Just a quick update...
Not long after posting my last update, I started getting glaring looks from the wife about all the parts and supplies strewn about, so it was time to button it back up. I never did repair the match or credit circuits, so when the machine runs out of credits I reach inside and gently turn the credit wheel back to maximum. I'm tempted to go back and cut the wire to the credit solenoid again. What I really need to do is put a switch in there, or better yet find one of the ancient jumper connectors that are in ther now.
I did do one last mechanical repair. The lowest-pitch chime never worked and the other two barely worked. I thought the coil on the non-working chime was broken, but when I started to tear it apart I realized that someone had oiled the coil sleeves! The oil has soaked into the "beer seal" that was across the bottom of the assembly for the plungers to rest on, and one of them had essentially been "glued" in place by the old oil. So it was time to take it all apart and clean it, and to avoid upsetting my wife I did all the work through the coin door rather than take the glass off again. Wow, that was a pain...
I ordered new coil sleeves and chime grommets from
http://marcospec.com. The original grommets had melted and hardened ages ago, and as a repair someone had used small post rubbers in their place which had also worn and melted onto the chime bars. So I scraped all the old rubber off the chime bars, cleaned the plungers with alcohol, replaced the beer seal and the coil sleeves, and started to put it back together.
I ran into trouble with the grommets. I had two issues: with the grommets in place there was no way the chimes would fit back over their mounting posts, and for some reason I stupidly bought three grommets instead of six. I solved this by cutting each grommet in half horizontally and placing the grommet halves over the posts rather than inserting them into the chime bars.
Now, the chimes all worked... too well. Hitting a target would ring a loud, clear chime tone that would hang in the air for 10-15 seconds. Playing the machine for even a few minutes had my wife looking for a sledgehammer. So I went back in and cut some squares of leftover beerseal, cut holes in the middle, and applied these to the top side of the chime bars to dampen the vibrations a bit. That seemed to work well, muffling the tones enough to be playable without driving everyone crazy.