The Pinball Diaries (what did you do today?)

[WARLOCK]

I think I am in "Pinball Moving Denial"! PMD for short.

I packed 17 pins myself that went to La Belle Province on Wednesday.
Unloaded 17 pins out (plus some parts and a populated pf) on Thursday with Brewmanager and Sparky.
Loaded up 3 pins with Walt and Ian on Thursday evening before heading out to meet Rob, Alain and Drano later.
Friday morning, Adriano and I went to pick up 1 more pin in Montreal from Sylvain, and then 8 more pins to pickup in St.George's Friday.
Great to see David C. there (awesome to randomly see old friends unexpectedly for me) but David expected me; and to meet Patrick, Andre and Gerry.

Friday evening, another stop in Montreal to drop off another classic "grail" container pin, and with fish in hand from Rob, headed home in poor weather.
Saturday morning between 1am and 2am, Adriano and I returned to Toronto to finally drop the truck in my lock-yard, rest and go to sleep after a long haul.

Saturday daytime, both Adriano and I took a break due to previous family engagements on both our parts for the day. Great day to spend with family.

Sunday, we returned to pinball, and unloaded and shuffled and moved 12 more pins to get to them to their owners and unloaded once again.
Monday, I met another pbrev regular contributor to pick up his pin and do a FS/FT deal on our own in addition to the container pin deal for him.

So, working late tonight, I had PMD really "bad" and I needed to move and set up a few more pins with my new extra space. I tackled the EM's first.
Volley and c-37 are both about 1/2 dialed in, mostly level, and jacked up for speed. Tomorrow I have the loftier goal of at least 3 great SS machines.

3 of the 4 FF's will be setup tomorrow. A few people know which of the 3 they are if they care to guess here.

For everyone else, Williams made the "Fantastic 4" pins in the very early 80's. Fantastic gameplay. 1 of the 4 saved pinball again? Speculation...
Regardless, all very fun. I can't wait to play them tomorrow if I am able to with some spare time.

 

[DRANO]

Sounds like a lot of work when you write it all out like that

My arms are still bruised, but my basement is full of keepers. Small price.

 

[WARLOCK]

Sounds like a lot of work when you write it all out like that

My arms are still bruised, but my basement is full of keepers. Small price.

Work or joy? (the bruises are showing today for me as well) pfft. (nothing, "merely a flesh wound", no biggie)

And years of waiting to gather up your grails finally and bring them home pays off.
And years to enjoy them in the future finally!

Finish the reno's, then finally reno all your beautiful games.
Brand new challenges (and full schedules) coming next.

Cheers!

 

[brewmanager]

Glad I'm not the only one bruised - and I only did a fraction of the work you guys did.

 

[Menace]

Spent the last few hours tonight schooling Jooky on soldering and then breaking down his Red and Ted heads from the container Roadshow he bought. Needless to say, the boys in Italy spend a lot of time hacking and shoemaking stuff yet it would take far less time and effort to just order the correct replacement parts and do it right. Jooky now has a nice list of parts that he needs to order just to get the heads working correctly, but I guess the good news is at least he can get all of the parts.

D

 

[DRANO]

Sounds like you've taken on a new apprentice Doug.
Now you're thinking... spread out some of that workload

Stephen is in my neck of the woods. Let me know when you're ready for house calls Jooky!
Good luck with RS. Quite the Lawlor collection you're putting together.

 

[jooky]

Made the trek out to Aurora to visit Dr.Doug. Apparently my Red and Ted assemblies had quite the hack jobs done to them by our European friends. Drilled holes in the assembly? Wrong springs? Gottlieb coils? Wha?! It was like a horror show. I was fearing the worst. Anyways time to go shopping at Marco's. Also got some nice soldering tips from Menace! I felt like Ralph Macchio and he was Mr.Miyagi.

I think I'll start a thread soon to show my journeys with a Road Horror Show. And yes, we have to meet up again Adriano! West end pinheads unite!

 

[Luckydogg420]

Stopped in at the mall to play creach today. It was great! The game worked perfectly and it played well. The hologram looked pretty blurry, but it looked like a cleaning of the underside was all it needed. I popped in 5 credits. Won 4 free games. I was there for over half an hour. It was great. I really like that game. The t2 looked great, well maintained, but I dint play it.

I made sure to leave 1 credit in the machine... Hopefully some kid will see it and play it and fall in love with pinball.

 

[WARLOCK]

Wong is "The Enabler."

After today...............

Brewmanager is "The Transporter."

Looking forward to Walt's post.

 

[tkaye]

It's alive!!!

Pretty pleased overall with my TZ
Ordered a Treasure Cove kit to give the play field the premium buff up after cleaning.
Some typical overseas operator fixes "McGyvered" in her but nothing too crazy
The optos in and out of the mini play field aren't working so I need to determine if its a opto board issue or the switches. Wiring all checks out. Also found one of the flippers replaced with a system 11 one. Weird stuff these guys do to avoid buying parts!!
Lots to do before its "collector quality" IMO but definitely not a bad example.

 

[brewmanager]

Looong day today, but a good one.

Had some work done on the van yesterday, including new tires, so I was a bit dismayed to see my low tire pressure light on this am. So my first stop was back to the garage, where the tires checked out fine - looks like its my sensor that's gone. Hmm...fix it, or live with a light on the dash. Van is getting up there in years and miles, so I'll have to think about that one.

Grabbed a belt from Timmies, then headed to a warlocks shop to pick up Time Machine. I already had WCS94 in the van, which I'd picked up for Speedythepunk last week from Paul in Brooklin. Next stop - Kitchener-Waterloo and Thunderstorms place.

At this point I realized 2 things. 1 he does not live close to the highway, and 2 I need to set my gps to avoid traffic circles. I don't like them.

At any rate, after unloading Time Machine Eric showed me his cool jukebox and awesome game room. Very neat stuff, and his token setup was really neat too, especially the bathroom floor!

So next was off to London, and Speed City Records. I'd met Speedy on a visit to Cookes place, and then hung out in Allentown with him a fair bit as well, and when you've got a friend with a record store, and you love music....well, you should probably have a turntable. So Speedy found me a good one, and I picked it up today, which was the real reason for my travels - I've been waiting months to get this. And of course, if you have a record player, you might need to get some records. I spent quite some time going thru the store, and only regret that my time constraints limited me - can't wait to get back. Oh, and I picked out quite a pile of vinyl to start me off. Looking forward to getting that set up, let me tell you.

So, Speedy had gone to an auction last night, and bought what is undoubtedly the cleanest em I've ever seen. I mean ever. It looks Huo, despite showing 50k games on the counter. I transported it home for him, then he helped me locate Brock's customs broker. I don't want to spill the beans, but Brock will have something in stock shortly. Something that was a lot bigger than I'd come to expect, but that was the story of most of the rest of the trip.

Speedy then had a brief business stop to make, during which time I wandered into a nearby thrift shop. Not sure why I did, but I'm glad I did. Really got me thinking about how damn lucky I am. Here are these people really struggling to get by, and I'm on a pinball/vinyl road trip. Frivolous is the best word I can use. I've let small things annoy me lately in the pinball world, and I have to say, on reflection, that that is bloody ridiculous. It's pinball, people! A game. A great game, one of the best, but just a game.

At any rate, further to my frivolous travels, I'd also ventured out to pick up a sign. Vintage advertising is a slippery slope, much like pins. I picked up a Dr. Pepper from church of the silver ball, coke from Allentown, Pepsi on the Montreal run last week, and found a Canada Dry in Strathroy, which Cooke kindly picked up for me and dropped at Speedys place. Add that to my few beer signs, and my walls around the bar and pins will be full shortly. Woohoo!

Final pickup is at London north Home Depot - I should let Drano tell this part of the story, but after checking on the Internet that a 4x8 would fit in the van, I picked up 20 to make up the walls of Dranos new game room.

What the Internet didn't say? Those 4x8s don't fit with the front seats all the way back. For those who don't know me, I am not a small person in either height, girth or shoe size. I need those seats back - the weekend Mike Wong and I traded vehicles was a rather miserable one for me.

I also learned two other things. Pick up the 4x8 sheets first before the seven other huge boxes, and putting 4x8 sheets in a van by yourself without wrecking them is extraordinarily difficult. Luckily, I remembered that Karmatose lived nearby, and after an urgent call for help, Eric was kind enough to pop by and help me load the last 17 or so wallboards.

At one point, the plan had been to bring a couple of. Pins back too. Glad it didn't happen. Cue poltergeist woman. "This van is full."

So I told my wife I'd be back hopefully by 5. Ha. Only 6 hours late. I was pushing it, too - I actually forgot to eat lunch. Didn't know about the K-W stop til this morning, and I had no idea Home Depot would take that long.

But, I saw some friends, had a great time, and most importantly of all, had my perspective fixed considerably.

 

[mwong168]

Here are some pics of karmatose to the rescue at Home Depot as Walt was probably pretty tired by this time yesterday.

Great story as usual Walt and sure lots of people owe you for your efforts yesterday.

 

[WARLOCK]

Walt,
A big thak you for dropping off Time Machine to Eric (Thunderstorm) for me in Kitchener-Waterloo on your way to London.
Very much appreciated.
Scott

 

[REVOLUTION]

HUGE thanks to Walt, Subpacket and Drano for aiding in getting this latest shipment of PDI glass back to the GTA. Without friends like you, it wouldn't be nearly as easy to share this awesome product with members of the Revolution

- B

 

[brewmanager]

With the recent lineup changes, I did some shuffling around of machines, made necessary by the fact that if my home theatre and Lotr were on at the same time, they blew the breaker.

I was a bit astounded to see the difference in slope in my basement in just a few feet - so just to be on the safe side I'm re-leveling everything. May as well do it right, eh?

Also doing my annual battery swap, and I'm even doing the machines that haven't been here a year yet. I was a bit shocked to realize that....that's all of them. Except High Speed, I have yet to have anything for a year. I took the time to count...23 months in the hobby, I've been through 15 machines. Wow. Of course, I had a static lineup for a long time, and after a crazy turnover period I'm pretty happy now too.

Sadly, no sooner do I make the deal to get Lotr into the basement on a permanent, not leaving basis than it starts acting up.

The ring opto is clearly not working properly. It activates when it should, but it's also going off at random times all over the place. Behaves perfectly in test mode. A bit mystifîed here. Menace says bad opto or connector...so I checked all the connectors. I'll have to see about finding a new opto, (and a manual) as its still doing it.

 

[Menace]

The ring opto is clearly not working properly. It activates when it should, but it's also going off at random times all over the place. Behaves perfectly in test mode. A bit mystifîed here. Menace says bad opto or connector...so I checked all the connectors. I'll have to see about finding a new opto, (and a manual) as its still doing it.

Yep, the optos (or transceivers in your case) register when the beam breaks or it no longer "sees" itself. If the connectors are good and it's still acting up, swap the transceivers. You could always swap with another set somewhere else in the game to verify, and if the issue moves you found the culprit.

D

 

[mwong168]

I took the time to count...23 months in the hobby, I've been through 15 machines.

Not bad Walt, I'm at 32 months and been through 28 machines and soon to be 29 by end of this weekend :FP:

Menace says bad opto or connector...

You forgot to mention my SMS:

Wong says: Finger the hole in test mode and during game play :lol:

 

[brewmanager]

I took the time to count...23 months in the hobby, I've been through 15 machines.

Not bad Walt, I'm at 32 months and been through 28 machines and soon to be 29 by end of this weekend :FP:

Menace says bad opto or connector...

You forgot to mention my SMS:

Wong says: Finger the hole in test mode and during game play :lol:

I wonder why... :FP:

 

[mwong168]

I wonder why... :FP:

But you did it anyways and said it worked fine in both :lol:

 

[DRANO]

Haha!
How did I miss that post Walt?

I guess the cat is out of the bag yes, I will soon have the cheesiest gameroom this side of the GTA.
I will be happily installing these this weekend!

Thanks again!


Still wondering why London was one of the only places with inventory?