Sharpshooter Update - Aug. 18, 2007

[vinito]

Just surfing and I thought I'd add an update on my Sharpshooter. (Long enough to be a treatise I guess)

I desoldered the part of my MPU-2 that had acid damage, which showed a pretty weak adherence of some of the traces & pads to the board. It kind of flaked off in spots. When soldering it back together I just added strips of wire to bridge where the missing traces were supposed to be. I did all this pretty carefully, so I thought it should work.

After I finished repopulating the board, I didn't feel great about it because it was sloppy work compared to my other experiences soldering new boards together. After cleaning & drying it, I fully tinned the board like "goose" described here, and still the solder didn't seem to want to flow like I wanted it to. Just not cooperating. But I checked it out afterward and it seemed OK. Time for the big test.

Plugged it all in correctly, did another double-check just for good measure, then powered it up.

Tadaa!... Nothing!
Well, not exactly. There was a new annoying hum that wasn't there before, but the sound board still made its power-on sound. Otherwise it was not good news. The diagnostic LED blinked once and kind of faded out. Shutting power off and turning it back on indicated I might have done further damage to the board on the first run as the LED didn't blink even once this time or ever after. Glad I didn't install the new ROM's yet I guess.

OK, I can either take the thing back apart and try again, or I can punt the whole mess and just spend a couple hundred on one of Jim's newly designed and manufactured boards from Echo Lake Pinball (*see contact info below). Well, I really gotta mow the grass too and about a thousand other things, so since I hauled the game home for free and only have a pittance into it so far, I opted to order one of the new boards. It is a more updated design and uses current parts, so it should work better, or at least for longer, than the original board anyways (I hope).
Side note: I think it would be really cool to pick Jim's brain on the ROM image and see if it can be changed to have a customized rule set. Not that much to do with a relatively primitive game, but it would be fun to mess with anyway.

So here I am just waiting on the minty board to arrive. That gives me a chance to do a bunch of other things I was going to put off for a while, but now that I'm into it a little it's pretty fun. One thing about a neglected pin is that a little time and attention makes a major difference in a hurry.

The flippers were pretty clunky so I got some new bushings from Marco (my only source for parts so far - pretty good source I think). They were almost an exact match except were about 3/8" too long, but that's not a problem because I have a machine shop at my house. Shortened them up with no problem and rebuilt both flippers and replaced the coil sleeves with new ones (cleaning all parts along the way) and they are pretty smooth & tight now. Works great with just a touch of white lithium grease! (Don't panic, just kidding)

One of my pop bumpers was cobbled together in a really buggered attempt to repair it. Nothing important was broken though and it is now rebuilt and feeling nice & snappy. New coil sleeve here too. Now that one is done it would be bad form not to rebuild the other three. That's coming up.

Dug into my new rubbers and discovered that Marco's info is incorrect for the kit, so contacted them and the right ones shoud be on their way. In the process of removing the rubbers, I realized that most of the playfield is pretty close to empty, so I'll go ahead and remove most of the posts, etc. and give everything a good, deep cleaning and some wax before reassembly.

The wiring in the coin door area was a little cobbled too. Someone rigged up a switch to add credits and I just removed that. No need for it if you just set a dip switch for free play. The test switch was cobbled too and was missing the diode, so I put a more appropriate switch and added the diode as per the schematic. Double-checked the other wiring and fixed some minor problems. Good to go now.

And to top it all off, I even have a brand new ball to break it in with.

This machine has seen better days. A couple of the inserts are a little loose and all of the inserts are sagging, some pretty extremely. I would like to flatten them up but that's so much more involved it would be better to put it off until I feel I can do a total playfield restoration. At that time, the whole design should be re-inked or re-painted since most of the board shows small dark, swirly "cracks", I guess from the ball bouncing around for some 30 years. Two of the plastics are cracked, but not bad considering. None of the plastics are missing any chunks or anything. Making up some kind of new plastics is also into the restoration league. Is it worth it? Certainly not from a financial point of view. But I remember playing Sharpshooter a lot back in the day, and this is a hobby after all. So from a nostalgia point of view it would be a worthy endeavor, and I would learn a lot too. Time will tell if that day ever comes. I can say with certainty that it won't be seen at the curb on my watch though.

There is something to be said about keeping any pinball machine alive from now on since they are hardly being made anymore.

I'd like to resurrect a "Spirit of 76" and an "Eight Ball Deluxe" to round out the three pins I played most while I was growing up. Popped my pin cherry on a 76 at the local bowling alley. Damn, even bowling alleys are nostalgia anymore. Wonder if I could pick up an old lane or two for the house 

Well, so much for this long post. I'll post some pictures in the future. I ought to take a couple of the process too. I always forget to do that.

More later.
Vince

*(Jim's contact info as promised)
Echo Lake Pinball Service & Sales
voice: 330-278-2228
925 Marwin Dr.
Hinckley, Ohio 44233

[vinito]

Since my playfield isn't perfect (far from it) I thought I'd keep my hear to the ground for another one so I could still play the machine while I restore the one that seemed easiest to do.

Well just today I found one I think will work. It's a playfield for a Sharpshooter II, but I figured since the playfield is almost the same thing, I could make sure it is wired correctly so it just plugs in, then play the machine with the v.2 playfield while I work on the original. Probably take me a year the way I do things.

Is this a hair-brained idea or what? Whaddaya think?

If it works out right though, It would be really slick to have an absolutely flat and restored playfield for this machine I think. Of course the time involved would not be financially worth it, but it will be kind of fun and I'm sure I'll learn (and cuss) a lot.

I guess that day of starting a restoration just got pushed forward.

Vince

[goose]

From my understanding the Sharpshooter 2 and sharpshooter playfielsa are identical with the exception of the rollover switches, the "2" uses a different style, but operation should be the same for both.  I can't vouch for the interconnects, but I would think that they don't vary much, since that would have required them to make new code to run the new game, not a very cost-effective route for a struggling game manufacture.
I see that you have found that ring kits are not correct.  I have given up on them and buy my rings in bullk from Pinball Life.  they are cheaper and I have spares.
Sorry about the CPU.  It sounds like the reset circuitry isn't quite working properly.  That is the section of all of those little parts on the side of the board that typically get eaten away with the corrosion.  After I re-tinned the board, I also got out my meter and verified that all of the traces (copper on the pcb) were still there and conducting.  If they weren't, I would add a wire to them to make sure that they would work.  Take care to verify that the holes conduct from one side of the board to the other side, that is also a common issue.  Even after all of that work, there was one more pcb trace that was bad, and it happened to be under the CPU socket.  That was a bear to find.  After that was fixed, the board has been working for about a year now.  How long will it last?  I am not too sure, but  a new board is bound to last longer.

You mention that there are cracks in the paint on the playfield.  Try using "magic eraser" with rubbing alcohol, it will remove most of the "ball swirls" that you see.  Don't get too aggressive or it will remove the paint!

Keep your eye out on Ebay, you might be able to find other parts that you may need foor your restoration, also you can place a "parts wanted" ad on the Mr Pinball Website.  There are also web sites that will tell you how to make new plastics.

I assume that you have seen this site:
http://www.pinrepair.com/gp/

He has other well written guides on how to restore pinball machines in general.  It is worth a look.

Good Luck.
Mike

[vinito]

Thanks for the reply, goose.

I talked to Jim (of Echo Lake) and he was very helpful. I looked at the schematic and he verified that "S" has 5 rollovers and "S2" has a single leaf switch in the turnaround loop. Jim says the single leaf switch scores more reliably and the 5 rollovers will skip once in a while, maybe when the ball goes through very fast. This presents a problem using the S2 field in term of scoring correctly and enabling extra ball or bonus multiplier or whatever the loop does unless I drill & add the rollovers or hack some kind of sequencer off the S2 leaf switch. If it takes quite a while to do the playfield work I may try something, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. As far as the scoring reliability goes, I like the idea of having the extra challenge of the five rollovers personally.

According to the schematic, switching playfields will be a simple matter of plugging it in. The wire colors and header pinouts are identical on the two games. The only problem is the four fewer connections due to the rollover vs. leaf switch issue.

Marco has sent out the missing 2 rings. I ought to be good to go once they get here. Looks like everything I need will be arriving at about the same time.

Thanks for the tips on the board repair. I may dig into it again at some point just to prove to myself that I'm not getting feeble. I'm happy that's not my only option.

I will definitely try the magic eraser. If that works pretty well, I will just repair any worn wood and do touchup. Obviously I hope that's my course of action because I want it to look great and I really don't want to repaint the whole playfield. Having the playfield off will give me the opportunity to flatten my inserts too. Man, some of them are really dipped badly. This means I will have to redo the lettering on the inserts, but I don't see that being a big deal. If all goes well and it looks good and flat, I think its worth clearcoating. I have some sprayers and a place to paint, so it's just a matter of buying the right stuff for the job. Jim says Game Plan games are laquered. I don't remember if he was certain about that or just an assumption. I guess that means I'm not certain anyway. There are only two small mylars on the field right now, so I will have to remove those of course & touch up if necessary.

Uuhh, I guess that's all for now.
I'll post some pics as soon as I get my card-reader driver issue sorted out. Damned Microsoft.

[vinito]

Damned postmen.
Every time I receive a package that needs to be signed, the mailman just drops a note in the mailbox to come by & pick it up at the post office the next day.
I checked the mail when I got home. Empty. I checked again about an hour later and various mail including the pick-up note was in there... again.
I was home, as has happened many times before, but they never even attempt to come up to the door & knock or ring the bell. I don't know if that's just lazy or if they have a legitimate reason.

But at least my board is in town. Tomorrow after work I'll drop by and pick it up. I guess tomorrow night will be the test. Only have a couple flipper insulators I need to install before powering up. Everything else checks out OK as far as I can tell.

Wish me luck.

I'm off to pick up some magic eraser and see if it lives up to the hype.

[vinito]

Magic Eraser kicks ass!

My playfield has tons of dirt-filled ball swirls.
Tried the Magic Eraser & alchohol trick and I figured it would help. It really cleans it up completely! Clean, vibrant color shows through nicely.

Under magnification you can see that the cracks are still there, but I guess the ME pulls the dirt out. Eventually it will get a new clear coat and that ought to do the trick.

Very cool.

[goose]

  Yes Magic Eraser is one of the little "Secrets" in the pinball restoration biz.

You will want to clear coat or Wax the playfield to keep those cracks from filling up again with dirt, AND get NEW PINBALLS!!!   The old ones have scratches that act like sandpaper on your playfield.

Good Luck on the new Board.

Mike

[vinito]

If life catches you at a time when you have less time than money (I have neither, but time was edged out this week), I highly recommend replacing a damaged Game Plan MPU with Echo Lake Pinball's new-fangled minty replacement board.

I picked it up from the post office yesterday, came home & opened it up. There isn't much padding necessary for a PCB since they are very light, but it was packaged very comfy and inside two layers of anti-static bagging as well.

I simply plugged it in and... NOTHING! Nothing wrong, that is. It worked like a champ. Instant functional pinball machine.

I have one wire on my payfield harness that seems to have an intermittent connection (This has nothing to do with the new board), but it's just for the general illumination for the playfield. I traced it down and wiggled it so it works. I have to dig a little deeper just to make sure it's not something that needs more than a wiggle, but it's all up & running now.

The sunken inserts makes for a challenging game of pinball. I need to address that and I will, but the game is playable so I'm happy there is some concrete progress.

I don't drink much anymore, but I might have to get an airline-size bottle of JD and have a ceremonial toast.

Now all I need is some roller skates and a disco ball and I can step back in time whenever I want. Might have to edit the music list though.
 

[goose]

Cool!

Ther si nothing like getting a pin working again.

Have FUN!!!

MIke

[magius74]

Are you guys talking about the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser product. Or is there some sort of cleaning product for pinball machines called Magic Eraser?

[BriMc]

yes it is the Mr clean erasers, the white ones. Do some reserch before you use then as they can do a lot of damage to your playfield if you are not careful.

[magius74]

Thanks for the response. I think I do need to do some research, since I am confused about how to clean my playfield. I have a Sharpshooter machine and I have the little dirt filled swirls that everyone here is talking about but I can get to them, I can't even feel them with my finger the play surface feels smooth. So it was no surprise to me when my friend tried to clean it with alcohol and got no results. I getting a bit nervous and thinking that to get in there and clean this swirls and cracks I will need to remove some sort of protective finish and then re-apply a finish which is something I've never done before. Of coarse I could be wrong about that, can anyone point me in a direction for doing research or maybe a guide book on line for this kinda thing? 

[BriMc]

I use magic erasers all the time they remove a little bit of paint but supposingly they force the alcohol and cleaner into the cracks and swirl marks forcing the dirt out. I don't know how true this is but that is what I have read.