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Here she is ready for restoration. I picked RF up in Newton June of 2008. It was in a family's basement for years and in pretty good condition but defiantly in need of a restoration to bring it back to it original condition.
The back glass was in excellent shape except for the marks from the foam pads behind the glass. It took me a while to figure out what those were!
This picture shows some of the new targets the machine will be getting. One of the inserts is missing too and ALL of them need to be reglued.
I removed everything from the playfield.
One box of new parts!!
July 2011
So I had the machine stripped down for a year or two or so and was not making much progress on it so I decided to get some help from Fellow BPA member Ed. Ed reglued all the inserts back in and did a great job cleaning up the playfield.
I figured with all that out of the way, maybe I could get inspired to get this finished.
This picture is actually a shot I took after I got all the parts back on. My Friend Carl gave me a big hand in starting the reassembly.
While Ed was working on the playfield, I went to work on the cabinet.
I took out the relay board and wiped down ~35 years of dirt.
I detailed the front door!
I added a custom Royal Flush keychain I got from ebay along with a new lock.
I cleaned all the score reels too!
One small detail...The missing insert.
I thought I would be ok with just dropping in a matching colored insert but the more I looked at it the more I didn't like it. SO.
I posted an ad at
Mr. Pinball Classified: Machines
looking for the insert. Not one but TWO responses from people willing to send me one if I covered the shipping!! Woo Hoo!
Stubben sent me one from Sweeden for $6 and I paid with Paypal
Thanks Stubben!!
This one was a little cracked on the bottom but that was not a problem when I glued it.
Everything reassembled!!
Now for the debugging...
Lets see. The 3000 Point target always scores 4000 points. That's not good!
So the best place to start is the schematic.
I tracked down the relay that gets activated to score 3000 points.
(I'm going to summarize but it took about two hours to figure this out!)
This section is key!
There are switch contacts on the clock motor that actually open during the cycle and prevent the 1000 point score reel from advancing.
One switch on the clock motor puts out 5 pluses per cycle. (I'm calling one cycle is 1/3 of a rotation)
There are two switches that get opened somewhere along the cycle and prevent the 1000 advancement. This opening results in three 1000 advance pulses to be generated.
If one switch failed to open then 4 pulses would come out and the player would get 4000 points.
SO something is up with the switch!
This is the timing chart for the motor.
It was really difficult for me to line up the little picture at the top to what is actually in the machine but once I got it figured out I could then identify the switches.
Ah ha!!
This guy has had the end of the switch worn off! No wonder it's not getting activated!
Zoom out of the clock motor.
Another zoom.
What next??
I removed the bad switch from the clock motor so I could work on it. I have no Idea where I would find this switch on a holiday or any other day.
Lets fix it!
A. I drew a sketch of what I wanted the repaired switch to look like. (I looked at the other good switches)
B. I chopped the blade off of an old switch I had.
C. I shaped the blade by wrapping it around my screwdriver.
D. Not bad!
Now for some solder.
The two surfaces are actually soldered and not just the end so I'm pretty confident I have a good bond.
I reassembled the motor and fired up the machine.
AND the 3000 target now gives 3000 points!!
More things to debug another night.
