Hotter than Hell: Another pin in the lineup

smalltownguy2

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And let me tell you what, the barn I pulled this from yesterday WAS hotter than hell.

Here we go again.....


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Hard to say - there's a really thick layer of dust, and there wasn't enough room to slide back the glass before carrying out of the shed.

Funny story about this table:

3 years ago, during a family Christmas celebration, I was talking about the recently acquired Firepower pinball I'd just gotten, and how much I loved messing around with pins and vids. My cousin Jennifer overheard me and said, "hey, you should fix up that old pinball machine my grandpa gave me."

Turns out this KISS pin was the one she was talking about. Apparently her Grandpa purchased it from a local bar owner many years ago. My Dad tells me that my cousin and I played with the machine quite a bit after he bought it, but I was pretty young at the time and don't really remember it. Who knows, those days could have been what sparked my interest in the hobby, and the interest laid dormant until 2007, when I REALLY got going in the hobby. :)

Sometime a few months after bringing the machine home to my cousin's place, it malfunctioned. So, it was turned off, put in the shed, and stayed there for 10 years until my uncle moved to a new house. Then the machine was transported (with all of the rest of my uncle's junk/stuff) to a shed at his new home. There it has been sitting for 15 more years.

Two summers ago, I was finally able to get into the shed far enough to get a look at the machine. I had to perform death defying acts of circus stunt style balancing on boxes of stuff to be able to pop the back box lock open and gingerly ease the back glass off the machine. I brought the back glass home, put it in the corner of my bed room, and it's still there today.

A few months after that, I re-visited the shed again, and managed to move enough things out of the way to be able to get the back box open and retrieve the boards. I brought them home and my buddy spent the better part of a few weeks repairing them while working on a Flash Gordon pin he had. He'd just rebuilt a Flash Gordon himself, so he was able to use his working boards to rebuild my KISS boards. They were acid damaged, of course, and there was a bad ram chip on the MPU. After they were fixed, the boards went into a box that got placed in my bedroom next to the back glass.

Now that I knew the back glass and boards were safe and sound, I waited until the time was right to go rescue the table. That opportunity presented itself yesterday, on the 4th of July. My dad and I zipped over there and managed to extricate the machine from the depths of the shed. Let me tell you what, it WAS hotter than hell. One of those days where even the air conditioning in the car can't even cool you down. Like just standing there sweating hot.

I didn't have a ton of time to survey the damage, since everything was happening pretty fast, and we were headed back to a family picnic for the remainder of the day. But here's a few things I noticed about the table:


  • Looks complete, no manuals though.
  • Legs are pretty rusty, acorn bolts will need to be soaked in oil and I'll probably have to re-die the threads before screwing them into the mounting holes.
  • Looks like a mouse nest up by the pop bumpers - hopefully it's not full of piss.
  • I did manage to shine a flashlight into the coin door opening, and the table appears to be pretty clean on the inside, and no chewed wiring that I could see.
  • Side art on the cabinet is in VERY good condition, the back box has some pretty nasty gashes in it, but all in all, it's in OK shape too.
  • I have no idea on the condition of the playfield, but I'll know more when I remove the glass tonight.
I told my cousin that leaving a pin out in the elements like this was sacrilege, and that I would take it, repair it, and keep it in my climate controlled arcade until such time that she could demonstrate that she had the proper place to keep the pin. She was totally fine with that idea. So, for the forseeable future, I should have a pretty nice KISS in the lineup once I get this one back together.


I suspect I'll have some solenoid and switch adjustment work to do on the playfield, as well as some issues to resolve with the diplays. Hopefully there's no mylar to deal with the PF. Time will tell I guess.


I'm not really motivated to get any work done today while this thing sits on a trailer outside :001_sconfused:
 
Super nice Brad. Great story too. I look forward to playing it some day.

Thanks, Allen. I hope to get it up and running. The nostalgia for this one is pretty cool, and it's a very collectible pin to boot.

I'm going to get in touch with my uncle to see if we can dig up any pics of us when were kids with the machine in them. It'd be really neat to keep a 30 year old picture of me and my cousin playing this pin in a frame on the wall next to the machine.
 
Didn't have a lot of time last night to do much, but this morning before leaving for work I was able to slide off the glass to get a better look at the playfield. There's NO mylar on the playfield, which is nice, but that means there's some wear too. Not too much, though. Just a few spots around inserts. Good stuff.

Back box is real clean.

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No mouse pee that I can see. Tonight I'll clean up the nest and see if there's any chewed up stuff.
 
I wish repro playfields were still available. Years ago, you could buy one for $500-600. Nowhere to be found now.
 
Wow, my father and I were just talking about our top pinball machines. His was Dr. Who and I was couldn't decide between the AC/DC table and the Kiss table. GREAT find! Probably going to have to look at an overlay for that top, eh?
 
There's LOTS of swirl marks on the table, yes. I'm going to try a magic eraser first to see what kind of help that gives me.

The only playfield replacement I would do to this table would be to find a NOS or repro replacement. Since that's highly unlikely, I'll be working with that I have.
 
Welp, 6 months later, and here I am. Now that it's the dead of winter, it's time to start working on this table.

I finally got around to metering voltages on the rectifier board today.

Here's what I got. Only connector J2 connected.

TP1: 7.73v (seems a bit high, but with no load should be OK)
TP2: 182v (OK)
TP3: 10.2v (seems a bit low)
TP4: Ov (a/c for GI, this sucks)
TP5: 44v (OK)

The only one that particularly troubles me is the zero volts on the GI line. Should be around 7.3 volts a/c coming right off the transformer. Not sure why I wouldn't have any voltage there. I really hope it's not a bad xformer. That would suck.

I'm going to pull the Transfomer and rectifier board assemlbly and touch up solder, check fuse holders, etc.
 
Pulled the board and transformer - found fuse F5 blown. Doh. I thought I buzzed them all. Guess I missed that one.

Well, since the board is out, might as well replace burned headers and connectors.
 
I wish repro playfields were still available. Years ago, you could buy one for $500-600. Nowhere to be found now.

I just sold my last IPB new Kiss playfield recently. They are out there. Lots of people bought them and never got around to installing them. What ever you do, do NOT install an overlay.
 
I just sold my last IPB new Kiss playfield recently. They are out there. Lots of people bought them and never got around to installing them. What ever you do, do NOT install an overlay.

That's why I just froze the project. Long story short - I bought a basket case missing backglass - it seemed to have been in a fire, smoky darkening to underside of pf, darkening of white paint on cabinet, sooty sheet metal ground plate in backbox, etc.. I got it for next to nothing, so thought I'd use cabinet, harness, etc. and buy all repro stuff and build a perfect KISS. I have the IPB plastics set, the repro backglass, bumper caps, but didn't buy the pf back when they were offered.

I have posted WTB on pinside, rec.pinball through the years, and no responses. I am not interested in doing an overlay and realize that someone sitting on a pf now might not let it go for $550, but I don't see them FS at any price.

I've since decided that I will probably build a new lower cabinet also..I mean, not much will be original anyhow, so it will be a mostly repro piece. The bottom is saggy/bowing downwards and the cabinet has plywood issues and is rough in spots.
 
Made some baby steps today. I pulled the transformer and power rectifier board out to resolder connections. One of the header pins on the playfield connector was pretty badly scorched, so I replaced the header:

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You'll also notice that the fuse in position F5 is missing, a 20amp. The original one was blown - that's the reason I wasn't get any power to the GI lighting. I replaced it.

Connector J1 was smoked pretty bad:

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So I de-pinned it, and crimped on some new Trifurcon pins. Ahhhh...much better.

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Let me just take a second to announce to the world that I LOVE MY MOLEX HT2445A CRIMPER. That thing fucking ROCKS for crimping these Trifurcon pins. Holy shit, this thing is smoooooooth as butter. I love this thing so much. Never has a tool made repairs so easy like this one. It's fool proof. Such awesome crimps.

I popped in a new 20A fuse, and hooked up connector J2 just to test to see if I was getting all of my voltages now.

Voila!! GI lighting!

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Finally...some signs of life.

Now, I need to ohm out all the solenoids on the playfield to make sure I don't have any torched coils. Then I can start trying to figure out what the hell is going on with all the spliced and tied togehter wires I have in my ground circuit.
 
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