Picking up a Judge Dredd tonight !!

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Woohoo....picking up a Judge Dredd tonight. I already have seen it last weekend. It looks complete, incl. the valuable topper :p

No Deadworld mod.

Completely dead though. Let's hope this is one of those "it's only a fuse" stories :)

Anyway, with the price I got it for, I can't go wrong :D

Story: friend of me calls me and says his boss has bought a new house. The former owners moved to Spain and agreed with the boss that anything they'd leave was his.....
There was lot's of other stuff and since my friend bought his first home recently his boss asks if he wants any of the stuff. He goes check it out and sees it's all rubbish, but he does mention that he probably knows someone for the pin.... :D

I owe my friend a beer I guess :)
 
Not free, but a very fair price indeed. Read on...

Well yesterday evening was the "road-trip".

Well what can I say. First I was delayed because my wife had some other appointments arranged. At least I had arranged a strong helper, a nice van and the seller to be in his new house for the pick-up.

We went down the "basement" to pick up the machine. Folded the backbox on the front, tied it down and brought it towards the stairs. Just by looking we already concluded that there was NO way that the backbox would fit through the staircase !!!! There was no other exit so we already wondered how that thing had ever come down there !

So....after some time we concluded that there was only one solution: The backbox had to be removed. Easy enough to say but if you've ever seen all the wiring going between the main- and the backbox you know what this means: removing LOADS and LOADS of connectors.

While I was looking what the best way to do this I found that the former owners probably had the same conclusion because there were a number of connectors already disconnected in the mainbox. However, one wire set cannot be disconnected there so I had to do it in the backbox. (The good news of course was that this meant it probably didn't work because of those loose connectors !!!)

Dind't have time/means to mark everything. I didn't want to postpone either because I had the van borrowed that night.
So, I removed all the connectors from the backbox. Then we removed the backbox.

This all went without problem.
So it was time to lift the mainbox up the extremely narrow stairs that also had a turn near the top !

Step by step, myself under the box, my friend guiding it upstairs we lifted it up in almost complete vertical position.
It took about 15 minutes to come up there, but we managed it !

However, time had passed quickly and I didn't want to have it in my gameroom like this so I decided to put it in Erik's storage for a little while.

I also forgot to bring my camera and even my phone so I am sorry to have to say I have 0 pictures....

Anyway, the playfield looks very good indeed. It looks everything is complete. The cover of the right sling has a small break. The artwork all around is undamaged. Not sure if it is discolored, was hard to see with the available light but it can't be much. The coin door shows very little wear.
I have the feeling that this machine has not been in operational service for long. The seller didn't know how long the former owners used to have it though.

Anyway, now I am left with an electronic puzzle: re-connect all those connectors ! regretfully there was no service manual with the machine, but I can of course download it, but I will probably buy an original one.
BUT, the good thing is that the guy who built my gameroom actually also owns a Judge Dredd !!! Soooooo, I can take lots of pictures, or maybe I can even put my machine next to his to wire it all up !!

No time this weekend though
 
The connectors shouldn't be a problem. Download the manual and it should have a page listing the connectors and the color wires that hook up to it. Should be really easy.
 
Woohoo....picking up a Judge Dredd tonight. I already have seen it last weekend. It looks complete, incl. the valuable topper :p

No Deadworld mod.

Completely dead though. Let's hope this is one of those "it's only a fuse" stories :)

Anyway, with the price I got it for, I can't go wrong :D

Story: friend of me calls me and says his boss has bought a new house. The former owners moved to Spain and agreed with the boss that anything they'd leave was his.....
There was lot's of other stuff and since my friend bought his first home recently his boss asks if he wants any of the stuff. He goes check it out and sees it's all rubbish, but he does mention that he probably knows someone for the pin.... :D

I owe my friend a beer I guess :)


I , too, recently picked one up and it is going to an actual judge. Very under rated pin.
 
Good to hear !

Heya, I went by the storage today and took some pics !

Stupidly enough I had forgotten the key so I couldn't remove the topglass to make good pics of the playfield but this will have to do for now.

I think it will clean up VERY nicely.

The topper has a crack regretfully but it is not too visible. Also the top of the crane is broken. And the right sling-shot cover has a small part broken off too. I think everything else is OK and there.
The batteries had a "best before 2009" marking, so I guess they weren't replaced that long ago (3/4 years ?). Very happy that there is NO battery leaks this time !

web.jpg


See all the pics here:

http://gallery.me.com/andre.huijts#100782
 
Cliffy, the guy who makes all the playfield protectors, is a really good airbrush artist, too. He took a badly faded JD and brought it back to factory looking with his airbrush. He sent me pix years ago, but I don't have them anymore. So, if you are ever feeling artisitic, it can be done.
 
I think you'll really enjoy it. Lots of variety and speed. I have owned one and I plan to own one again when money allows it. You're lucky the topper is all there, albeit cracked. Those babies are expensive and IMO complete the look of the machine.
 
I had one for a couple of years (it was my first pin and I bought it unshopped) and then traded it as part of a deal for NGG. It is not a hard machine to shop or keep repaired and there are a lot of docs avail. It is a great first DMD pin to learn with. Once you understand the virtual locks concept and learn the ruleset, you can have some fun trying for high score. Keep the playfield clean and waxed for the long shots to be enjoyable and strong.

Bill
 
Happy to report that this one is back to 99.8% running state.

Just some more lamps to replace, some PCB's/sockets to check and it's done for me.

I didn't do an entire shop (i.e. remove everything on the playfield) but did as much as I can without doing that.

Lot's of cleaning.

One flipper link broke after a day or 2 that I got it running. Was the wrong kind. Replaced and working great.
Going to rebuild all the other flippers.

Had the "usual" trough problems, one LED had a bad soldering. I want to hang these PCB's in rubber grommets like the Williams solution. The PCBs are OK otherwise and don't want to buy the new one's for those amounts...

There was one drop-target of the JUDGDE targets down constantly. Turned out it was "under" the reset "comb". Turned it loose, reset it and tightened it again and fixed.

This was a really good buy. The more I learn the rules, the more fun I have playing it.

Ultimate wish would be to do a 100% shop but I don't have the time for that now.

It's fun to work on a pinball for a change. Very rewarding.

I think JD is underrated. I'll keep this one for some time for sure.

P.S. Normally I'm not that much into changing original things, but sometimes.......I felt the flashed of the Pursuit ramps (blue and white) were much too white (white bulbs). I replaced them with red and blue flasher bulbs and WOW it's VERY beautiful. IMHO it should have been like this factory....
I also saw a LED solution, but I want to keep it lamps-only. (Although I _might_ add some playfield illumination.

web.jpg
 
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