Monday, February 27, 2012

Another Medieval Madness Repair Day

I have been so busy lately, I haven't had much time to work on my Medieval Madness machine.  Finally I ordered some parts (from the newly redesigned Marco Specialties site!) and set aside some time this past weekend to get my hands dirty.

My first job was replacing the coil on the damsel tower ramp diverter.  Here's how the old coil looked, compared to the new one:


About a year ago I replaced the sleeves on ALL of my coils, which I highly recommend for three reasons: 1) It really helped me familiarize myself with all of the components underneath the playfield  2) The coils worked a lot better with new sleeves! and 3) It helped me pinpoint a few coils that were starting to go bad, like the one shown above.  Not only had it burned through its paper, but it was almost impossible to get the new sleeve in because the coil had swelled.  I'm glad I was able to replace this before it froze and blew something on a circuit board.

After swapping out that coil I installed this great set of Medieval Madness protectors.  Some of the exposed plywood was starting to chip in high-traffic areas, but now all are protected by a nice layer of metal.  I took a photo, but it's hard to see them, so I indicated where they are with some arrows...


The other big repair news is that I finally cleaned my machine properly!  When I bought my Medieval Madness I was given a bottle of Mill Wax, which is full of petroleum distillates and basically has no real wax in it.  I've been using it for the last couple of years, because I didn't know any better!  But after reading this lengthy thread on rec.games.pinball I decided to make the jump to cleaning with Novus 2, then Novus 1, then a carnuba paste wax.  I can already tell the difference, my playfield is looking good and playing like greased lightning!

All of this is small pinball news compared to the MEGA-news that Jon is sitting on.  Hopefully he'll spill the beans soon!

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