Pole Position's original power setup sucks. Installing a better power supply is key to making this game reliable.
I used a 200 watt PC power supply scavenged from an old 486, but any modern PC power supply would work.
I kept the ARII boards and simply disabled the 5v regulation section. They're needed to serve as the audio amplifiers.
Another important thing to do is to build a better power harness. A big weak point on Pole Position is the edge connector - it's really not up to the task of carrying the current that the game board draws. I made a small harness with spade connectors on it to plug onto the 5v and ground test point lugs on the game boards.
Doing all this modification is a fair amount of work - but it's not terribly complicated either. It was a lot more tedious in my case, since I also had to completely replace both PCB edge connectors, as the old ones were severely damaged. If you have a good working knowledge of electronics, you shouldn't have any real difficulty. It's just a bit tedious.
-Ian