1949 Bally Champion One Ball Project

New arrival to the collection

1949 Bally Champion

A genuine bona fide One Ball Horse Racing gambling machine.

I've wanted a One ball for almost as long as I've been collection bingo machines...

Drove basically a whole day to and back to pick it up.

Just took a chance on it. The ad was up for a while despite the price being very good.

I didn't even know if the machine would fit in my minivan.

Just drove and took a chance.

Fortunately for me. The back leg was broken somewhere far back in the machine's turbulent past. It was held by a couple of flimsy pieces of wood, glue and a few wood screws. This allowed me to take the back leg off. That gave me just enough space to fit in the Sienna.

This game is Massive. It's HEAVY. I had no Idea how bulky these games were.

The fit was so close, I had to take off the front levellers just to clear the rear hatch.

Once I got the machine home however. I had to deal with the broken cabinet...

I decided to make the back leg removable IF (and that's a big if) I ever want to move the game.

First, I removed and cleaned the original repair.

I got some construction adhesive, 3/4 in plywood and carriage bolts at the hardware store.

I cut some pieces of plywood.

Cheapskate trick: If you only need a small piece of plywood and don't want to spend for a whole 4 X 8 sheet. Most big box home improvement stores have a cutting service department. They usually have cutting remnants. They aren't supposed to sell remnants but they usually do anyway. I got a convenient 12 inch by 8 foot stip of plywood for a canadian fivver. Pretty sweet...

PL glue job with 1 1/4" nail gun staples (not shown) and obligatory clamps. 24 hour cure time.

Next step was drilling holes for the carriage bolts

I made a crude template for drilling the necessary hoes.

Mostly just to have the same pattern on both sides of the cabinet.

The finished product is very solid and the back leg is removable if ever necessary.

I made sure everything was straight before bolting it together.

It doesn't look too bad.

Next step is to take care of the crummy jones connectors.

I predict lots of soldering in my near future. 

This is looking like a typical pindude152 project. Driving way too far for a NO value game that requires a ton of work and potentially lots of spare parts.

I'm not complaining, I welcome the challenge.

BTW

I'm looking for a (free) scan of the Schematics and/or the manual, since neither are available on IPDB.

To be continued.

Heck! I don't even know how this is going to end. I'm posting stuff as I do the repairs .