Complete BALLY SKATEBALL. Now sold, but still in the U.K.

[new forest pinball]

Ohh....yeah! Up next for a full restoration. Including cabinet and metalwork. A Bally 1980 skateball. This has been in storage for 11 years.
Really excited about this one......For all you real pinball geeks this machine is ESB1569 of 4150 made. Originally imported to France.
Lots to do on this baby....could take a while.........hope this post finds you all well....Keef.

 

[ronsplooter]

Awesome game Keith One of my favourite Bally games, looking forward to seeing the resto

 

[DRD]

Really looking forward to this one

 

[new forest pinball]

INITIAL INSPECTION REPORT.CABINET AND BACKBOX ONLY.

BAD.
1). Leading edges of backbox oversprayed in black. (Very common on games this age due to lazy operators on a quest to maximise profits. Well it is the intended purpose of a pinball machine after all.) much easier and cheaper to purchase a tin of black paint, than bothering with matching and purchasing a coloured paint.
2). Coin door has no hinges. Coin slots in DM currency so travelled from France to Germany at some stage.
3). A/C line filter bypassed in a bodgetastic style with the filter still in situation!!....
4). Wood split on one of the backbox hinge fixings.
5). Terrible original 4” speaker fitted which is broken. Intend to upgrade/modify this to an 8” or 6” x 9” depending on space available.
6). Backbox light board filthy but not cracked or split so will refurb good.

GOOD.
1). Cabinet pretty solid. No woodworm or rot. Deep grooving or splitting.
2). No graffiti or bubble gum on the undercarriage........
3). Backbox very good apart from the above mentioned split at hinge mount.
4). Original key set for door and backbox. Unusual but nice touch.

So in summary...compared to Dolly Parton this thing is mint!!.....hee hee....
Here are a few pictures. First thing we are going to explain is the easy removal of the side rails and glass channel. This is a question we are frequently asked about. “How come you can get those *#@**# screws out? How come you don’t put some serious bends in the rails? When I pull out those plastic glass channels they snap!!...”
1). So the way we do it is like this......we start at the rear of the cabinet to get things started. Remove the lower tack first. Leave the top one for now. If you do cause a bit of damage here, it will not be easily be seen or noticed. Two simple tools are required a wide putty knife and a pair of steel pincers.


2). Then carefully work the putty knife under the bottom of the rail directly under each consecutive tack, lift the knife toward you gently a couple of times until the tack lifts just slightly away from the rail so the pincers can get a grip. Grip the tack with the pincers then carefully pull and twist the tack anti-clockwise and out she comes.



3). Repeat this until all tacks along the side are removed. This will leave you with the last remaining tack on top of the rail at the rear.
4). Finally just slightly lift the trim upwards from the coin door end until the last tack at the back lifts up enough to grasp it with the pincers....job done.


To remove the plastic glass channel, again starting from the back , gently work your putty knife under it, twist it and it will lift out easily with no damage to the trim or woodwork. Do not be tempted to lift it upwards with your hands just follow the knife all along the trim and it will just fall out........

Few more pictures....
Diabolical speaker......shock horror.....


Fantastical line filter by-pass.


Cabinet stripped out and initial clean out.


More to follow shortly.....ciao fer now doodes...Keep safe.....

 

[AlanJ]

brilliant, thanks for the explanation on how to get those things off!

 

[stumblor]

Great log Keith will be glued to this one. There's two hands on those pincers were you taking the picture with your teeth!?

Edit - Mystery solved I spotted a third party

 

[new forest pinball]

COIN DOOR REFURBISHMENT.
Next up is the coin door. Not in bad condition generally. Few deep scratches and one dent on coin return slot.
What we intend to do is handdrill Polish it with autosol. Also we want to make some custom price windows. Get rid of the coin mechanisms and coin return mechanism. This sheds an awful lot of weight from the machine, which makes it easier to move.
So let’s strip it all apart. Removing all the mechanisms, lamps, coin eject rails and coin slots/ mounting plate.
Here’s what it looks like currently...

Here’s the back of it with three German coin mechanisms...


If we remove the very top four silver Philips screws the coin slots on the front of the door will drop down, revealing four further screws on the front of the coin door like this....


Then remove these four black Philips screws and the whole part comes away nicely. Undo the six screws fixing the coin slots and coin ID plates (DM in this case). Leaving us with just the cast alloy metal part for cleaning.
We use a simple oven/hob cleaner from Poundland. Does a good job....first soak it in hot soapy water for 20minutes. Then use a sponge scourge to give it a good scrub with your oven cleaner and it comes up lovely. Removing all that ground in grime and nicotine...Put that to one side for a while, and let’s strip off all the mechs and the coin door front...leaving us with this...


Time now to polish the coin door, normally I would have all these parts polished by Phoenix Polishers in Poole but he is shut currently for obvious reasons...So I am going to do it myself with a drill polish pad and some autosol paste. This is really tedious work, but if patience is exercised good results can be achieved.......This is it afterwards, with a new Bally door sticker and the coin slot carrier refitted...very happy with it.......


Next we will refit the coin door rear chassis. (Minus all coin mechanisms and associated parts). But including the slam tilt, start button switch, test menu/game adjustment switch , lamp holders to illuminate our custom coin slots and the return coin coil.
So it looks like this and weighs about 7kg lighter!.....

Next we wanted to blank off the coin door coin slots. Had an idea to use a couple of broken plastics and one of our stock “free play” blanks. Here’s an old plastic and a saw.....

We cut out a couple of inserts from the old plastics, these will look cool illuminated from the original lamps that we have remounted on the rear of the coin door...here is the end result of our coin door.......nooice!......


Back box strip down, and backglass illumination board up for refurbishment next.........

 

[new forest pinball]

BACKBOX LAMP BOARD REFURBISHED .....

First some good news .....matching serial numbers for cabinet and backbox. (ESB1569). Yippee! Not as common as you might think on Bally’s this age....here’s a picture. Notice the lovely hand brush painted black front edge of the back box! Awful job!

The rear of the backbox is pretty good, few light scratches and as usual the air vents are completely black with 40 plus years of dust....We will brush that out with a 2” paint brush. Easy.....here’s what the back looks like currently...

The backglass illumination board is looking absolutely terrible!...sporting a nicotine brown look! Notice the black feature lamp shades, normally white on Bally’s. Seen black a few times on classic sterns...very unusual. .....


Will have to remove these for respraying the illumination board gloss white. We will do this with a long shaft flat blade screwdriver...first let’s get the lamp board off from the backbox. To do this requires two simple things...remove the four screws from the long hinge plate. (Far left side). And remove the plugs from the lamp driver board , power board and the cpu.
Leaving you with this. Easy access to the board set.

Then remove the displays and the metal display tray assembly’s. (Five of each). Look someone has stuffed something behind one of them?...what is it?.....

Ha..ha...it’s a German school report from 1984!!......for a Kerstin Schmidt born 1968.........normally only find old cigarette packs,
Any ways...back to work....once all the displays are removed, by unplugging the connector and then they simply slide out from the front. Next remove the display tray assembly’s by removing the four Philips screws from the front of the plates...
Next we will remove the black plastic stapled feature lamp shades, and the lamps. Like this...

To stop the lamp holders from getting filled with spray paint we have a ready prepared “bag o White blankers “...
Hope none of you are “white blankers?!” here they are in both types #555 and #44’s.

To prepare the boardroom spraying, simply lightly rub down with a piece of wet and dry abrasive paper, then remove the remaining dust with a brush. Then insert the white blankers...like this....


On the back of the board tuck up all the connectors and wiring loom to ovoid any over spray...something like this..


Then it’s ready to spray...we recommend rust-oleom gloss white it’s great quality for the money.


Give it six light coats, let it dry for two hours, then replace the black shades....here it is after the paint and the shades replaced.


Finally today we will clean the display mounting assembly’s by washing them in hot soapy water then clean the front two edges on each mount with the oven/hob cleaner. (Where the screws fix it to the light board). Here they are before and after.......

Then reattach them to the light board...

Next up is to strip out the backbox and refurbish/ rebuild the displays.....
Notice that the one in this picture is a machine original with esb1569 serial I.d. Sticker...more tomorrow......
In the meantime we will place the screws and fixings for the illumination/lamp board in the tumbler.

 

[new forest pinball]

Got caught up with customer pcb repairs today...so not a lot done...
First job was to paint the cabinet air vent and the transformer guard red.....


Before we spray the cabinet, time to decide on the speaker upgrade ...went for 6” x 9” 3 way jbl in the end.....

FITTING PREP FOR 6” x 9” JBL SPEAKER.
first remove the old speaker and wood mount, with a flat blade screw driver.

Then cut your hole out from the underside of the cabinet like this.....
Fit a new mount on the inside like this...here’s one I made earlier....

Then we will put an exterior grill on to finish later..that will look like this....


Whilst we were there we cleaned up the metal switch plate....
Before....


After...


Then we sprayed the cabinet in a matching yellow....

 

[saladman]

Really enjoying the detail and photos on this build along with tips and tricks. Will you be keeping the school report with the machine for provenance?

 

[GezTheHealer]

Lovely attention to detail Keith. Love all the detail of the tips and tricks - bag o’ blanks. Plastic in the coin door is something I wanna do on my robot now..

 

[DRD]

I fink dis geez Keef mite knoe wot he's doin'

 

[new forest pinball]

Had a bit of an easy day today....went on a 9 mile work in the new forest..(where else!....). First thing I wanted to do was ch ck my transformer voltage/ frequency. Here’s the transformer chart from the cabinet so we know what’s what...



So studying this chart what’s our transformer set up for?........here it is ...


As you can see it has heavy yellow on number12. Heavy red on number 1 and the frequency link is 3 & 5.......
Looking at the chart we are on 220v 50hertz...so simply move heavy yellow from 12 to 7 and we have 240v 50 hertz....



Next we put the backbox in primer, and sanded off all that horrible black emulsion......uuugggg!,,,,,

 

[saladman]

Interesting notes regarding mains voltage set up, nice to have the diagram to refer to! What are the thoughts or reasoning on changing from 220V to 240V? Given that UK mains is now ~230V (at least by spec), my understanding is the setting the transformer to 240V would result in weaker solenoid action on the table, compared with setting for 220V. I'm no electronic engineer, and not sure what other components would be pushed too hard as a result of running on the 220V setting.

 

[DRD]

Voltage varies depending on where you are. I live near to the Trent Valley power stations, they were coal but have been moving towards gas.

I get 245v

 

[new forest pinball]

Hi all,
With the voltage query...similar to @DRD we have 244 -5v here to! To answer your question @saladman never had a problem with coil power or lamp voltage/brightness..after the flippers are rebuilt and new coils on pop bumpers and flippers, mostly also benefitting from new mechanisms never had a problem with power ever, hope that helps......

Anyway back to the job in hand....The Backglass. This skateball backglass is a 9/10 in our opinion, it has two very small artwork chips and a short light scratch on the boarders helmet!(titter titter...). Here are some pictures of it as is.....points to note..
1). Some vandal had drawn on black nipples to the board girl on bottom left, and written “flo” on the head of the main boarder.
(Interesting fact , there was a teenage boarding hero in Germany born in France!!...?) called Flo Marfaing could that be the same flo?.......
2). Back in the eighties Bally backglass came in two thicknesses with a three part black plastic trim. The two sizes were 1/8” and 3/16”...most we come across are the thicker size. (3/16”). But this one strangely enough is the thinner glass. 1/8”. Take a look at the parts catalogue.....

3). The bottom trim/ glass retainer has dulled, dented, marked and rusted over the decades so we will replace that with a new one........here’s how it looks....


4). Some original skateball backglass had the games designer name painted on the Hudson truck. Ours is not one of those.



Here is the “Flo”.......



Front of the backglass currently....


And here is the back. Not to bad really..a small build up of burnt dust and nicotine but not horrendous by any means. We will clean that all off later.....



The tools you will need to replace the backglass chrome trim and get rid of all the nicotine and burnt dust is as follows....
1). Windolene cleaner spray. Do not be tempted to try anything else. This stuff works really well and does no damage. Do not be tempted to use foam cleaner, detergent or glass polisher....
2). A nice soft blanket to work on...
3). A long thin piece of wood..(does not have to be oak).
4). Rubber mallet. A hammer is ok but we have dropped one of those before....so we stick with a rubber mallet.
5) couple o polishing clothes......

So remove the trim first so you can clean the area behind it for a nice smooth refit of the new one...Remove it like in the following picture. Just use gentle taps of the mallet. Start at one end and move along slowly tapping as you go...do not expect the trim to come away immediately at the end you start, it does not normally free up until you get about half way...so don’t panic.....continue to the far end and by then it would of just fallen off with no damage.... Like this...
Here are the tools.....


Here we are in action.........



She’s off...hooray........then what we do next is clean it....cover the rear of the glass in a good spray of windolene. Leave it to soak for about 2 minutes then wipe off...Job done........
After.......Rear...



Front...



Then we run a length of insulation tape along the bottom edge to protect the glass from the new trim like this....



Then tap the new trim in place using your polish cloth as protection to keep it nice and new looking.....



If your “credit” decal has lifted a bit at the edge like ours has here, just trim it off with a Stanley blade up to the graphics.



Job done...looks wonderful.....

 

[stevebm1]

does anyone reproduce those credit decals?,I heard of people using white letraset and clear gorila tape,but never seen any repo's for sale anywhere

 

[Paul R Owen]

That backglass reminds me of Phil Taylor

 

[DRD]

Phil -thy animal Taylor

 

[saladman]

You are racing along with this resto! I'm always terrified to touch the backglass with cleaner. Maybe because I have seen a lot of glasses with flaky paint. What are your thoughts on triple-thicking? I am working through some backglasses at the moment and first thing I do is get some triple thick on there to lock the paint down. Haven't had any nightmares yet, apart from the first one I did without masking the score windows.

Also never knew about different thicknesses of backglasses, good tips. Any recommendations for where to source new plastic trim parts? I often find these are broken, cracked or simply missing.

 

[Deleted member 2463]

dood are you flogging this after your are done?

 

[new forest pinball]

“CONVERSE, GO ORANGE,”
Ok as ole Chuck said back in the eighties..”converse! Go Orange!” Granted he was talking about the mountain bike brand, not pinball but who cares!(?) it’s lock down......


Yes it’s that crazy time, Stencilling...First thing to consider is the source for your stencils. I have tried 4 companies in my time and they all suck bar one. (Not keen to slag off the others, not our style). But promoting an excellent product is..so we only ever use Jeff’s stencils from Pinball Pimp. They are great once you know how to use them correctly......and are a licensed product.
Contained in the pack is a certificate of authenticity, which is nice. Although if we had any criticism it is about the certificate.
It is now just that a universal certificate. It used to carry a serial number and the name of the machine..but there you go!....
They come rolled in a jumbo tube , so first thing to do is lay them out flat for a couple of days before use to make the job easier.
Like this.....

Notice the smaller stencils, (backbox and front cabinet). Are joined together. So the next job is to cut them apart and then trim then to size...like this....



I am not going into to much detail on stencilling as it is very dull and time consuming......but here is a picture of it in place on the cabinet and backbox. Orange first , then the red.......thems the rules.......



Mask it up to avoid overspray...now the biggest secret is this...do not let the paint dry before removing the stencil or you will tear it all off! Also do not be tempted to apply to much paint..keep it to one coat if you can two if it looks patchy......depending on the temperature leave the paint for 5 - 7 minutes that’s all...today we left it for seven.... when you peel the stencil off do it slowly, and away from the newly painted edge. Do not rush. On this machine it has artwork that flows from front of cabinet to the sides, so you need to be doing the front of the cabinet first!.......so it looks like this.....


Ohh...nice join sir! “We like it! We like it a lot!......

 

[new forest pinball]

COWS, AND DISPLAYS......ok , strange day today....lost me mojo completely!?.....not a good night either if I am honest. Trouble sleeping. Covid19 and related issues no doubt.......Anyway so what I did today mostly...was walk Forrest Gump style...left home about half past nine with my wife my apprentice, (a.k.a. My daughter Rosie.) Dolly the chihuahua and fuzzy the Pom. Ended up walking for 10 miles, the sights and weather was fabulous down here in the new forest. Was therapy really....reminded me how fortunate we are to have the new forest on our doorstep. Thinking of those locked down in a city apartment!...not good.......met some cows among other animals.......did not get back until 3.30pm but did manage some nice whattsapp chats with a few friends on here..including @Kman @robotgreg @GezTheHealer and Mel at one stop when a 4g signal was available......



Got back with a bit of renewed zeal...got on with refurbing/repairing the displays. Interestingly 3 of the displays are originals with a ebs1569 serial number. So worth saving. First thing to do is brush off all that dust..uuggghhh! Here’s what they look like at the start....


Give them a good brush off all of it will shift no problem. Then with our good ole faithful windolene give both sides of the glass and plastic surrounds a good spray and polish.....First we will re-run all the solder joints on the segment driver I.c. And the socket pins...the pins look like this.....

Can you spot which ones of these pins are dry/bad solder joints...starting from number 1 far left up to 14 far right. We just resolder them all anyway for reliability and longevity......Did you get it right?....joints 1,2,5,9,10,11,12,13,14 we’re all bad on this display.........not normally that many........
After that we will test the transistors, resistors and driver I.c’s we use the “big daddy rebuild kit” for this easy!...

..so our five displays needed 4 resistors, 2 transistors and one driver I.c. Tried them in our fireball classic and they all work perfectly in test.
Fantastic news!.......Then anew card shield and job done......here is a finished one... C u soon doodes...K.

 

[carl lawrence]

Where can you buy the new card shields sir ?

 

[new forest pinball]

Where can you buy the new card shields sir ?

Hi Carl,
@carl lawrence good ole big daddy.....a dollar a pop. What I like about these is they are thick card. And dust coloured!..lol..
Reminds me to order some more ....only got 4 left.......we gobble these up!.... you will find them here....

https://www.bigdaddy-enterprises.com/

Keef...

 

[stumblor]

Amazing work so far Keef, inspirational. Really enjoying watching this progress.

Joints - I would have said 12, 13 and 14 but the rest looked fine to me. Goes to show!

 

[GezTheHealer]

Sorry to hear you’ve been struggling, take it easy Keith. I’ve prescribed myself afternoon snoozes in the sun and find it helps. Skate ball is looking a beaut and the step by step gives me and I’m sure others confidence for a restoration project. Cracking job! Sweet dreams! Hopefully better than the shadows;
View attachment trim.CD8B03E5-5E44-4A53-AC37-D876846D4E98.MOV

 

[DRD]

@new forest pinball how did you test the driver ICs please?

 

[saladman]

Stay strong @new forest pinball I find getting out in the sun is a great way of re-invigorating the soul... almost as much as de-gunking PCBs and refreshing solder joints
Top work

 

[new forest pinball]

Nice weather today so the outside workshop was perfect for spraying...so we finished the cabinet and backbox off in a nice gloss cherry red......noice!.....yes the lady’s in red...but no dancin cheek to cheek yet!...sorry to disappoint.....here’s how it looks currently. Apologies for the picture quality but the sun reflects off the gloss finish so it’s tricky to capture her in full glory....

Here is the cabinet......


We also got around to refitting the washed glass guides and the new red air vent. (Although shadows make it look black still. But it’s not.) Here is the backbox.



Finally we got around to fitting the new speaker. A JBL 6” x 9” 1980,s back shelf boy racer style......here’s the inside of the cab..



And the external protection grill. Underneath.



Next up...”purple rails, ...... “purple rails.” And metallic at that....find out what we are on about in the next thread..........