A buddy of mine dropped me a line the other day about two pins (PinBot and Black Knight) that had popped up about 4 hours from me and 2 and change from him. The backstory from the son who was selling them was that his mom was a huge pinhead and his dad was an electrical engineer and they had been in the house since he was a kid. He was moving and just wanted the games gone.

The pins seemed like they had a ton of potential. I was desperate to get out of town and hit the shore and my buddy had a bad shoulder and would need help with the pin he wanted to grab so it seemed like a fun adventure. That was until I woke up at 0400 the morning of and realized we were experiencing what could be only described as a monsoon. I hit the road at 0530 and drove two plus hours to meet my buddy in NH. The roads were terrible, the rain would switch between normal to massive downpour. It didn't change much from NH to ME.

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When we got to the seller's house we were taken to the basement. We were shown the PinBot first, that booted and looked solid minus a few broken plastics. Then we were taken to the backroom where the gimp, er Black Knight was kept. The game was a hot mess, we removed the BG and paint literally started raining down off of it. Powered it on and it was deader than Tom Petty. Looked over the PF and while the guy understood electrical maintenance had never heard of wax. In addition there were tons of broken plastics

Me being me, I still bought the train wreck, albeit at a discounted price. I don't plan to go crazy on this one, just get it looking nice and playing right.

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We spent the next hour or so breaking down the pins and walking them about 400 yards through a major downpour and the wet grass to the van. When all was said and done we were drenched, but we got a couple of sweet arse pins and had lunch plans for the Great Lost Bear in Portland, ME. If in town, I recommend the All Might Cheesus, a burger sandwiched between two grilled cheese sandwiches.
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My favorite parts about these pickups are the backstories of the machines, the people you meet and the adventures along the way-like this Tramp House in Richmond, NH. When all was said and done it was a fifteen hour day, the bulk majority driving through terrible conditions. The sun did finally manage to come out after we unloaded my buddy's game at his place.
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Like I said, I love the backstories of the sellers and machines. This guy kept binders filled with the game manuals and schematics as well as repair logs etc. It turns out het had bought the BK in 1987. This game has been home use for 31 years. I just wish it had been a more caring and loving and wax filled home.
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It amazes me that a guy that could research so much and have all of these manuals and everything would not have heard that waxing was an essential maintenance. This poor PF. This is a great example of why "Home Use Blah, Blah, Blah) means sh*t.
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The cab has the typical basement funk happening and today is bright and sunny so it was a good day to defunk the knight.

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Today was also the first day I could seriously look over the cab. Hmmmmm I was told this guy was an electrical engineer. Something is not adding up. I mean, shouldn't electrical engineers know about batteries...the hot mess gets hotter and messier.
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I was told that one of the magnets had stopped working. Hmmmm, this and that blown out transistor could have something to do with it.

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I'm starting to doubt the electrical engineer story. What is this world coming to if we can't trust guys on the interwebs claiming to be the kids of electrical engineers?

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Some more questionable repairs that look like they were done by someone other than an electrical engineer.

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That's pretty much all for today. I am letting that stinky knight sit outside a bit more and then I shall move it inside. Tomorrow I will start to address some of these wiring hacks and maybe try to get it to boot. After that it will be fun times with some vinegar to see if we can salvage this PCB.

I don't plan to go too crazy with this one. I would like to get some new plastics and a better BG and given the news that CPR announced yesterday this seems likely. Not sure about the PF yet, after my Whirlwind CPR experience I don' think I would go repro PF again. That being said, it may be a fun one to send out to just have the inserts fixed and PF cleared.

I was thinking the same thing! I don't mind the swaps, but I don't think I will ever go repro again.

This guy was an electrical engineer so a few steps above your average electrician.

Yeah, it seems that PF run was plagued with issues. I see so many folks jumping ship and listing theirs. The stories I have read from others who have finished are just as bad.

It's good to know that Micro will be running some PF's. It's definitely not a must, but definitely something I would consider depending on how much it costs to get this up and running.

Yeah, I can't complain. My buddy got a pretty decent PinBot that should clean up very nicely and I got this Knight for cheap enough that I have a lot of room to work with.

I'm pretty good with many aspects of restoration, the one thing that I am absolutely terrible with is painting and drawing. I don't have that brain to hand connection. I actually failed studio art a couple of times in high school, only passing b/c it was a graduation requirement and the teacher took pity. That being said, I do believe you are correct that this should be an easy one to clean up.

I did some light cleanup yesterday, and agree that this should come out nicely. I was just amazed the level of dirt on this PF. It looks almost as if it was stored w/o glass for a period, but given the difficulty we had removing the glass and the buildup on that it also felt like the glass had never been removed.

I don't think it was an LE, but maybe produced around the same time so crossover parts. I'll take some more photos of the switches, etc today.

Working on getting the Black Knight setup in the house today. Step one is addressing the surface rust on the legs. Everybody has their own methods, for something like this, I prefer white vinegar and a green scrubbie. It's cheap, takes about a minute or so per leg, there is little cleanup, and they come out looking great. Only downside is that you'll end up craving chips.

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I got the cab inside and vacuumed and got it up on four legs with the back box attached. I need to address this sagging light board. So far no matter what I loosen and pull the mounts don't move much. I am leaving it for another less than 100 degree day.

All in all the cab was the best part. I would say easily an 8.5/9 out of 10. In some ways this is one of the cleanest/less beat pins I have taken in. I'll add some cab pics when things are less tight in the game room.

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I was also able to give the circuit boards another look. I found another spliced wire and some questionable caps. Look at this little chubbers. I plan on rebuilding the PS this week and doing the inline fuse mod.
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Fun Fact: Sprague capacitors were made in North Adams, MA (about 40 min from me). MASS MoCA currently resides at their old factory site (the more you know).
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I have a couple of friends that are electrical engineers/physicists, we have all gotten a good laugh at these repairs. Some of them just leave me scratching my head. I mean why solder? Why not repin?

I need to deal with the cut wires on the upper PF. The yellow and white are more than likely GI, but I'm not sure why he tied in some of the stuff that he did. I am pretty well versed in System 11's, but this is my first System 7 so I got some learnin to do.

OK back at it today. First thing on the agenda was to sort out what got nuked here. Oddly enough this is the "cabinet Wiring" harness. Typically these are all of the lines that run from the body of the cab: coin door lights, flipper button, credits buttons, volume, etc.
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That being said, if you look at the bottom of the "cabinet wiring schematics" you see a two line lead from the upper playfield GI goig into pins 1 and 2 of the cabinet harness. Yo no say.
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Which totaly checks out given my cut upper PF GI.

One mystery down. Oh so many more to go.
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This could very well be true. I am slowly making my way through it. The origial story was that it was working fine except for the left magnet. Some of this wiring leads me to believe otherwise.

With the connector sorted out, I moved on to testing my power supply. First I pulled all fuses out of socket and doubled check spec and continuity. All checked out fine except for F2 (solenoids), that was blown. If you remember we had a smoked transistor (Q2) on the MPU which drives the left sling. This is more than likely the culprit of the blown fuse.

I went ahead and removed all outputs so as not to fry anything, fired up the cab and went down the checklist: 12V, 5V, HV, lamps and solenoids. Only my 12V and lamps were in spec. I have cap kits for the PS and sound board en route as well as HV and 5V rebuild kits. The cap kits should be here today, the rest of the resistors, etc sometime early next week. I also ordered some bits to modernize the MPU.

I'm pretty much going down the Clay's guide/Vid's guide checklist on these rebuilds.

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My cap kits for the PS and sound board came in yesterday as well as a replacement Q5 for the PS. I got everything swapped over. The cap kit fixed my solenoid line issue, but not my 5V line. After the cap kit it was still reading a steady 1.8 down the line. BR and Q5 tested fine, but I decided to toss the new Q5 in, anyway. Oddly enough this started to act up.

Thread here:

Tossed my old Q5 in and the voltages leveled out. Just to be safe I threw in a new BR, and that got me up to around 2V steady. The only other component on that 5V line that was not swapped out was the IC. So I ordered a new one from G-P-E today.

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While I wait on the rest of the parts for the PS I decided to try and clean up the MPU and Driver a bit. Nothing that a toothbrush and white vinegar can't clean up. FRom green to grey in about two minutes time.

I don't want to do too much to it as I haven't been able to fire with a working PS. I would prefer to start at ground zero, knowing that I haven't done any repair work and go from there. It's never a good idea to add additional variables before being able to test as it makes it hard to determine if a presenting problem was pre exiting or a result of your work.

Seriously guys, look at some of these solder joints. I guess not all electrical engineers are created equal. Oof, these board are going to need a lot of TLC. For my own sanity I may just send them out to be reflowed. I hate trying to get the points clean enough for new solder to take hold.

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He installed new female connectors on the 40, or at least it looked like he did. Hard to tell in that pic post vinegar., but there were some really shotty and burned solder points in there. One that was completely depressed.

This will be my ongoing joke mostly b/c I bought this thinking "maintained by EE should be a quick fix."

Here is what that connector looked like pre-vinegar, etc.

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No, I had missed that when I placed my last order. I was looking at .084's and didn't realize the size difference. Thanks so much for the link, I will order these up stat!

More than likely. Micro also has one coming out in October, with and without glitter.

Thanks man, I appreciated the kind words.

This is awesome advice info. Thank you for it. I actually have a buddy pulling his hair out on a similar issue with his Firepower 2. I will suggest he take a look at his connectors!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled restoration thread to bring you a new pinball crime drama: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/nerdygrrls-black-knight-adventure-takes-a-turnfloridian-grandma-scam

I got the IC in for my 5V line on my PS. Sadly getting the IC out proved to be more difficult than I though and I broke C15 the glass/ceramic capacitor. These repairs are pretty straight forward, but these boards with the solder through totes sucks. Lesson learned, don't attempt to pull chips and sockets without a good solder sucker.

At least I have the new IC installed, now we wait for a replacement capacitor. One day I shall have a working 5V line, today is just not that day.

Not a lot I can do until I get that part. I don't want to mess with too much until I can test fire and see where things stand. Well, nothing except maybe pick up a second BK project from a buddy of mine tomorrow

I am going to poach some parts off of that, and then pass it along to another local collector who is dying to do a head to toe restoration on one as well. He offered to buy this one from me, but I didn't want to part with it.

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I keep telling myself I will buy a proper station and then beer, bourbon and pins get in the way. I mean $300? That's a lot of good times right there.