Bingo Pinball not resetting

After some discussion online with the experts on what my next steps should be, I plugged the United Brazil Bingo Pinball machine and and manually set it up a couple of games (by pushing on the lever).

When turned on, it is supposed to rest back to zero. I plugged it in and turned it on:

and it runs! but it never resets back to zero.


After digging around and looking at it, it looked like the solenoid that was pushing the reset level wasn't doing its job....seemed like a straightforward sticky solenoid plunger.


I pulled the unit out of the Bingo:

and pulled off the solenoid.


Surprise! it was in great shape, not mushroomed or sticky at all. In an effort to figure out what is going on, I managed to film myself working the unit manually:

Analyzing the movement, it looks like the little lever connected to the tiny spring is not moving the way it should around that shaft. I'm going to pull off the lever and clean the shaft.

A big thanks

A big shoutout to the previous owner of my United Brazil bingo pinball game.

In order to get the Brazil upstairs and into my workarea, I had to remove the topper. No big deal, those come off all the time. But in the ancient pre-electronics era when this thing was made (circa 1956) they didn't have modern connectors.

So what did they do?

They used an ancient knife-connector style of thing. The problem is that the "knives" fit in multiple connectors.

I searched desperately for some method other than the "try it and see if smoke comes out" method. Fortunately the previous owner was smart enough to put a dot of colored paint on each connector - you can see the yellow dot easily on the top of the leftmost connector.

Then it was simply a matter of checking each "knife" and matching up the colors!

As a side benefit of this work. The lights now have come on, so apparently part of my problem was just corrosion on the connectors!

Brazil backglass artwork continues

Work continues on the Brazil backglass artwork.

I have made it to a pretty hammered section so the progress is slow. Part of the interesting work is attempting to duplicate the artists casual style.

For example, this is a section of a scan of my original glass:

What you are seeing is a bit of the pennant on the top of a sailboat mast and the shoreline in the background. Note how the white of the flag at the top does not match the black outline. The "shore" is even worse, with the black lines mostly working as a guideline.

It means that I don't have to be too perfect as the original was not photo-perfect, but I want it to be as faithful to the original as possible.

Below is a side-by-side section of the sailboat. On the right is the original, not much there... on the left (top) is my best guess of what the sailboat looked like originally:

Note how the lines are not perfect. I hope I did a faithful job on it. Below is a GIF showing both compared:

One sailboat down, 2 more to go.....Work continues!

Brazil Artwork Repair

The problems with attempting to redo the artwork can be tricky. Here is a tiny example:

This is the only reference image I have to work from. Note the small white box in the center - presumably an ice chest.

On my backglass, this is what it looks like:

My problem is twofold. The shadow and the lines. Projecting the lines gives me a incorrect perspective:

The leftmost lid line is not the same angle as the bottom right box line, everything looks wrong. So how much do I faithfully follow what is there, and how much is the result of a paint chip sliding around or missing pieces.

The shadow is another issue, the notch at the bottom left looks like it is supposed to be there, but I am not so sure about the one at the bottom right.

With a little fudging and nudging I was able to recreate what I think is about what it looked like:

I tried to duplicate the original artist's imperfect style, with wobbly lines and all.

Now on to the next object in the restore......

Backglass Art Restoration

Just a quick post to show I am still working on the United Brazil Bingo Pinball backglass artwork restoration. In addition to my other post on artwork restoration here are a couple of new "before" shots:

 

You would think this section should be fairly easy to restore. The breaks and tears are in solid-color areas. Of course the reality is that I have to redraw the entire area in Photoshop anyway, but it is relatively easy as the level of detail is low.

This one is going to be tougher. For two reasons. One is that there is a large amount of missing detail. As I mentioned before, this backglass simply does not have any high-resolution scans I can use for reference. And two this is a relatively complex area. It is doable, it will just take some time, especially with my limited skills.

United Brazil backglass artwork

Taking a break from digging around in the electronics of the United Brazil, I decided to tackle the other part of it that is in poor shape - the backglass.

In many cases, when a pinball backglass is old and the paint is flaking off, a new one can be purchased, either a replacement from eBay off another machine or from companies that specialize in creating replacement artworks.

In this case, the Brazil is quite rare and none of that is possible. Looking at the backglass, I decided to attempt to make a new graphic myself, filling in the missing pieces as best as I could.

I started looking for some reference images online, but there are only a couple and all are very low rez (less than 500 pixels wide) so they are pretty useless for this kind of work.

But I wanted to get started, I tried scanning the image on my flatbed scanner. It turns out the thickness of the glass puts it completely out of focus! It would have to be a camera then.

I set up my camera as close to 90 degrees as I could to prevent barrel distortion and took several high-res pics, then stitched them together in Photoshop resulting in a 6000x7000pixel image.

(small version)

Then I started fixing the "easy" stuff, the geometric shapes like circles and squares, the sky, etc.


I am slowly making progress, here is an example:

That area is complete. But down in the complex stuff it is a different story:

on the left is the original scan. On the right is the same area as it looks now, as you can see I have some of it done but the complex shapes like the building and the man walking are still to be done, and in some cases it is gone and I don't know what is supposed to be there. But it will end up being better than it was and I will still have the old one for any purist collectors.

It is a slow process. Things like the letters. In an effort to be authentic, I am scanning each letter individually. In many cases different versions of the same letter exist - a "T" doesn't look exactly the same everywhere, so I am assuming they were hand-drawn. Rather than just use a font I am doing my best to make it as perfect of a reproduction as I can.

Brazil Legs

(dated January 2017)

Leg refinishing the Brazil Pinball was pretty straightforward.

The legs are simple wood. I removed the fittings (bolts that held them to the table, the bottom spacers and the side bolts that prevented the wood from splitting) and threw them all into the tumbler for polishing.

The legs themselves were sanded down smooth to get rid of the old finish, scuff marks, etc.

I then put a couple of coats of stain on them and several coats of clear.

The bolts and parts came out of the tumbler looking like new and it all bolted back together just like it was supposed to.

With the legs on, I was able to remove the sawhorses and let it stand on its own!

Turning on the United Brazil

(dated December 2016)

I turned on the United Brazil pinball. Despite its good looks inside, nothing happened other than 2 lights came on. Still - that the lights came on indicated the power was good for at least part of it.

I checked the fuses - amazed at how little has changed. These are literally the exact same fuses I purchase now at the hardware store in a 60 year old machine. The fuse holders are the same, everything is the same except that since it dates before electronics, everything is individually wired with a wire.

The fuses looked good:

I located the schematic and dug out my multimeter. Initial results looked good, the power coming off the transformer seemed ok.

My problem is that the access panel to the power area is on the side of the unit. I need to get it moved into my workarea so I can easily get access.

In order to do that I need to get it off the sawhorses (I removed the legs for transport)

The wooden legs are in poor shape so rather than simply bolting them back on, I decided to refinish them and get them back to shape first.

United Brazil Bingo Pinball

(dated November 2016)

Today was a red-letter day! I spotted an ad for a "classic pinball machine" at a local shop and went to take a look. It was in surprisingly good shape, not like some:

And the price was good, real good. It looked like it might a restoration project.

On closer view it turned out to be a 1956 "United Brazil" Bingo Pinball machine: Original Brochure

and when we got it home and really got a look at it, other than the backglass, it was in pretty good shape: