So Instead of Blogging....
I am taking a shot at refurbishing my pinball machine. It is called Eight Ball Deluxe (EBD), made by Bally's in the early 1980's. It is the machine I played the most in college, along with defender (probably a future purchase). The 1980's is kind of a lost generation in pinball, as manufacturers got cheap for a while and quality suffered. 1980's machines also lacked the charm of the earlier electro-mechanical machines with the mechanical scoring, but also lacked the complication and sophistication of later machines. As a result only a handful of machines from the 1980's are on this top 100 list, and EBD is the highest rated of these. I personally like the older machines and don't really care for all the flyovers and whirling doodads.
Anyway, I have steadily repaired this machine so that it works reliably but the playfield is old and worn. At first I sort of liked the antique look of it but have decided to do a complete overhaul including a new playfield. On the left is the old playfield (I have stripped all the bumpers and such from the top) and on the right is the new one. In the following two pictures you can really see the wear on the old playing field.
In the following two pictures you can really see the wear on the old playing field.
Below are the two playfields flipped upside down (the new one is in a pair of bicycle repair stands that let me rotate it freely to work on both sides). The trick of course is to move everything from the old surface to the new one. In the process, everything mechanical will be cleaned and rebuilt and most of the lighting will be replaced with LED. And about a zillion electrical connections have to be made correctly. This does not show it but since these were taken I have most of the lighting in place now and have rebuilt the flippers and one of the drop target banks. Some folks go all-in and tumble and polish all of the parts, but simply ultrasonically cleaning them and replacing key elements like the actuator coils is enough for me.
The Internet even after all these years constantly amazes me. The depth of the online pinball community is incredible. Every part you see (including the new playfield of course) can be bought online, often from multiple vendors. There are whole chat rooms dedicated just to this one particular machine, of which only about 8000 were ever made and which has not been manufactured in 40 years. I can ask an arcane question like what is the screw thread on the flipper coil brackets and will get 4 answers in a couple of hours.