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Complete Dealer's Choice, Williams, EM

AlanJ

AlanJ

Site Supporter
5Years
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
8,553
Location
Leeds, West Yorkshire
Ebay purchase - so bought unseen, only going on the photos provided. Arrived late last night and is as poor as I expected. I haven't bothered looking inside yet. It's been sat in a garage for several years and not been in a working condition for many years.

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It arrived 8.30 p.m. last night after a horrendous journey for the delivery guys, so I've not had time to really look at it yet as it's sat in my garage. First job is to get it into the house - I can't work on it in the garage, it is just too cold at present. In the flesh I like it more that when I saw it on ebay, the card design theme reminds me of playing card games with my grand parents as a kid, so bringing back some lovely memories.
 

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Nice project, chimes and 16 score reels to service, you do seem to like your pink machines. Good luck with the project fella:thumbs:
 
I'm jealous of that; once polished up it will be fantastic, 4 player EM's are fantastic. Hadn't really played any until pinburgh last year and went away loving them (and being grateful that I was able to play them decent unlike many of the more modern games!).
 
Neil McRae said:
I'm jealous of that; once polished up it will be fantastic, 4 player EM's are fantastic. Hadn't really played any until pinburgh last year and went away loving them (and being grateful that I was able to play them decent unlike many of the more modern games!).
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I bought it as I wanted a multi-player EM game to complement my single player one.

The game play on multi-player EM's is often worse than on a single player. E.g. on a single player machine, features can be carried over from ball to ball, but on the multi-player they often reset at each new ball as they hadn't the room/cost constraints to put in enough feature relays etc to handle 'remembering' each players' progress from ball to ball.
 
Watching this with interest, what are your plans with the "planking" I believe it is called on the pink of the play field.
 
AlanJ said:
I bought it as I wanted a multi-player EM game to complement my single player one.
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Good call, my only regret with my Rocket III is that it's single player, but it's a cool space race theme and has the carry over features as you describe. That aside pinball is at it's best playing with friends imo so multiplayer is a top feature.

While I think on Andy the Legend sells used score reels for peanuts, worth adding one to your next order just for the spares or coil alone, for your 16 reels :-
https://pinparts.co.uk/products/used-score-reel-with-tested-coil
 
So first look:
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Broken sockets in the backbox, but will probably still function.
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strained springs on a score stepper
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missing coil on the credit stepper/score reel - 2 wires free - so should be an easy fix

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A load of loose wires, I believe these should have plugs on and will optionally plug into the jones socket below and are used to select the high score credit values. So the game should function without these being fixed initially.

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bank of relays in backbox - look intact, so does the player 4 score reels above.

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Backbox is basically all there.

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Rusty Metal backbox cover, it doesn't fit on, but I think the key&lock mechanism is the wrong way round. Rust needs sorting.

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Interesting feet - big circular metal affairs. Legs are a gun-metal gray

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Cabinet well worn.

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Backglass is crackled

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Broken plastic

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worn and dirty playfield.

Now let's look in the cab:
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The usual crap in the coin box. 3 balls, they are rough & knackered. The bits of wood are from the cabinet, underneath were the backbox connects onto the main body.

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Lots of Dirty contacts, rust. urgh.

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Labels always help!

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underside of pf looks pretty clean, some target switches broken/missing, but all the flipper assemblies look to be there. all relays etc, all look to be there.

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Lots of dirty in the bottom, more stepper units in here.

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Tilt assembly has gone.

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missing coin mechs - not an issue for me. Rust!

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rusty under the lock down bar.

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3 cut off wires?? Will have to trace those and find out where they should be going?

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Chimes all present, fuse board is right underneath - not the easiest place to put it! Transformer leafs are quite rusty. As is a lot of the metalwork all over the machine.

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An interesting sort of stepper switch unit right at the back of the cab. It's something to do with coins per play. More rust.

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another stepper right at the back - looks fairly clean, cleaner than the two further forward, but will still probably need looking at. The relay switch contacts at the bottom of the pic look dull, might need a clean, but I wont be cleaning anything unless it doesn't work.

In summary, looks like the machine is more or less all there, there are a bunch of cables ends complete with jones plugs in the bottom cabinet, so looks like should all plug back into the backbox ok.
Lots to do, need to have a good think about what I'm gong to tackle first.
 

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You should ping the EM specialists going to Texas they might have a load of parts that they could bring?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
astyy said:
Good call, my only regret with my Rocket III is that it's single player, but it's a cool space race theme and has the carry over features as you describe. That aside pinball is at it's best playing with friends imo so multiplayer is a top feature.

While I think on Andy the Legend sells used score reels for peanuts, worth adding one to your next order just for the spares or coil alone, for your 16 reels :-
https://pinparts.co.uk/products/used-score-reel-with-tested-coil
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Hi Yes thanks - I've already had a couple from him for the last project, looks like this will need some more!
 
astyy said:
Good call, my only regret with my Rocket III is that it's single player, but it's a cool space race theme and has the carry over features as you describe. That aside pinball is at it's best playing with friends imo so multiplayer is a top feature.

While I think on Andy the Legend sells used score reels for peanuts, worth adding one to your next order just for the spares or coil alone, for your 16 reels :-
https://pinparts.co.uk/products/used-score-reel-with-tested-coil
Click to expand...
Hi Yes thanks - I've already had a couple from him for the last project, looks like this will need some more!
 
Good luck - that is a huge amount of work!

Will help if I can but used to working with Gottliebs - some stuff is the same though.

Sealing glass etc etc
 
Re. those loose wires - if there's nothing obviously missing from the motor panel, they might be meant to have single pins on (as with the replay adjustment plugs in the back box) for use with the pricing adjustment sockets I see nearby
 
Jay Walker said:
Re. those loose wires - if there's nothing obviously missing from the motor panel, they might be meant to have single pins on (as with the replay adjustment plugs in the back box) for use with the pricing adjustment sockets I see nearby
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Thanks @Jay Walker - good point. I've got the schematic, it's in 3 photos someone has taken and uploaded to IPDB, gonna blow them up and print it out so I can read and follow it.
 
I ummed and arred over buying this, so glad I didn't...! that looks like a huge amount of work to sort... Good Luck! :thumbs:
 
Moonraker said:
I ummed and arred over buying this, so glad I didn't...! that looks like a huge amount of work to sort... Good Luck! :thumbs:
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It is certainly going to keep me out of trouble for rather a long time, I have no sense of urgency so just going to do work on it when I feel the need to have my head in a pinball machine.
 
Today my progress was hampered by snow. I needed to reverse one car out of the garage in order to move the machine into the house. Opened the garage door to a 4 foot snow drift. Decided not to bother trying to move it, spent the day just looking and pondering over how best to tackle this project, and how far do I want to go with it.....? The schematic pics I have downloaded don't print very well, I wasted a good hour trying to clean the images up and blow them up into legible printed versions. No such luck, then the laser ran out of toner.....Wine O'clock then.
 
astyy said:
Hopefully not much required to get this working/playing then decide on major bits. As you say this is a hobby and something to do in the background for fun as/when:thumbs:
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That's the approach I think is best too - get it going mechanically and prove it works, then work on the asthetics afterwards. I'm not looking to make concours level machines, just getting this working and looking as best it can without major works and within my own skill level. I'll have a go at stabilising the backglass, but I must admit to being tempted by bgresto - I've emailed them for a quote.
 
Started to strip the playfield. There are some useful non-faded coloured parts under the posts etc. Gives me an idea of how this used to look (as well as some nice pics on IPDB of course).

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Filthy and it's ingrained in. How bet to tackle this - is it a Naptha based product?
 
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