Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[MattBLancs]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

[MattBLancs]

P.s. the paint touch ups has made a massive difference!

[myglaren]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

Or a new one over the old one.

[Zelandeth]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

Or a new one over the old one.

I've got high resolution photos of it, so if I wanted to have it recreated (being a silver foil backed one it's not something I could do at home) at a later date I could definitely do that. Though it's technically wrong for the car anyway - a period and geographically correct sticker would have read DDR rather than D.

[Zelandeth]

Big old box was picked up from Parcel Force today. Which has been through the wars a bit en route.



Though the innards were well protected and nothing had escaped.



This is what was fished out after a solid ten minutes of de-packaging.



It's astonishing how much pipe there seems to be in even a really basic car exhaust for a tiny car when it's off the car and inside the house.

It doesn't sound like a lot on paper, but you can definitely see it is bigger than the standard pipe when you compare them. Doesn't look ridiculous though. The 45mm one would look distinctly more conspicuous.



Apparently there are differences to how the innards of the heat exchanger/expansion box are set up compared to the standard one. How much difference it makes in the real world remains to be seen.

It's actually only held on the car in four places, and they're all actually easy enough to get to. Only two require crawling around under the car, the ones on the silencer. I'll have a quick look at the state of those tomorrow so I know what sort of fun and games we're in for. Everything else has been off recently so shouldn't be too much of a headache.

[Zelandeth]

Went out to have a look at the exhaust on the Trabant. The intention was to just see what was going to be involved in removing it. Yeah, less than ten minutes later...



Total of six fasteners - four 10mm bolts on the hangers and two bigger ones on the manifold clamp, and the jubilee clip for the heater outlet and the whole thing just drops off. The exhaust doesn't go up and over anything, and there's plenty of room under the car so it can just be pulled off intact.

Turns out the silencer was in pretty poor shape so I definitely made the right call to replace the lot.



It's definitely perforated somewhere around the inlet side. Plus a black spot on the underside I originally thought was a splash of underbody sealant actually turned out to be a hole.



I'm kind of curious to attack this with the grinder to see if the internal structure is any different to a "normal" one to optimise things for the two stroke application. It also rattles...so I'm kind of curious to see whether it's full of carbon crud - or the bits of metal which escaped from the original engine. I'll need to cut the main pipe down to take it to the recycling centre anyway as it's unwieldy with it being so long at the moment.

It's basically impossible to judge the condition of the front box because it's hidden away inside the outer shell - but it externally looks pretty rusty and given that it's most likely as old as the rest of the system I'd not want to trust it long term. Especially as there's very much a safety aspect here as a failure can result in combustion products being pumped into the cabin.

Less than an hour after I started we were done.



That is the easiest exhaust swap I have done, ever. Okay, maybe the rear engined Skodas are possibly easier - assuming the fasteners hadn't rusted away to nothing and/or the manifold to downpipe studs decided not to snap anyway, though that always seemed to be a gamble.

I was planning to do this on a ramp, but it just seemed so simple I just got on with it.

It sounds way different. Will take it out for a proper test tomorrow, but a very quick run round the block shows it sounding far sharper, and it is definitely a bit louder - but not obnoxiously so given the car we're talking about here.



Excuse the portrait video. I'll try to get a better one tomorrow and a proper test drive.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Zel Can't wait to hear it

[Zelandeth]

Today on "random things you can easily fit in the back of a big Volvo."





I did add a couple of straps on before driving to ensure that I didn't get decapitated by a pinball table if I braked too hard.

I do really appreciate the fact the design of the integrated dog guard. I don't have the back seats down very often, but the fact that I can just fold it up out the way without needing to mess about removing it every time is really nice. Oh, and it doesn't rattle which puts it say ahead of pretty much every after market one I've ever worked with.

Here's what will be making up the chassis for my virtual pinball table.





How long it is since this saw service is evidenced by the coin door.



The fact that it says "NP" I'm guessing is "new pence" which puts it in the early 90s I think.

I absolutely wouldn't have been willing to pull apart a working machine for this sort of project - or even one which had any real chance at being restored. This however is one which has already been used as a parts donor to restore another table, which sits better with me. It's a bit scruffy, and isn't a cabinet that was used in many games, so the odds of finding someone who needs exactly this cabinet to get them going is pretty slim. Plus I'm not going to be massively hacking up the cabinet anyway, so if someone did want to restore it somewhere 30 years down the road I won't be doing anything to stop them.

I'll take a closer look at things tomorrow to confirm what we've got and to start taking some measurements so I can start making a shopping list.

[CitroJim]

Wow! That's magic Can't wait to see the end result of this project Zel

The fact that it says "NP" I'm guessing is "new pence" which puts it in the early 90s I think.

Much earlier I would think. The UK went decimal on the 15th February 1971 - I remember it like it was yesterday... So I'd say early 70s or possibly even earlier as 5, 10 and 50p coins were in circulation concurrently with 1 and 2 shilling coins - same physically - from 1968 onwards...

The 50p was introduced when the 10 bob note was withdrawn from circulation as far as I remember...

[Zelandeth]

This one definitely won't date back to the decimalisation period given that Eight Ball Deluxe LE which this machine is wasn't launched until 82. I'm pretty sure the "new" in this case will be from the period in the early 90s when the 5, 10 and 50 pence coins were shrunk to slightly more wallet friendly dimensions. Unlike when they messed about with the pound coins a few years ago, I seem to recall that these were phased out over a far longer period so things were labelled as "new pence" for quite a while afterwards.

Would also tie in with the dates. By then this would have been a pretty old machine which was likely to have pretty low appeal in an arcade setting - especially as the early to mid 90s is when pinball very nearly died out entirely and a huge number of machines wound up getting scrapped as quite simply nobody wanted them. Oh how things have come full circle now!

[CitroJim]

This one definitely won't date back to the decimalisation period given that Eight Ball Deluxe LE which this machine is wasn't launched until 82. I'm pretty sure the "new" in this case will be from the period in the early 90s when the 5, 10 and 50 pence coins were shrunk to slightly more wallet friendly dimensions. Unlike when they messed about with the pound coins a few years ago, I seem to recall that these were phased out over a far longer period so things were labelled as "new pence" for quite a while afterwards.

Ahh yes! When they shrank both in size and value!!!

[Zelandeth]

Okay, let's take a closer look at this project.



Which yes, technically is a very large, heavy wooden box.



There however is a lot here that I needed. For a start, it's a very well built large and heavy wooden box. I am not a carpenter, so putting that together from scratch in a way that's both structurally sound and anything close to presentable looking is well beyond me.

All the bracketry to hold the playfield (which of course will be a display in our case) is already there and the geometry of that has been figured out to allow it to hinge up like a car bonnet for service access (there's even a prop in there to hold it up). Trying to engineer that all from scratch could have ended up eating up an unreasonable amount of time and cause a lot of frustration. I might need to drop the rear brackets down a touch depending on the depth of our display but that's easily done.

The metal trim along the sides and top of the front is important - as this is something that you physically lean on when at the machine. So it both needs to be sturdy, free of any sharp edges and of course being right has a substantial impact on if using the machine will feel right. That's all hardware I'd have had to either import from the US or try to find used over here - and the way it fits together is pretty precisely designed so I'd probably have driven myself insane trying to make it work with a homemade cabinet.

The plunger. Very important for many games where there's a skill shot on the ball launch. Hardware exists to allow this actual hardware to be used and the position reported to the simulation PC - so it will work just like the real thing. This is something you just can't replicate on a keyboard or anything like that. This one needs a good clean but will work just fine for our purposes. I'm pretty sure this is one of those cases where cleaned up old hardware is probably better than new hardware.

Buttons! Goes without saying that real table buttons and switches will have an impact on how realistic things feel. The actual switches are missing here but they're not expensive, the buttons themselves are still present.

Coin door. This is a surprisingly expensive bit of kit to buy a replica of (about $150 for a decent one, obviously plus shipping etc which would probably double that). This original one is HEAVY.



While we won't be using coins, a button on the coin door (I'll be using what was originally the coin reject button to the left of the slots) to add credit is generally essential, likewise the position is present for the original start game button. A cabinet just needs the door to be there with the illuminated coin slots to look right in my mind.

The inside of the door also gives a good location to tuck away several additional controls that we're not likely to need often. For one, the three or four service buttons you need to access the operator settings on many tables (we are running the exact software used on the simulated tables, so all the system options are there to be meddled with). It's also a handy place to tuck away things like a master volume control, reset button for the simulation PC, random things like that.

Speaking of buttons - we will need to add a few more, though I'll generally be trying to keep them to a minimum. Some games use a "launch ball" button rather than a plunger, so one for that purpose will be added directly below the plunger. An exit button is needed to back out of individual games back to the menu system - the flippers, start and exit are basically all you need to navigate things, the front end software is really well designed. Extras will be a power button to start up the PC, which will be going exactly where the original would have been on the underside of the table behind the right front leg. There will be several power systems running in here, bunch of 240V supplies for the various displays, 12V, 24V and I think an oddball one at something like 38V for a couple of the bits of actual pinball hardware we'll be using as feedback devices. Is actually really easy to have this all turn on with the PC - just run a mains contactor with the coil fed from the 12V of the PC itself. This is good as it means we only need one power button rather than about five. I'll stick a double pole isolator switch on the back as well so I can turn it properly off without having to stand on my head finding the socket (most of them are in really odd places in this house!). The other button will be a "night mode" one which will disable all the noisy feedback devices if someone wants to use it without making a racket. It's not an issue for us here just now as the room it lives in is miles from any bedrooms, but I can't guarantee that will always be the case and it's something easy to implement. That will probably also go underneath the table in the same general area as the power button.

Last item of external hardware I can immediately think of would be the legs - these are another part that is fluffing expensive to buy. Which now I've seen how ridiculously heavily made they are I'm less surprised by, and all the correct hardware to attach them. Again, just one of those "why try to reinvent what they spent 50 years getting right" situations.

Displays are probably the single most important thing we need to consider here. Especially the playfield one as that's what we're going to be looking at. Something which is quite helpful here is that large scale 4K resolution PC monitors aimed at the gaming market have become pretty common in the last few years. Historically televisions had been the normal displays for the playfield, but they can be an absolute minefield in terms of image processing lag and suchlike, and questions have to be asked like "does it handle being depowered gracefully?" PC monitors are far better in these regards.

My usable space for the playfield display is 950mm by 520. It obviously can't come right to the front of the cabinet as the plunger takes up a bit of room there. This is a tradeoff pretty much everyone is happy to live with as it's worth it to retain the plunger.





A quick rummage around this afternoon turned up an ad for a secondhand 40" 4K gaming monitor for a whole £75. The dimensions of that without the stand are 904mm by 512. I couldn't really have asked for a better fit. The width (so height of the display) is the critical one as that's basically what constrains us, and the tendency for gaming monitors to have really thin bezels has helped us greatly here, as the largest TV I could find that would fit was 38", and we would be having to drop down to 1080p from 4K there.

The backbox internal space is approximately 630 by 360mm. Which is *astonishingly* close to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and I think a 24" monitor in there will do absolutely fine for our purposes - and I think I actually have one already in the loft which I can just chuck in there.

The little box which sits between the playfield and backbox is where the original score displays on this table lived - photo can be seen over here on the IPDB. Link. This is actually a pretty unusual setup, and we could go to great pains to recreate it...for a setup used on a total of two pinball tables (Eight Ball Deluxe Limited and Centaur II). Not worth it... I'm going to mount a 13" laptop panel (again...I have one in stock) in the centre to emulate any normal dot matrix display setups and put a pair of speakers to either side more akin to the arrangement used on later Williams/Bally tables. It's just going to be far more flexible and actually useful.

I'm picking up the main display monitor on Monday, at which point we'll be able to start actually piecing things together. Will probably be a fair while before it's actually playing tables as I'm currently short of a computer to run the show, but getting the main display actually mounted is probably one of the most important steps in making it work.

Will probably give it a good clean and properly put the thing together at the weekend so it looks more like a pinball table again rather than a coffin someone has upended in our back room.

[CitroJim]

Awesome I'm following this project with great interest Zel

[bobins]

Your plans interest me, Zel. I've never had much interest in pinball machines, but I'm looking forward to progress on this one

[Zelandeth]

Ten minutes this afternoon and a moderate amount of swearing about how heavy this thing is had it looking more like a pinball machine again.



It is insane how heavily built this thing is. Which makes sense for the intended application, but it's still quite something when you're used to working on domestic equipment!

The seller included a replacement for the missing lock on the coin door as well so that was installed.



I mentioned there are usually operator controls on the back of the coin door before but never actually showed them - in the case of a relatively early solid state machine like this it's just a single momentary switch for the menu interaction and a volume control.



I'll need to add another couple so will probably need a bigger bracket, but it will be in the same sort of location.

Plenty of room in the back box for a display. That hinged section will be likely removed as that's purely the backing for the original illumination. Though I *may* instead just move it back a bit and attach the display to that which might well be easier and more service friendly.



Depending how we're looking for depth I may also put some of the mains distribution in there as it's both accessible and out of the way. We are going to end up with a LOT of clutter down here, so anything which can help tame the spaghetti is a good thing.



Space for the middle display is usually a headache as it tends to end up in conflict with the main playfield display, but actually isn't too much of a problem for us - there's plenty of room in here for our score display screen.



We'll just be using a 13" (ish) display in the middle rather than the original layout.



A little cardboard aided design was employed to demonstrate the fit of two of our displays.



Pretty much spot on for the playfield it looks like.





Let's me show how clever these brackets are too.



Which I'm very glad to not have to engineer myself. For quick access to items under the playfield it lifts up like so, supported on the bonnet prop like support.



Or for more in depth work it can slide forward and be tilted back slightly past vertical where the weight of the playfield itself then holds it securely propped against the backbox.



The display will be a little deeper than the playfield so I may need to move the brackets down a touch, but I'll see how things sit first.

I think next step will be pulling out the remaining wiring (aside from the ground bonding) as I've no use for it and just give everything a good clean as it's all pretty filthy.