Working on Bally On Beam

A shot of On Beam with it's guts hanging all out. I love Bally's of that era for their design: top glass frame, sturdy playfield and score motor panel that can prop up and out.

The problem was the outhole not registering. The cause was a switch on the trip bank carry over switch stack. A small switch blade adjustment did the trick.

Pinball lifestyle: Community and Bally Venice

Bally Venice is assembled in my workshop. To get it there, I needed the help of a few friends. I am grateful for their assistance.

1968 Bally Venice Bingo

When you're in a hobby like Bingo machines, you need a network of friends around you. Because bingo machines are few and far between, you need people on the lookout for you. Bingo machine heads are really heavy, you need help to move them. Also, you absolutely need the manual and schematic if you hope to being able to fix the game and usually, they're not inside the game.

Whether it's lending parts to a buddy that needs to get a game working asap OR riding shotgun for a seemingly dodgy pinball transaction. To appreciate pinball as a hobby, you need people around you.

I was thinking the other day about the difference between a "normal friend" and a "pinball friend". I keep a mental list of my normal friends who have given me help to move or assemble a pingame because it's unlikely they will do it a second time. On the other hand, I have a few pinball friends that are always ready to help move something big and heavy down the stairs, and myself, I will help them however I can.

bingo.cdyn.com has always been the source for bingo documentation. Until now, the website however did not have any good pictures of the Venice internals so I will gladly send the pictures to Phil so that bingo aficionados all over the interwebs can use for reference.

Now that Venice is assembled I will work on it when I have the time. I have other shop jobs to take care of. Most of the switch points in Venice need burnishing and the special game is a mystery, but all of the internals are sound and when I first put the power on to the game, the credits on the display knocked off to zero so the games isn't completely brain dead.

Special Thanks to:

R.A.B. For acting as a broker in the Venice transaction
James S. For letting me store the game at his place for the weekend and letting me crash there overnight.
Bob G (ShootAgain). For helping me lift the head into place.
Julie L. For general help and understanding.
Phil Hooper For his website http://bingo.cdyn.com/ the best and only place for bingo manuals and schematics

More pictures of this EM juggernaut

Bally Venice Head

Bally Venice door

Bally Venice special game panel

Pinball's influence in graphics design

Here is a picture of a box for a cat toy my Freundin bought a few weeks ago for her kitties.

Obviously, the graphics designer likes pinball. The design even features a coin slot on the front of the box.

Stuff like this keeps pinball alive in the public consciousness.

New Arrival: Bally Venice 20 hole Bingo machine

My newest arrival: Bally Venice 20 hole bingo machine with the "Super double-up" side game. When It was first released in 1968, Bally didnt even bother making a flyer for it. It's the second Bally Bingo machine with a side game, the first being Bally Orient. Bally Venice was followed by Bally London bingo.

OK.

As I write these words, I've had the game for 13 days already. Not exactly fresh news. I had a bit of writer's block. Sorta. I didnt feel like publishing anything. The game is still in two parts in the middle of my livingroom. I don't want to jump into it. I have other projects to wrap up first. Patience.

I read somewhere, on someone else's blog: "How to write a successful blog". I didn't actually click the link and read how to write a successful blog but It sure isn't by writing about old pinball machines and bingo machines. Aim for the lowest common denominator. Popular subjects: Eating, Travelling, Cars, Potty training toddlers, Not Bingo machines. Furthermore, people don't want to read anymore. It takes too long. Make a video and put it on youtube.

Luddite! Whatever!

I am what I am. I can't help it. I write about what I like.

I digress.

I'm relieved to finally have this extremely rare Bally Venice 20 hole bingo machine. I knew of the location of this particular game for almost 4 years. It took the help of a good friend to convince the owner to sell it. It was part of a bingo machine lot and the seller didn't want to sell me just that one game.

The backglass is broken but the mechanicals are pristine. This is one of the most complex bingo machines ever produced. So complex that it has a small transistorised circuit for the Odd / Even detector for the side game. Transistors! In a bingo machine from 1968! Predates other games by at least 5 years. The only EM flipper pinball machine with a transistorized circuit I know of is 1973 Williams Travel Time and it had ONE transistor.

My Carnival Queen: the game with issues

My Carnival Queen has broken down for the nth time.

Even my non-bingo pinball buddies recognize the Carnival Queen for being temperamental. A.K.A. Always broken. With good reason! This game is worn down to the whitewood. It was operated for 29 years continuously. In it's heyday it was played from opening to closing of the bar or tavern it was in. It's the first magic screen bingo I ever fixed. Since then, I've fixed a few!

 

 

It's most recent failure was the search wiper hub grenading. Probably due to the bad batch of neatsfoot oil I used when I last lubricated the clutch washers. Too much drag. The bakelite part just couldnt take the pressure anymore and broke.

Fortunately I had a spare hub. The replacement was simple enough. I re-lubed the search wiper clutch and it was good to go.

 

 

I remember the mood I was in when I first fixed that game. I was down. My marriage was falling apart. I was fixated on fixing that game. By the time I finally got the game working, my now ex-wife had already moved out.

 

Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe it was the red wine. But when I played the first game after this most recent repair. The machine all lit up and jaunty. It brought a shrinkwrap of tears to my eyes.

On Beam Trip bank armature mystery?

When I started working on On Beam. I noticed some of the trip bank armatures looked a bit weird. Some were broken, some were replaced with some strange mystery part that sorta did the job.

More importantly, I noticed that the first armature, on top of being all messed up, was missing a small 90 degree piece of metal that would stop half of the trip bank from resetting when the reset motor was running. Without that small 90 degree piece the game would never work properly.

The other trip armatures were not a problem to replace since I had a bunch of spares from parts machines as they are commonly used in later bingo machines.

The first armature is cactus but the 4th trip has the part I need

Serendipitously, I also noticed that the 4th armature was the wrong kind installed for that trip, but it was the correct armature I was missing for the first trip. The 1st trip required A-261-12. The 4th trip had a A-261-12 but required a A-261-11. So my missing part problem was solved...

A hodgepodge of armatures

From the Bally 1976 parts catalog

This whole story of the A-261-12 in the wrong place got me thinking. How or why was it installed in the wrong place, yet so conveniently...there for me to use it to fix the game?

Maybe it goes back to when the machine was assembled at the Bally factory. Maybe the factory worker assembling the trip bank ran out of A-261-11 and installed a A-261-12 instead.

Maybe that factory worker was really a latent precog. That he subconsciously knew that by installing that part, he would save a lot of grief to one of the future owners of the game that would be stuck with the broken missing part. Maybe the factory worker's precog ability subconsciously guided his hand to the wrong parts tray.

Maybe I got the part in there. That is the future me, reflecting on how I once had this On Beam game but that it never did work properly because of the missing part. But fortunately for the future me, Time Travel technology would be available, allowing the future me to go back in time, get that armature, hastily install the part in the game before I would first acquire the game...

Maybe it's a different me. That is, an analogue of myself in a parallel universe. Very similar to this one except that the Time Travel equations and all the other technological details are commonly available. In this parallel universe, time travel tourism is not illegal but strongly frowned upon. Unfortunately for my parallel self, the missing armature is no longer available in his universe. Therefore, it was simpler to go back in time to get the missing part. Maybe this other self from the parallel universe built a time machine to go back in time to the Bally factory in 1969 for a tour of the plant on the day that my On beam was being assembled. Maybe my other self distracted the factory worker at a critical moment, resulting in the wrong armature plate being installed. Unfortunately for my parallel self, he built his time machine from cheap eBay parts. Resulting in a faulty time machine that not only travels through time but also through parallel universes. He ended up in this (my) past timeline, similar enough to his own timeline for him not to notice the shift until he travelled back to his own present where he would find his On Beam still missing the part. Thinking his time altering actions were all in vain.

Eventually the Time police caught up with all these timeline altering shenanigans. To return the equilibrium to the timeline, a Time Police constable installed in my On Beam a faulty A-261-12 armature that broke soon after I got the machine working. 

Fortunately for me in this timeline, Pinball Resource has the part in stock. I ordered a bunch. Apparently, PBR bought a parts inventory from a defunct amusement operator, the armature was part of that inventory lot, but maybe there's a lot more the this story....

Maybe one of my time travelling parallel self stepped on a cockroach in 1969 that wasn't supposed to die. It died only because of the On Beam armature saga. Maybe it resulted in a similar timeline chain reaction as in Ray Bradbury's short story A sound of thunder?

Pinball cabinet repair tip: Re gluing a Bally head

The first thing I did when I got On Beam was repair the head. The bottom panel fell off.

To repair, I first removed the backglass and the backbox insert. The insert is held in by a series of machine screws on each side of the panel. Then I carefully set the insert aside .

On Beam broken head

With the backbox insert out, it's a good time to check all the counters, relays and stepper units since it's easier to work on them out of the head. Also, once the head is glued up, it needs time to cure so it's a good thing to pass the time working on the game and checking things over ;-)

On Beam backbox insert

Cleaning a stepper unit disc

One thing to keep in mind is that Bally cabinets of that era use very few fasteners, the cabinets mostly hold with tongued, grooved and mitred joints and glue. So once a piece is broken, like in the case of my On Beam, the repaired re glued joint will never have the strength it had when it was intact. However, the game is cactus if I don't do anything to repair the cabinet and give this rare game a new life. The head does have a couple of factory wooden corners to strengthen the joint so it helps a bit to take some stress off the repaired joint.

Glue Job

I use Lepage carpenters yellow glue for the glue job. Once glue is applied and the pieces stuck together. I use carpenters clamps to hold the pieces tight while the glue cures. It's also good practice to verify squareness of the backbox before setting the piece to dry definitely. I put some stretch wrap on the floor under the workpiece to avoid messing up my kitchen floor with glue. A clean and damp cloth can be used on the workpiece to remove the excess glue and runs.

Re inserting Insert

Once the glue has cured for 36 to 48 hours, the insert can be reinstalled. A good trick I found to avoid damaging factory information cards is to fold pieces of cardstock on the sides over the info cards before carefully re-installing the insert.

Repaired head