Allied Leisure New In Box Wild Cycle Repairs
In the 4 previous posts I unboxed and documented the state of the insides of a New In Box Allied Leisure Wild Cycle arcade machine.
It was a collector's dream of mine to one day unbox a vintage EM arcade or bingo machine so when I had the opportunity to buy this NIB Wild Cycle I did a two day 1400 km road trip to go get it.
You think that because the machine sat unused in its original box for 50 years, that it would be fully working in perfect condition? You are wrong. Cardboard box or not, time and storage conditions affect the machine.
Parts corrode: switch points, potentiometers, connectors, lamp sockets and zinc plated parts.
Grease dries up or goes hard
Rubber parts degrade, turn to goo, become brittle or deform.
Electronic parts like capacitors and photoresistors go bad.
Gearmotors get stuck in their own grease.
ALSO
There's always the possibility of rodent damage and cosmetically backglass art can degrade.
So If you want to buy a vintage New In Box game: know the risks!
You are rolling the dice on Schrödinger arcade machine. The machine inside the box could be mint or it could be a total POS or something in between. You won't know until you open the box.
Right out of the box my Wild Cycle partially worked. It turned on and it coined up but road disc did not turn and motorcycle did not steer.
The road disc just needed a bit of hand coaxing to get it started. The gearmotor that drove the disc was jammed in its own grease from lack of use.
For the motorcycle steering I had to change the "O-ring" on the cycle motor pulley and wipe off the old grease on the shaft. Over the years the O-ring got a flat spot that would cause it to jam.
When installing a rubber ring on the pulley. I discovered that the pulley was loose on the shaft. The nylon pulley has a set screw to secure it to the motor shaft. The set screw was loose and the motor shaft would spin freely. Again! right out of the box. A manufacturing defect. The words build quality come to mind...Again! First the crash unit then this pulley. This must have been a "Friday afternoon" machine.
The drive belt in the 8-Track tape player turned to goo over the years. The rubber had the consistency of a jujube melting in the sun. I had to scrape off the old belt and clean the residue with pure methanol.
For the time being I replaced the belt with a heavy duty rubber band until I can find a proper belt. It was more to validate that the 8-Track tape player actually worked. The rubber band, being more stretchy than a proper belt does causes a bit of WOW at startup. The important thing is to choose a rubber band that's not too tight as it will strain the motor and the capstan flywheel bearings. The rubber band has to be just tight enough not to slip but has to track properly.
Once the disc, motorcycle steering and 8-Track work properly. I could finally play a game on Wild Cycle. The first thing I noticed was the bad road detection. It can be seen in a video of another New in Box Wild Cycle: At 1:29 the motorcycle should not be able to drive over the fork in the road without crashing. The detection should be precise and unforgiving. Stay on the track or crash. On my game, the detection was even worse. It was vague and sometimes delayed. Unplayable!
The poor detection was caused by the old photoresistors. 50 years of total darkness inside the box made the original photoresistors slow to react.
To safely get to the photoresistors I had to take out the whole motorcycle unit and track.
First I had to remove the top shield.
Now we can see the motorcycle manakin better
Then I removed the unit to work on in on the "bench".
Nice side shot of the manakin. The paint job on it is pretty bad.
Back shot of the manakin and we can see the solenoid that tilts the motorcycle.
Old photoresistors.
New photoresistors. I put some protective tubing around the photoresistor legs to avoid the legs shorting out on the bracket.
With the new photoresistors, the crash detection is precise.
Last problem I fixed was more of a design flaw.
When a new game was started, if the previous game ended with a crash, the new game would immediately start with a crash. Sometimes even if the motorcycle was centered on the track the game would still start with a crash. I thought that was unfair to the player. I imagined this caused frustration in the arcades back in the day. "Why did it crash! No fair!"
That's because of a design flaw in the off track detection circuitry. The detection circuitry is powered at the same time as the projector lamp. The crash detection is instantaneous at the start of the game BUT the projector lamp does not start emitting light instantaneously. The filament needs to heat up and get white hot. That delay might be tiny, fractions of a second, but electronics don't lie. The photoresistors detect darkness and trigger the photo relay.
Notice the track is Beige-ish white clear while everything else is dark color. There's a black strip on each side of the track. When a black strip crosses the path of the photoresistors, it triggers a crash. Any darkness will cause a crash. Covering up the photoresistors or turning off the projector lamp causes a crash.
Also When the player got to the Champion track it would always cause a crash at the beginning for no good reason. This can be seen in the
New in Box Wild Cycle video at 1:43, motorcycle crashes despite being in the middle of the track. Again because of the delay between detection and the projector lamp turning on. Lamp turns off when the game is switches tracks, Photo relay is triggered by the darkness.
I fixed this design flaw using a Omron industrial delay timer to disable the photo relay at the beginning of a game OR when the player first gets to the Champion track. The delay timer is powered by the 120V of the projector lamp. At power up it will disable the photo relay for 2.5 seconds, giving the player just enough time to center the motorcycle on the track. After that the detection works normally for the rest of the game or until the projector lamp turns off again to switch to the Champion track. Again it gives the player 2.5 seconds to center the bike on the track. The modification only involved desoldering one wire from the original game wiring and is completely reversible if desired.
I ran some zip cord, held to the wiring loom with zip ties, to the bottom of the cabinet where I put the delay relay and I chose not to screw the relay socket to the bottom of the game to keep the game pristine.
Pin 2 and 7 of the delay timer are parallel to the projector lamp.
Pin 1 and 3 of the delay timer momentraily cut power to the photo relay for 2.5 seconds once the projector bulb is powered. 2 seconds on the dial is more like 2.5 seconds in reality.
With the repairs and the modification done, Wild Cycle is a fun and challenging game. The 8-Track music adds even more enjoyment to the experience.
