Vectorbeam Speed Freak

animesuperj

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Making some good progress on my Speed Freak restore/rebuild, whatever you want to call it; so figured I'd get around to starting a thread. I'm hoping to have this done soon, but with my basement arcade build in full swing it still might be a little bit before it's completely done. Either way, I'll continue to update this as it progress until it's all finished.

Some backstory thus far:

Back in October of last year, I was able to pickup a Speed Freak. I was tipped from another member on here I had been chatting back and forth with for selling one of my cabinets. I had mentioned the other vectors I was still searching for and this one had popped up in his area. A little back and forth with the seller and I had struck a deal to get this. Only "small" issue was it was in Tennessee and I'm in Wisconsin.

A convenient turn of events happened, as another friend/local collector also made a trade deal for a new game; which was located about 20 minutes from where my Speed Freak was. We each arraigned with our seller to come down together in a few weeks time, and the road trip was on!

So, the day of the trip comes, I drive down to very northern Illinois, and pickup my friend Bill at his place around 4am. We have his (friends/brother in law, I forget who's) trailer already loaded with his Mace that he's trading. We make the, uneventful (thankfully), trip down to the Nashville area. First we pickup my Speed Freak. Chat a bit, checkout other games in the warehouse and get back on the road. Stop to Bill's trade and he trades his Mace for a Star Rider upright. Everything loaded, drive back home. In total, I think it was a 26 hour round trip for me; slightly less (25?) for Bill.

I finally own a Speed Freak! I had been searching for one for a couple years, so glad to finally have it. However, the sound and main board are missing; and the cab has seen better days. I ask around, and SOMEHOW (I'm still surprised) was able to find a soundboard within a day. Grab that right away. Thanks to another friend, I got a main pcb as well. Tested everything and all parts are working! This also surprised me, as I've never had that happen with cine/vb games; especially on a project. Usually something is dead or needs repair.

I had the cabinet remade, and just got that back yesterday. Brought the control panel along for a test fit and it went on perfect! Bolted it on right away so I don't have to deal with removing/putting it back again. During the downtime of having the cabinet re-done, I was able to have the coin door and pedal sandblasted and powdercoated, so those are ready to be put back together and thrown on the cab.

At this point, I mainly just have to clean up parts and put the game back together. Side art is in progress, so I'll be getting that on soon as well once it's finished. Super happy to have this one nearing completion; as I find the game fun. Plus, vector cows! One more off the list, at least once it's put back together!

Attached pics are the only before ones I have. I need to get better about taking more detailed "before" pics of projects.
 

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Here are the two pics I have at the moment of some "after" stuff. New cab with (still somewhat dirty) control panel attached and freshly powdercoated coin door and pedal. Can't wait to get these back on the cab and start putting it together!
 

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Basement build and kids have been taking up a lot of time, so not making as quick of progress as I hoped. Even so, little progress tonight. Tossed the part in some clr to get as much of the rust and grim off. Tomorrow will be cleaning and polishing up a bit, hopefully starting to reassemble soon!
 

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Haha, I know that storefront, I'm pretty sure I saw that exact Speed Freak when I was there a couple of months ago :D
 
Haha, I know that storefront, I'm pretty sure I saw that exact Speed Freak when I was there a couple of months ago :D
lol, yeah, I picked it up around late October last year; right around your area. Was a "fun" drive down from Wisconsin! Pretty much gutted it as soon as it got home and dropped the cab off to get re-made. I moved right at the end of the year, so didn't mind the wait on the cab; it was WELL worth it as it's very, very well done. Plus, I hate these vectorbeam cabs. As soon as they see a tiny bit of moisture, they go downhill quick. I had to make a new cab for this game and Space War so far; luckily my Barrier is in good shape. We'll see how Warrior is, whenever I can find one :(
 
Made a bit more progress with the game. Still moving slow overall, just finding the time recently has been a challenge. Finished putting together the pedal assembly and getting that dialed in for the correct height and tension on the spring.

Also took apart the whole control panel, cleaned the wheel and shifter assembly, cleaned all the bolts/parts and reassembled. Tested the switches on the shifter and those are confirmed working when shifting. Luckily didn't have to deal with spacing issues on the magnetic switches, I was a bit worried on that. The wheel went back together fairly well, but had to mess with moving some of the washers to get the height of the wheel correct, so the encoder wheel passed freely through the encoders. After it was all back together, got it mounted on the cabinet and had to adjust the spacing so it was as square as possible. Overall I'm happy with how it turned out, given this was fairly gross/dirty when I picked it up.

Next on the list is to get a couple other basic parts mounted: monitor grounding plate, speaker (need to clean up speaker cover) and marquee. Then can move to running the wiring, which has already been cleaned; and finally adding the psu/monitor/board. Looking forward to getting this finished, so I can finally play a few games!
 

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Coin door back together and mounted. Put on the all important serial number plate. Started to run the wiring. Might push to get this wrapped up within the next week. Really want to play it!
 

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Soon, very soon, it'll be back together. Everything has been tested separately and is working; just gotta find a good stretch of time to finish this thing. That is a very shaky video, lol. I might have to shoot a better one ;)
 
Yes very shaky. Not sure what was going on there. :)
At least that is a real machine and I didn't post a SPEED FREAK MAME video. LOL :001_stongue:
 
i remember this being an extremely difficult game to play, so much so i only played it a couple times and only remember ever seeing one of these machines, the cows are still quite amusing to see
 
i remember this being an extremely difficult game to play, so much so i only played it a couple times and only remember ever seeing one of these machines, the cows are still quite amusing to see

It's very difficult. I've played it a few times at a friends place, and once you shift up to 4; it's really fast. Although, I do like super challenging games; Ghouls 'n Ghosts is one of my favorites.
 
i would love to play it when you are done with it .... you're just too damn far away :-(

a rare piece fo sho
 
Took advantage of the nice weather recently to strip the speaker grill. Use the saw horses to spray it black, along with a lower back vent grill. They turned out very nice!
 

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Reassemble the speaker with the newly painted grill and attached it to the cab. Ended up just replacing the speaker as well, since the cone was destroyed. The speaker itself ohmed out, so maybe I'll test it once the game is running to keep as a backup/test speaker. Mounted the power supply in the cab as well. I didn't have the bolt holes drilled through the side, as I think it looks cleaner without them; so the only other real good spot ends up being the coin box shelf. Also tossed the main and soundboard on a metal backer and slide those in.

After the power supply and boards were in I could start running the cables and figuring out where to put cable ties. I did some initial running of the ground braid, and sorta left it at that point for today. The kid was playing outside all day while I was doing this, and it got to her bedtime; therefore stopping time for the night! Only thing really left is to attach cable ties, mount the monitor, mount the marquee and figure out the plexi retainer. All, hopefully, fairly quick; and then it's all done!
 

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Finally finished getting the internals reassembled inside. Powered up the game and it's running! Only bad part is it's not coining up, which seems odd. Oh well, something to look into. Only thing left is to attach the cosmetic pieces and it's pretty much done!
 

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Finally finished getting the internals reassembled inside. Powered up the game and it's running! Only bad part is it's not coining up, which seems odd. Oh well, something to look into. Only thing left is to attach the cosmetic pieces and it's pretty much done!

The coin switch setup of the Cinematronics and Vectorbeam games from this family of games is a little strange. There are two coin-related logic inputs to the game connected via ribbon cable at J3 on the CCPU board. It's not one wire from each switch like you'd expect. There's one normally high and one normally low signal and both are routed through both coin switches such that both lines toggle when either switch is activated. Note that the timing of the switch activation is actually measured by the game logic so if the pulse is too long or too short, it will not coin up. It was designed this way in an effort to detect real coins dropping and to thwart efforts to gain free games. If there's a bad contact or a broken wire on either switch, the game probably won't coin up because both signals must begin in the correct state and must both toggle to coin up.

The Speed Freak manual page 4-10 describes a simple troubleshooting procedure. However, there's lots more circuitry and chips involved with coin detection. I suggest looking at "sheet 1 of 1" (page 2) of the linked Star Castle pdf. Also look at the coin door wiring diagram page 9 of the pdf. I know this is a Star Castle doc but the coin door wiring is pretty much the same on most, if not all, of the games.

Star_Castle_Rockola_Schematic.pdf


Good luck,

Bill B.
 
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