Numerous fixes!

A quick summary of a few things that got fixed:

Eight Ball Deluxe had the Game Over lights stuck ON in the backglass.  HAD.
I had people over for the Pinball Women Ottawa group I run, and after a night of playing, the next day I noticed that suddenly the Game Over was behaving. 
If it was locked on, I was sure a bad transistor, and had one ready to replace it, but welp, it's working!
For all the dickheads out there that whine whine whine about women in pinball:  FUCK. YOU.
What we witnessed was the magic powers of women playing pinball:  shit just randomly fixes itself, apparently.
Take that, meninists.

Oh, and I had also re-adjusted the upper plastics above the 8-ball target.  Now with tighter alignment, shots don't fly by the Bonus Collect hole and in to the rollovers.  Very important for collecting bonus on hard shots!  It is devastating if you were shooting for that collect and the ball didn't stick in.


Corvette!
Small issue with the ball sitting on the LT5 gate and not falling in to the lock.  Expanded the hole on that new LT5 upwards ever so slightly, and now the alignment is far better and the ball rolls down appropriately.


Sinbad!
While playing the game would stall on ball reset and say to check coil 7 (thanks, Pascal board!)
But it was intermittent.  I'd check it, look for cracked solder, but all was good.  On power up, game would reset fine and you could play for a while until the error arose again.
The problem turned out to be the fuse:  It wasn't blown, but one side's metal part had cracked / come loose.  So when I raised the playfield, it shifted and connected again.  After a few solenoid bangs under the playfield, it jiggled a bit loose and caused the error.
1 new fuse solved that issue.

Sinbad rollovers wires touching lamp wires

So I guess I gloated a bit too quickly in my last post:  while I had gotten through the final repair, a new thing cropped up:
When the lights stopped rotating for the skill shot and settled on a hole, the right most rollover would be triggered with a DING and of course that means the ball save timer has started.
I assumed that while the playfield was up and I was swapping LEDs that I had bumped the switch and it was closed always.  Checked the switch and the gapping was fine.
So what was different?  I noticed the wire bundle going to the lights was touching the wire from the switch. 
They weren't shorting, the wires were all insulated, but I imagine the wire used for the lower-power switches is less insulated, and having the light wires up against it caused some leakage and a false positive.
I bent/redirected the wires away from each other and voila, the problem went away.

Sinbad: finally done

There was one nagging thing for Sinbad:  one of the rollover plastic's didn't have a light bulb underneath it.  I had taken the old one out and couldn't for the life of me get a new one inside it.
Welp, we FINALLY got a bulb in to it, and that officially closes out the repair list for that game.  Nothing much else to say, no grand pictures, but damn I love Sinbad and I am happy to say it's done.

Sinbad: sprucing up a few minor things!

I will have to write a longer post at some point about just how great of a game Sinbad is.  This Gottlieb System 1 is winning my heart.
So of course I had to give it a quick once-over and get it playing even better.

4 new flipper rubbers, a rebound rubber, and a new lamp socket are all this machine calls for.  Plastics have some chips, but are now protected by lexan washers from further damage.  And really the chips don't both me at all.  It's a player's machine, and oh what a machine.

The flipper rubbers are easily swapped and give this game, which is ALL about ball control at the flippers, a new dimension.

The rebound rubber at the top was feeling flat.  The ball just hit it and limped away, so time for a new rubber on it. You hit that rebound rubber every plunge (almost...) and so having it vibrant is really important to the gameplay and general pinball esthetics.

When I first approached switching a rebound rubber I was a bit unsure and went the hard route, doing the nigh impossible contortion to unscrew the mount from the metal playfield apron.  NEVER DO THIS.

The solution is easy:  Get an exacto blade, slice down, peel off old rubber, force new rubber on.

The last thing to do is replace the light socket for one of the top rollover lanes.  I can't seem to get a bulb in to the sockets there, so at some point I will replace it.  And that's about it!

Introducing... Sinbad!!!

I am in love with this game.  It is the perfect combination of the 70s Gottlieb EM esthetics, but with a more advanced solid state ruleset.  (OK, the casual racism is a touch offputting, I admit)
The rules are straightforward and addictive: 4 drop banks of differing amounts of drops: 1, 2, 3, and 4.  Finishing each bank lights a roll over at the top. 
Each bank also awards a bonus X multiplier, but with the catch that the multiplier won't apply unless you have the prior drop banks down.  i.e. no multiplier X for finishing the third bank until banks 1 and 2 are also down.
And for extra strategy, the third bank lights the extra ball roll over at the top, so risk/reward abounds.

Double flippers mean you face crippling embarrassment of the ball going down right between them, and the lolling ball arcs of EMs means you have to be a few steps ahead to shake away from the outlanes.

a really sedctive layout

The final thing that sold me on this game was the Pascal PI-1/X4 board in it.  All 3 other boards and their interconnects?  Gone.  I'm lucky that I have never had to re-pin a connector, as apparently that is not a rare thing to do on Gottlieb System 1 machines.
The board adds extra features of a skill shot, ball save, and I think more high scores.


Even though this is my first real post on this machine, I probably won't discuss it much since there isn't too much to do any more!
The big issue was the left pop bumper wasn't working, totally jammed up.  I was lucky to also receive a spare playfield with this game, so I harvested the remaining mechs (pop bumpers and flippers) and then sold the playfield.
I was able to use one of those salvaged coils and a brand new coil sleeve and had it going great.

you can quickly tell this one might be a problem.

And then it was stuck again.
What had happened was the switch was getting stuck on and the fuse wasn't blowing and so the coil was bulging/overheating.

I eventually traced this back to the plastics of the pop bumper, which had enough give to allow the switch plate to get wedged under the plastic chasis, at certain angles, and then be always on.
I swapped out the whole pop bumper assembly with a spare from the other playfield, and it has been perfect since.

Hard to see here, but the plastic blue bit is wedged down on the bottom right.  Stuck!

Spare playfield to the rescue!  Time to harvest.

inspecting and cleaning the spare.

LED lights now all behind the backglass.  I am going to get some LED blinkers still, though.  Those incandescent blinkers heat up right quick!
I took the plastics off, did a deep clean, and swapped in LEDs on the playfield.  Added lexan washers to the plastics posts.  Even though many of the plastics have chipped, they still look good all around, so want to avoid any further damage.
Novus 2, Novus 1, then waxing.  Then I used clear low-tack plastic sheets to cover all of the playfield wear spots at the top, around the bumpers, and in front of the drop banks.  Hopefully that will help keep it well preserved for years to come.

All that is left really is to pop in a new rebound rubber, as the current one is going a touch stale and doesn't have the signature bounce.
And one light socket needs replacing, as it is too corroded.
Parts ordered!

some lovely colours

INTRODUCING... omg what the hell just happened? Sinbad! Corvette! Revenge From Mars!

 CORVETTE! REVENGE FROM MARS! SINBAD!

Yeah ummmm hi.  I might have a problem.  And it's name is pinball. 
My whole lineup has shifted.

Surf Champ sold, Sinbad bought.
Monopoly traded for Corvette.
Flintstones for Revenge From Mars.
and Beat The Clock left to be replaced with Baywatch.

GOOD TIMES.

Things were a bit nutty around that mid-September mark and the Ottawa/Gatineau Pinball Show.  :)
Huge thanks to everyone who worked oh so hard to help me make this happen.  Pinball hobbyists rock.  We all go out of our way to make MOAR PINBALL HAPPEN.