.jpg

I bought it in unknown working condition for $900 from a dealer that gets machines in bulk that I bought another machine from in the past. It has water damage to the back of the back-box. The entire particle board back is swollen and falling apart and will have to be replaced someday when I can stop playing it. I got the feeling the dealer didn't want to mess with the wood working and was looking to move it.

It is missing the dot matrix controller (which I have on the way from eBay) so I don't know if the plasma dot matrix display works or not. When I got it home and plugged it in, it immediately tripped the house circuit breaker. Turned out to be a melted power cord and corroded IEC connector at the back of the machine which was a simple fix for me (just cannibalized an old PC power supply and used an old PC power cord). After fixing the power cord, it powered right up!

I think I got lucky even if it needs a new display!

Fixed my translite scratches with a Sharpie Paint Pen. Worked awesome! See the results and pictures here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/translite-repair#post-1351636

Thanks for the generous offer! Unfortunately (or fortunately considering the weather ), I am in the Atlanta area.

My dot matrix controller board is due to arrive in the mail today! Dang mailman can't get here fast enough!

I cleaned and waxed (2 coats) the playfield last night and it looks awesome! I took the slings and side ball guides out which made cleaning the side lanes a piece of cake. I got all the ball tracks and dirt off with just Novus 2.

Novus 2 worked easily to get the dirt off the face of the targets too. The sides of the targets are still dirty but I will go at them later with a q-tip or drop them through the bottom of the PF for a thorough cleaning and replacement of the foam backing pads.

The whole PF shines like glass with the exception of the mylar on the upper playfield and a couple pie shaped areas just above the flippers. I'm sure I could get the shine back near the flippers with some work but it really isn't noticeable and I would rather not wear down the Diamond Plate.

Controller came in and the display IS ALIVE! The DMD is a little dark on the lower left and right but is workable.

IMG_0870_3_5_1.JPG

Nice, clean playfield shots... you can see the ball wear in the diamond plate in this picture. It isn't noticeable without the camera flash and glass on the machine.

IMG_0854_1_5_1.JPG
IMG_0859_2_5_1.JPG

Next up is hooking up a Polk subwoofer I have...

hehehe! I am from the Midwest originally!

markmon here on Pinside had a local artist repaint his I500 and it looked awesome. Not sure how you would find someone to do that...

I saw another person that took digital pictures of the side, retouched the photos in Photoshop and had car wrap printed to replace the decals. I would love to see if that person is willing to share their files so I could print my own decals. Even if I can't get his files, I may have my daughter do the same for mine as she is a Photoshop genius.

I hooked up the Polk subwoofer I have and all I can say is meh. The cabinet speaker is pretty decent for the volumes I play at. I turned up the volume and it sounded pretty awesome so I suspect that's why people love this add-on.

You do know that the machine originally comes with a decal on the sides, that is not paint so putting a new decal on is the way the factory would have done it...

I was thinking this AM that changing the car on the cabinet side are to my favorite Indy driver would be cool too! I have been going to the Indy 500 for the last 30 years. I think I have missed only 2 in that time. Not much of a Sneva fan

Wow, maybe we should meet up in May for some pinball somewhere!

hehehe, Rick Mears owned the Brickyard! Too bad he had to call it quits. My favorite is Emerson Fittipaldi. A neon red, 1989 Chevy powered Marlboro Penske on the side of mine would be cool! You can see Rick Mears' 1991 Chevy Penske in the background when he won from the pole.

Indy500winningcar1989.JPG

Picture from here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indy500winningcar1989.JPG

Spin and win baby! That was my first race! Loved the Miller American car!

Back to Pinball....

Bad news... my machine reset in the middle of a game tonight. Walked away to watch some football and came back a couple hours later, started a game and did the double flipper test and it reset again! I've played 200+ games since I got the machine a week ago and never one reset. Now I have 2 in a row... I looked through the Pin Wiki reset test procedure and measured the 5V regulated and get 5.05 volts on the driver board test point and on the CPU filter cap so that's good. Inspected and reseated J101, J102, and J103 and other power connectors on other boards. Played 10 more games and hit both flippers repeatedly through the games and no resets. I have some new Molex connectors and headers on order. I needed some anyway to fix the burned GI connector. It gets hot to the touch so I only play 30 minutes at a time so it doesn't get too hot.

I moved the subwoofer from under the machine to between my I500 and F14 and raised the volume on the I500 a couple clicks and it sounds much better! It adds just that little bit of authority on the low end.

Reset Issue update:

When I went through the PinWiKi for WPC resets, in my hubris to get to the issue that I KNEW it was (bad IDC connectors), I skipped over step 4.8.6 which is check the flipper diodes. http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#Missing_diodes.2C_open_diodes.2C_or_cold_solder_joints_at_the_Flipper_coils

Lookie what I found when replacing some GI bulbs...

Did a redneck diode replacement and time will tell if this fixes it! I will do a proper repair (thread the leads through the grommets, etc.) when I rebuild the flippers in the coming weeks. New connectors have not arrived yet so I didn't waste any time on my shotgun fix, thankfully...

IMG_08842.jpg

The diode wasn't it, got another reset this afternoon.

Interesting tidbit on the reset issue... I left the machine on all evening and played it several times throughout the night and not 1 reset. It appears that the resets happen more when the machine is cold. I'm going to add a thermistor to my next GPE order and give that a shot....

Reset update -

Installed the thermistor and still had 4.92V on the 5V regulated supply when the machine was cold. I re-flowed the 5V regulator and bridge rectifier pins when replacing a burned GI header and now I get 5.05 V when cold. Not sure if removing the board and resetting all the connectors and ground screws raised the voltage or if re-flowing the pins did it. Time will tell if this will resolve my reset issues.

Light up targets -

One of my lightup targets was randomly firing when the machine was cold. Thought it was related to the thermistor but swapping it out did not solve this. All it needed was a simple cleaning. See the whole story here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/i500-opto-target-registering-randomly

All my targets were good, thankfully!

I just installed a 4F memory capacitor so I could get rid of the batteries on the CPU board. See this thread for more info.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/memory-capacitor-fans#post-1392515

Had another reset today so the saga continues... They are not happening when first turned on any more so I will go back to the PinWiki to continue troubleshooting.

Also today I rebuilt the high voltage section of my dot matrix controller board that was getting very hot and blowing fuses. See the details here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/wpc-dot-matrix-controller-heat-and-voltage-question#post-1392560

Update one the memory capacitor - testing indicates that a 4F cap (a relatively large memory capacitor) in this machine will only yield a 3-4 day backup so stick with remote battery solutions.

Resets seem to have gone away since rebuilding the HV section of the DMD controller. Could have been the high voltage section (that was blowing 3/8 and even 1/2 amp fuses) was drawing so much power that it drew down other voltages from the transformer... time will tell...

Still working on getting GI dimming working. You can follow my progress here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gi-dimming-on-indy-500-i500

Thanks! I'm really loving this game!

Update - I figured out the GI dimming problem with the help of the people on Pinside and PinWiki! See the whole story here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gi-dimming-on-indy-500-i500

The problem with GI dimming ended up being a defective BR2 which no doubt contributed to the reset problem. I suspect this will fix the reset problems too!

Now I can focus on learning how to play this thing better! It is really kicking my butt!