Repairing a Ted Nugent Pinball Machine from 1978! OUT OF CONTROL!!!!

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back of another cool pinball repair video for you today we've got this Ted Nugent by stern pinball game in our shop we sold this many years ago to a company that put this in a brewery and they've been operating it for a long time and it's had some issues arise so they brought it back to our shop and we're gonna see what's going on with it see what we can fix and get it working good for them so they can put it back out and play it some more so these are our favorite ones whenever they've been back out on location and people been enjoying them so we pulled the back glass out let me go show you the rest of the game in the front so they brought it to us with the legs off which is fine we've got the legs over there and the guy when I talked to him on the phone he said that the power supply was messed up I don't know about that but we'll see what it's doing it's pretty dirty so one thing we'll have to do is clean it up for him you see here in the middle it's got a lot of dirt on it so we get that all cleaned up from what I understand they've been playing the hell out of it now it does have some ball we're up here someone to see if that was like that before I got that we always take pictures of everything so I don't know if that was already that bad when we sold it or if all of that is new if all that's new we're going to figure something out about that folks but other than that everything looks pretty good I don't even see any plastics that have broken you got some stuff like this where they popped up off of the post but we should be able to get it back doing its thing so we took the back glass off and here's the main CPU it had been repaired you know they always have the alkaline damage we cleaned it up and it looks like it's still nice and pretty clean I don't see anything where it's coming back or anything and then there is a remote battery holder soldered to it that's good this is the power supply the Stern's were very much like the Bally's but this was one of the early ones so some of the some of the stuff is just a little bit different from the valley stuff but they basically ripped Valley off got sued for it and then agreed to pay Valley a royalty for every game they sold said I could use their boards it can kind of work well because they've what they're thinking was if we if Stern and Bally two companies use the same boards this was Bally's thinking then the operators will get to where they prefer Bali or Stern because the boards will be more familiar to them right so they did this to try to screw Williams they were going after Williams hard so the CPU board looks fine the sound board over there looks fine lamp driver board looks fine and all of the displays look fine but who knows who knows people so we've plugged it in let's turn it on and see what happens Oh booted right up okay it's got some issues though so that third display it's trippin you may not be able to see it on the camera but it's got some issues there some stuff going on the other displays all look fine about half of the lights of burnout in the back box and on the playfield almost all the lights of burnout some of the the insert lights are working but on the general illumination light it's only one of them lit up so if you can't a bunch of bad lights so we'll have to we'll have to mess with that see if we can get it credit on it [Music] okay we got three credits so she'll start she started okay flippers aren't working right that flipper up there isn't working at all that's that's their problem probably can't play it when the flippers are screwed up he said power supply so I wonder if there's something else going on so we'll have to work through it a little bit see if it let's see if it ends the game after three balls should Helen almost place itself about to pop bumpers work fine slings both work switches seem to work [Music] soundboard works knocker works so it looks like it's it's working but it just needs it worked through so I think the first thing I'll do just gives us driving me crazy as we'll mess with that third display see what I can get going on that so whenever you get one like that that's tripping a little bit first thing I'll try is I'm just gonna try it with the power off and try unplugging the display plugging it back in and see if that fixes anything and if not we're going to try pulling it out Andrey soldering the connectors okay folks so I the display the there was nothing wrong with the connector everything it had been it had been restored I guess I'd resolder dit whenever I had it before so the power supply looks like I think somebody has worked on the power spot it wasn't me this games been gone a while but there's I think somebody replaced a filter cap I don't know why I didn't do that whenever I had it but the polar caps been replaced so I in other words I think somebody's working on it a little bit since me and the display voltage was a little bit low which is fine people turn down the display voltage because it makes the displays last longer but if you turn it down too far the problem you get is sometimes some of the displays don't like that and they'll start doing what that one was doing where it was ghosting a little bit so what I did was I turned the display back up to 185 it says 175 but 185 was acceptable and whenever I did it stopped doing the flickering almost entirely it was still doing it just a little bit though so I moved it over here if you look at that third digit it's still doing it a little bit I don't know if the camera will even pick it up you can barely see it but in that position it's gonna be covered by the back glass because it just uses those two digits and those two digits so alternately you can swap the display I think what's actually I think what's actually going on is that the glass is starting to go on it so they may have a display it needs to be replaced down the line they make new LED displays and you can actually swap just one of those so you can buy just a LED display for for this one if you wanted and they look pretty similar to the to the original displays too so if it gets worse and worse and starts where the digits that you can see are flickering too then we'll get them a brand new display but that fix didn't cost anything right so then I started playing it a little bit and I think their problem that they basically this thing has just been rode hard and put away wet I mean they've played the hell out of this thing which is great I'm glad they I'm glad they're getting a lot of play out of it like I was saying earlier it needs cleaning they should have cleaned it a little more but basically the flippers are starting to wear out so this flipper wasn't even working this flippers real real touchy got things going on this flippers weak right so I'll lift up the playfield and I'll show you what I figured out was going on with the flippers so this flipper on the right wasn't working at all the one that's halfway up the playfield it just wasn't working so I thought the way that the way that it works is this flipper whenever it pulls in it touches these two this switch this switch together which makes that one fire as you can see it's doing that I just ruined my story right now you know what's gonna fire that shouldn't be arcing like that though but it wasn't working so after looking around I figured out that the little wire I'll show you on this one cuz it's easier to get to see that green wire in there going between the middle lug and the right lug that wire was broke in the middle so basically half of the coil wasn't working so it wasn't strong enough to fire it wasn't all the way put together so I pulled back the wrapper a little bit I found the broken piece of wire and I soldered it back and now it flips I've got to clean that in two strokes which though it shouldn't be sparking like that arcing like that this right one and this left one worked fine but if you look down here that's the right flipper cabinets which see that the contacts the two contacts there that touch together okay on this left one one of the contacts is missing so when you press it it still touches and I convened it to make it easier to touch but there's no contact there they should have two contacts touching so that switch needs to be replaced and while I'm at it I'm just going to replace the switch two just so that they're known I replaced the three nylon sleeves and all three of the flipper coils but the one of the issues that people have had for a while is that this these Stern games they're really similar to the Bally's like I was saying they have the same boards and all of that or similar board sets but there are slight differences so the the on the flippers for instance there are slight differences it's made just a little bit differently so this actual link here this is the plunger and this is the link it's hard to get in for a while you couldn't even get them so I think whenever I did it before you there was no way they'd even replace that or at least maybe I thought there wasn't so there's somewhere in it but they've been playing the hell out of this thing so therefore they may just they may have been found before and now they're worn out but if you see how that moves there should be no play in that I shouldn't be able to do that at all the metal and the fiber link have it's the metal has worn out that sleeve so it's making this flipper weak this flippers got the exact same thing going on but the good news is pinball life to the rescue and a couple other companies but pinball life has completely redesigned or completely reproduced the flippers so you can get not only that plunger you can even you can get the whole thing I mean you can get the plate everything on the flipper has been reproduced by pinball life and I think you can get some of the stuff from pinball resource but I just checked and they were sold out of the plungers that I need and link but they'll get some more back in I'm sure but I just went ahead and ordered them from pinball life which is great company so I ordered some flipper rebuild stuff will rebuild those and I'll order some cabinet switches we'll replace those and then we'll shop the playfield after thanks filthy we'll change all the rubber rings and clean it and wax it and replace all the light bulbs I replace the light bulbs in the back box it might be a good idea to upgrade them with LEDs so that the so they last longer if they're going to be playing it on location this much but let's see what they want to do but I'll order that stuff and we'll see what whenever it comes in we'll swap it out and we'll see what the playfield looks like after we clean it up a little bit so we're waiting on the flipper stuff but we went ahead and shopped out the playfield I didn't take everything off of it I just took the plastics off and all the rubber rings off but it cleaned back up pretty good and get the lights working again that helped a lot cleaned it up waxed it it's got to wear areas one right there we sold this game five years ago so I looked it up and the wear was still there five years ago and then that little spot at the top has gotten slightly worse I'm thinking that this kick-out hole kicks the ball all the way across there in it that's where it lands from that kick-out hole I think that's right so I think that's why there's damage up there so I'm gonna try to get some mylar and cover that up so to look a little better and we put the back glass back in of course we didn't have to do anything to hit that's one of the dam the only word for that is red that's one of the raddest back glasses of all time the only letdown of this machine is that it was before they really had the ability to play you know really good music and in the machines i saw where somebody made like an mp3 mod that you could put in this where it plays some of the songs but i don't think they had it where it does it intelligently I think it just plays his music well the games playing but we got it looking good again and it's playing good we're just waiting on things to rebuild the flippers because they're sloppy so we've got to get the flipper stronger so we got our stuff in that we ordered for the flippers and everything I also ordered the little credit sticker cuz that'll and they're actually operating it so that'll help them people know where to press the start button um we put in new flipper switches I guess I can open this thing up but you get the whole point we put in new flipper ones your links and all of that so let's let's turn it on I don't have it on wigs so it's flat but we can see if our flippers are better no Claire our top one will work what do you think oh I missed missed again oh we're back down on this one that's strong enough ain't it pretty strong all right let's try it with the left hand [Music] who'da strong all right so I think we got it ready to go so we'll put it we're gonna send it back out to the brewery where people can't enjoy it some more that's a pretty cool game so I think what I'll do is I'll uh we actually filmed ourselves playing anujan and so I'll put a I'll put some gameplay footage at the end of this video so you can see what it plays like we just thought we'd film a little video showing yes the shape that they're in whenever they come in sometimes and what we do to them to get them back doing their thing so all uh let's play some let's play some Nuge all right and that is what it looks like with the lights off one thing about these videos that up now we don't have a glass on it so there's no reflection but what that does is it makes all of the flippers and the coils and the kickers and everything really loud because they're not muffled by the glass like they usually are usually you can't hear them quite as much as you can with the glass off so ignore that I've turned to sound way up so I hope it's not too loud but it'll give you an idea of how it sounds another thing about these early Stern games they had this the stern SB 100 sounds in it and it just makes beeps and Boop's stuff like that well the thing is you can tune the things there's these little knobs in there you can turn to make them higher pitched or lower pitched but there's no record anywhere that I know of or that I've been able to find of what you should tune it to like should this note be a C should this note be an e so if you look at videos of these early Stern games some of them you'll hear and that the chimes will be or not the chimes the the sound effects will be real low and some of them it'll be really high because nobody knows how you're supposed to - no and unless we can find like a really early video of playing somebody playing one or something I don't know how we're gonna be able to figure out if they're supposed to be high or low because you hear both some people say they remember them high some people said I remember them low so maybe back in the day everybody tuned them different so I guess it doesn't really matter but alright we'll play a game and you can see what you think this is Stearns Nugent 1978 baby check it out I got the lucky bounce off of the the post between the flippers when you get that saucer up there you get to collect the bonus normally you just like the bonus at the end of the ball I was trying to let it just that you can't quite see it in the camera but there's a post right in the middle here and so I was trying to let it just bounce off the post back up that's a dangerous game to play oh and again to be fair to stern I know the sound ain't as cool as you would think from a Nugent game but uh nothing was any better at the time really I'm sure some people will reply and say yes there was but not really I mean I guess some of the Williams stuff was but Bally's really wasn't doing that much better man we'll try another one score was 78,000 that's not very good yeah that bonus up there [Music] ah the beats were quicker than the lights I kind of like it let's read the instructions maybe I'll get a better score it says pop bumper scores a thousand now I may I hope I got that set right with the dip switches but it says pop bumper scores a thousand top and the center rollover score a hundred and it lights the top right and left lanes for nine thousand so that would be this there's a little button right here and there's another one up at the top rollovers stationary target scores 5000 and lights the return lanes that's this bad boy all the way up here ball kick out hole scores the lit value hmm oh they're saying okay so yeah so whenever you get the saucer up there you get the Litvak I guess which would be the bonus it lets you get the because it says collect bonus all right upper three bank drop targets down score 6000 and they multiply the bonus by the lit value that's pretty cool so up at the top there there's a green light lit right now that says two times and then there's the three times and a five times so if you get all three of those you get 6,000 points and it'll give you double triple or five times whatever the bonus score is every fourth turn on the spinner advances the bonus so if you make that sucker spin and the lights go all the way up it makes your bonus start walking up the bonus ladder on the guitar there spinner lights when bonus reaches 10,000 so if you get the 10,000 lit it lights up the spinner so that that says spinner scores 1000 when lits every time it flips around it gives you a thousand points left side three bank drop target down scores 10,000 points those are those over there the other one did 6000 remember it says the second time it's down it lights the extra ball lane so the extra ball lane would be hmm oh I think then I do not see the extra volume there is a shot if you look behind that flipper if you lift that flipper by using this flipper you can actually shoot the ball past it back into the return lane which kind of a hard shot maximum one extra ball per ball and play special scores one replay and then whenever you tilt it to disqualifies the ball and play only so basically hit as many targets as possible well that's a good one apparent oh man I always forget that flippers up there I wanna try to make that weird shot by [Applause] they got me alright one last game folks [Music] they didn't even give me a free ball come on now if you don't score any points they're supposed to give you a free ball actually they did give me a pretty ball sweet oh come on now all right there it is folks so there you have it 1978 Stearns Nugent by the time you see this video uncle Ted here the Detroit City Madman probably won't be here anymore because these things usually sell pretty quick but maybe we'll have something else that you're interested in you can check out our website Lyons arcade comm and see all the games we have in at the moment we usually have a lot more arcade games than pinball machines but we do get pinball machines or you can stop by and see us in person we have a shop or open every day except Sunday and we're open from 11 to 8 we're in downtown Rock Hill South Carolina which is about 15 minutes south of Charlotte North Carolina and I stopped by we've got a showroom here we've got all kinds of stuff usually 40 or 50 games at a time so we'll see you soon we'll bring you another cool video right away