Space Invaders Pinball Restore

Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair

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Ian:

Acquired a free kind of working Space Invaders pin.

It has been sitting for years I think in a heated garage (thank god). No keys, no way to see what was going on inside. I swear I was having nightmares about battery acid damage, and loose wires and broken mechs. Luckily this machine is pretty bare bones.

Here are some pics from when it was stored....

Now I am very aware this particular game is just considered an average game. Value is anywhere between $800 to maybe $1200. So seeing as I got this for free I had a plan to stay below $800. I wasn't really looking to turn a profit but I didn't want to lose money either.

Ian:
So dirty was all I really saw. With closer inspection, all of the rubbers from the 4 flippers where dried up cracked and fell off. The other rubbers where intact but nasty. The playfield looked intact, however it had what I thought was just an epic layer of dust. It was far from vibrant looking! I did have the balls to plug it in... because what the hell if it started on fire or blew up I could just chalk it up "Eh it was free". After all this is my first restore on a Pinball Machine. I think this is a great candidate for a first time restore, as these machines are common, and not really all that special. There is not a lot of moving parts, and it is a wide body which gives me a lot of room to move around.

Anyway, it powered up fine, half the lights still worked, the game tried to start but there was a rubber from one of the flippers jammed up where the ball release was. So I could not play. The flippers did flip and no smoke was seen. However there was no sound.

I got the big bastard home and drilled the locks. Now I had to drill the locks of the Popeye machine I purchased a few months ago. That took a good hour. So I was expecting the same kind of time frame. But luckily these locks literally took seconds to drill into, they crumbled! ha ha ha. Never saw anything like that. I was finally able to look into the back box and remove the glass.

(starting from the top left... That is the MPU board basically the brains, top right board is the solenoid driver board, bottom left is the lamp/lights board, that little guy next to that is the new sound board, and the far bottom right is the auxiliary lamp board.)

No battery damage at all... everything looked relatively well maintained. No obvious reasons why there was no sound however. I was able to remove the rubber that was jamming up the ball launch and was able to play a game. Everything seemed to work. The three pop bumpers, all of the stand alone targets, all of the drop targets, everything. So that was pretty damn cool. Cosmetic resto coming up!!!

Ian:
Well I thought it was going to be a cosmetic restore..... I was looking to see why I was missing sound. I read that the boards in these old machines go out pretty frequently so I just said screw it, I will just buy a new sound board. After all it seemed all the wiring was intact and there were no cold solder issues. No cracks, nothing. So I found a website that makes all the boards for this game.

http://www.allteksystems.com/products-mpu-replacements.html

Bought a sound board and plugged it in... nothing.

So then I pressed the test button (up until this very moment I thought I was doing pretty well. Looking back now I know I was an idiot). The test button which should have tested the speakers ended up being a button that released fireworks inside my machine! Let me clarify.... I pressed the test button and the board above it (the Solenoid driver board, which controls all the pop bumpers and flippers) sparked and smoked and flamed up pretty nice.

I was so pissed. I talked to Alltksystems and the guy was so very nice, and explained that I had a short somewhere. While I was on the phone with him I followed the wires from the sound board to the speaker and sure as ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, one of the speaker wires had become disconnected and was shorting against some metal bracket. Surely I would have been smart enough to check the wiring to the speaker BEFORE I bought a sound board right????

Wrong, the whole not having sound issues came because of a stupid speaker wire. :banghead:

Rookie mistake.

So... I purchased a nice brand new solenoid board from the nice man over at Allteksystems. lol

So now I have a brand new sound board, a brand new Solenoid board, I resoldered the speaker wire and fired her up!

I got sound! Glorious Space Invaders boom beep boom sounds! And all of the Solenoid issues were solved, I had pop bumpers and flippers again. It was fantastic and a good lesson learned!!!!

Ian:
Here is the playfield as it stands after I took off the glass and wiped it down. Really cool artwork, but it sure looks dull....

Now on to the playfield... I removed most of the plastics to get them scrubbed and washed up. I use the Novus cleaning/polishing system. Anyone not familiar with Novus it is a great way to clean up and remove scratches from plastics. Used a lot in the pinball hobby.

https://www.amazon.com/Novus-7100-Plastic-Polish-Kit/dp/B002UCYRZU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539271216&sr=8-1&keywords=novus+cleaner

Removed some posts, and washed them as well.

pbj:
Been there, done that. If that's all it took to get it working you got off cheap.

:cheers:

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