Thnx yes that is a good motto!

Hi All!
Just acquired a Night Rider SS in good condition. It did not run for 20 years - hence I am up for a complete overhaul. Cabinet and playfield look great - just dirty. Seems to be complete including chimes and documentation - and the usual amount of work being required for a restore.

Nice project waiting!

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Congrats!! Great pin! I have EM and its really fun to play!!

Very pleased to be in the club finally. Picked this up from Aflacjack who was nice enough to split the shipping with me from Tennessee to New York. Going to enjoy it for a bit then start the restore with my son. Should be a fun project. I’ve never done a full restore before but after reading through RonSS posts I’m confident it will turn out great. Have my CPR playfield,pinball pimp stencils and new apron decals so far. I wish I could find a new plastic set. Reached out to CPR to see if they plan on running one. Mine are decent but would love to have a brand new set. Swapping the Playfield seemed like a daunting task but after really taking a look how things are layed out underneath the Playfield I’m pretty confident. No issues with gameplay/mechanics so that’s always a plus.

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Very pleased to be in the club finally.</blockquote

Congrats.

Never played one but would have one easily .never had an EM.

Ten drops and two spinners with those chimes, oh yeah.

How does your playfield look? I've been really wanting to purchase one. Mind posting some pictures?

All the inserts are sunk/cupped but overall it’s not terrible cosmetically. I’ll post some pics when I get home. I would be more then happy to send her you’re way if you’re interested for a small fee+shipping.

Flash71 youre going to love the project!

Congrats!

I admit RonSS has inspired me to try repairing a playfield so i would be interested in your old one so i could try that without taking my game down so please PM me and maybe we can work something out. I was initially wondering how the CPR playfield looked though? I was wondering if your happy with the art details and colors.

The CPR one is nice. Very smooth and all inserts are uniform.

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I’m looking forward to the challenge. I guess my biggest concern is rerunning of the control /general illumination lighting wire. Lots o pictures and labeling.

Does anyone know the exact color code for the red and blue on the cab? I thought I saw sunburst red in a post.

Looks great! Thanks for taking the time to share. I'd love to follow your restoration if you start a thread.

I think I will. It will be an adventure I’m sure. Lol!

That was from @GDonovan. Its the spray can color from Home Depot, so i doubt an exact match, but it looks pretty good.

I have a can of blue in the garage still, ill grab the color for you shortly.

Arg! Totally forgot! AM. Sorry.

I recently got a pretty beat up Night Rider to work on as a bit of a stress relief. I figured I’d post a few photos of the current progress to liven up this thread. It’s not perfect but it’s a huge improvement. Still lots to do but hope to have it back together in a couple of weeks.

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Is yours an EM or SS version? I have a well worn EM, it’s my first pin and still most played just a fun fun game. Congratulations!

It’s an EM. My first EM, excited to get to playing on it. Personally I think the game looks better as an EM as well. Love the colors on this one.

Hey Night Rider club, I made these apron cards as part of my work in updating my project. I hope they uploaded correctly, let me know if not. I made both a 3 ball and 5 ball variation.

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I picked up a non-working EM version from an estate sale last week and after a few days, I have now have it coining up and starting 1, 2, 3, and 4 player games (my first EM!). I can play games, but I've got a pretty good punch list to get through before I claim it 100% working.

Question for the group: my Night Rider has a steel undercarriage. In all of the pictures I've seen online of the EM and SS versions of NR, I've not seen this undercarriage. I'm assuming it's there to protect / deter breaking into the machine from the bottom to steal the cash box. I make that assumption because the floor itself is still in good shape, i.e. this is not a repair job. I'm just curious if any knows if Bally did this at the factory for some units or as an option, or was this more likely an operator who did this himself. It's very clean-looking and fits well...this isn't a hack job. Holes had to be drilled through the cabinet, tho, for the bolts (secured by nuts on the inside of the cabinet).

After I get this pin working 100%, I'll be deciding if I'm going to take the refurb further by repairing some cabinet dings and re-stenciling. If I do that, I'll likely be filling in the cabinet holes drilled out for that steel undercarriage and not reinstalling it. I don't like the way it obscures the cabinet artwork, and this pin won't be routed (at least by me, anyway).

Do any of you guys with Night Rider have this steel undercarriage? Is it factory?

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Mine is a rough one and it doesn't have the metal on it. It was added By owner/operator. Is the bottom full metal cabinet are just the edges? Most likey reason cabinet damage. If full bottom they were sure to keep their coins.

It covers the entire bottom. From the inside of the cabinet, the wood floor appears strong and undamaged. I'll know for sure about the exterior floor when I do a full tear down, but that won't be until spring or so.

Couple of rules / behavior questions for the Night Rider owners. Picked up that non-working EM NR above a month or so ago and now have it to point where just about everything is working. Now I'm paying closer attention to the scoring/rules.

On my NR, the bonus count never goes advances past 15,000. The shots still score, but the bonus count stops at 15,000. Is this normal behavior or do I have something new to debug? Don't pay attention to the dirt and grime - I'll do a full tear down and shop job once I get everything working reliably:

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Second thing that's odd that I just noticed today - sometimes (randomly on any score value) the scoring from the saucer does not score. You get the bonus advancement and the ball ejection, but not the score. Here's a quick video of what I'm talking about:

First few seconds show that with the 1000 score selected, you get no score (no chimes) but the bonus advances (I do this twice). I then move it to the 50 score, and you can here the chimes of it scoring and bonus advancing (I do this once). I then move it back to 1000 score, and you can hear the chimes of it scoring and bonus advancing (I do this three times).

This doesn't just happen on the 1000 score....I've experienced this on each of the saucer score values at one time or another. This isn't normal behavior, is it? There is something likely wrong with the Top Hole Unit assembly I'm guessing? I had to replace a fried coil and a melted plunger assembly in the Top Hole Unit as part of the punch list to get this pin flipping...perhaps something else is compromised with it?

This is true for the solid state version which only goes up to 15,000 max bonus so I imagine the EM version is the same.

Issue Above: scoring with saucer is sometimes skipped (but bonus advances) is definitely not normal. I decided to take apart the Top Hole Unit assembly to inspect it and lo and behold, I found an open trace on the scoring PCB - that's gotta be the issue:

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So before I go through the trouble of unsoldering this PCB from the wire harness so I can get it on my bench to repair the open trace and clean up the rest of the traces, does anyone know if these PCBs are obtainable from anywhere (I'll probably reach out to Steve at Pinball Resource)? If they're around and not too expensive, I'd like to just replace the PCB as long as I have this thing apart.

Second question - I'm assuming the white jumper wires to get around the screw holes is factory? It's exactly the same on both the scoring PCB and the lamp PCB in this Top Hole Unit assembly, and the age appearance of the jumper wires look to be the same as the rest of the wires in the pin.

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Let's fix a broken/lifted trace! I'm not going to win any soldering awards, but this trace "repair" now ohm's out from the contact pad to the wire just fine, and there's enough clearance for the contact wiper to rotate. Got other things on my To Do list today so hopefully I can get back to this soon, reassemble, and re-test that saucer scoring issue.

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I’m struggling with the two score targets near the pop numbers not registering. If anyone can provide any input on my thread I’d really appreciate it. All other items are working so it’s the last fix before this project is in the home stretch.

Edit Solved:
Went back to basics and took each target assembly apart. After reassembly both worked fine. Guess I just had bad/dirty connections. Feel silly but hey, progress!

Picked this beauty up a while back, the cabinet is so wrong yet so right.

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Pretty sure the armor for the bottom is an aftermarket thing. My High Speed came with something similar installed and I've heard from others they've seen them on all kinds of machines. Considering how many games I've seen with a big hole carved through the bottom under the coin box, makes sense that there was a market for an added security measure.

Did you ever get it completed?

Sadly it’s still sitting in my basement waiting to be restored. I have everything needed just need to find the time. I’ll keep you posted. Happy Thanksgiving!

Can someone help me finding the following fuses from the rectifier? I can’t find the exact ones, What can I use to substitute and replace the blown out fuses? I would like to swap all of them for new ones. Hope someone can advice.
Thanks

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Does anyone have a clear photo of the card by the arrow of the EM version of the playfield (I grabbed this off of the IPDB)? I just finished a playfield swap on a new CPR Night Rider and one of the last steps before I move on to restoring the cabinet is reproducing the under-playfield cards. I have all of the other cards on my original playfield, cabinet, and backbox but this one is missing on mine. Thanks in advance....

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Hope this helps you. Had dig out my dumpster save night rider to get these pictures.

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Way cool - this helps a ton. Thank you!

I'm going to clean up the EM board in my Night Rider.....anyone know what kind of label went by the big red arrow (mine seems to have been ripped out)? The stapled remnants look pink, probably was red, maybe a voltage warning since it's near the transformer?

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Looked in the dumpster nightrider there is not any red tag there the just wire loom tag. No staples either also noticed you wire loom bolt down is on opposite side also. But I did find a lone staple in front of game with little bit of red tag. So not the exact answer but maybe a better idea of why or what it was.

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Here's a Before and After:

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I noticed on the EM Night Rider cabinet that there are thru-bolts used to mount the Tilt Board and Chime Box.....the bolts go all the way thru the cabinet and the boards are secured on the inside with wing nuts. They didn't seem to do this on the SS Night Rider cabinet and opted for the standard wood screws from the inside to secure the boards.

I'm thinking of filling in these holes and mounting the boards to the cabinet interior like the SS version so the bolt heads aren't visible in the cabinet artwork. I'm making enough cosmetic changes in this restoration that I'm not that hung up on originality when it comes to those bolts.

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Damn…that’s impressive!

I’m not done yet but today was a big day in my project. The stencils and paint is mostly done. A little bleed and overspray to touch up but I’m happy with the results overall.

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Any owners out there of the EM version of Night Rider who can help with a scoring issue? I'm in the process of restoring my machine - playfield swap complete and the cabinet EM board, tilt board, and chime box (along with all of the playfield mechs) have all been cleaned and refreshed. While I wait for a string of decent weather to work on repairing and repainting the cabinet, I'm making sure the machine works while I have it spread out on my workspace.
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I've fixed a number of electrical and scoring issues along the way over the last few weeks, and I think I'm down to my last one: a scoring issue with the Drop Target banks. In case anyone has suggestions on where to start, here's the issue:

1 - Right Bank will reset when its 5 targets are down without waiting for the 5 targets on the Left Bank to be down despite both plugs being set to Conservative. 3000 points are awarded, and the SPECIAL lamp gets lit.

2 - Left Bank will not reset when its 5 targets are down (as expected when both plugs are set to Conservative for the first time the set is downed at the start of a new ball). When the targets are downed in the Right Bank, both banks are reset and 3000 points are scored (instead of 6000), and the SPECIAL lamp gets lit.

It's as if for the right bank, the Drop Target Adjustment plug is being interpreted as Liberal even tho it's in the Conservative setting.
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I've checked the blades for all of the switches in the Drop Target, Drop Target Reset, and Total Sequence relays and they all look good - none are stuck closed or shorted for Normally Open, and none are gapped for Normally Closed. Blade contacts were cleaned and continuity confirmed with my MM.

I'm going to stare more at the Drop Target later today and trace the wires with my MM from the Drop Target Adjustment and Right and Left Lane Adjustment plugs and make sure I've got connections where there are supposed to be connections. After that....I'm not quite sure where to go next.
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Thanks in advance for any help you can provide....

OMG - 5 minutes after I made that post above, I figured it out. And there's a reason why the right bank was behaving like it was set to Liberal. Because it was, and it was my fault.

Weeks ago I made reproduction labels for the Jones plugs, including the ones on the playfield underside. The original for the LEFT AND RIGHT OUT ADJUSTMENT was still on my original playfield, so that was easy to copy. The original for the DROP TARGET ADJUSTMENT was missing from my playfield, so I reproduced it based on the photos cp1610 provided earlier but I did not pay attention to the LIB-CONS legend. ASSUMING consistency in positioning, and using the LEFT AND RIGHT OUT ADJUSTMENT as a guide for LIB being on the left and CONS being on the right, I did the same for the DROP TARGET ADJUSTMENT label. Nope. DROP TARGET ADJUSTMENT is CONS on the left and LIB on the right. Can't believe I missed that.

Moved the plug over, and the damn thing is now behaving and scoring like it should. I don't know whether I'm relieved that the fix was so simple, or mad that the problem was caused by my lack of due diligence in making the labels and following my assumptions. Actually, feeling both.

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It’s been a longer project than I was expecting g but I learned a lot and that was half the reason I took on this refurb, my first EM. It’s not perfect but it’s come a long way from how I got it. Before and after.

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Nice job. Do you have a restoration thread on your EM NR project?

No I didn’t make my own thread but happy to share any of my learning, I certainly looked up a few threads here as I worked through various issues. Love the community here.

Nice job. looking to start mine as soon as the weather starts breaking up here in the NE.