Hi, since I bought this a month ago, I have realized this machine needs a lot of love. More than I thought, but a month ago I did not know anything about pinball machines except I liked to play them once upon a time.
Recap:
Located in northern BC canada. A long way from a service tech!
Machine has not been played in at least 10 years.
Play counter reads 86,114!
Basically 99% complete as far as I can tell missing back box metal cover and some parts of the tilt mechanism, possibly a few play field parts.
Needs full repaint
Cost me $150 for the machine as is.
I've ordered a full set of play field rubbers and also stencils for an eventual repaint back to orig graphics.
My first PM never worked on one ever.
So the machine did not complete the full start up sequence (it still does not). When I first plugged it in, I could tell the score counters were one obvious source of trouble they did not reset to zero, and as well the bank of 10 pop up targets on the left hand side of play field will also not reset. The score motor was loose and dirty. Somebody before me decided that some 3 in 1 oil would fix the popup targets (sigh) and that oil dripped onto the score motor.
For the past month I have been working slowly on the backbox guts....I figured that would be a good training ground for me, watched all the very helpful videos, combed through posts here and other sites...all so very helpful thank you!! All the score reels have been stripped, cleaned and now work smoothly. Having passed grade 1 tech I moved over to the ball count step motor!! Now i am on the credit stepper i think.
My question for this night is: on the metal lobes / cams that briefly contact each other in the stepper units, do you lube the contact surfaces with super lube gel, or leave them dry? I did lube the shoulder bolts and other obvious places they were binding, just not sure of these little areas of metal to metal contact. Also do you lube the big black gear teeth in the centre of the unit?