Tee'd Off

This is the only machine I bought off eBay from an individual (as opposed to a distributor or vendor), and I will never, ever buy from an individual again.  This was back in the days before PayPal was popular (it may have even been before there was a PayPal), so I sent the guy a money order.  Three months later after countless lies, he finally shipped my machine.  Everything pretty much worked, and there wasn't too much playfield damage (the playfield was probably a 7 or 8), but on the underside of the cabinet there was a 6 inch hole in the plywood, like someone ran into the machine with the forklift.  I didn't notice this until after I had unpackaged the machine, and since the packaging wasn't damaged, I can only assume the carrier wasn't at fault.

This machine had a little gopher sitting on top of the back box that would move when it talked.  Unfortunately, the gearbox was so loud that you couldn't hear what he was saying over the noise (unless the volume was cranked all the way up).  I couldn't find any way to take it apart, and silicon didn't help any, so I ended up just cutting the wires to it.  The lights near the gopher still flash, that's good enough.

Another problem I had was with the roulette wheel.  It wouldn't register certain letters when hit.  So I raised up the playfield...

And SNAP, the head broke off the screw that held the pivot point on to the playfield.  The left side of the playfield dropped, and the right side stayed up. Luckily, it's a tight fit between the playfield and the cabinet so it got stuck before the left end crashed all the way down.  I managed to straighten the playfield and set it back in the playing position.  Then I enlisted my brother's help to lift the playfield completely out of the machine and onto the floor.  It turned out that their was only 1 screw holding in the left side of the playfield and I guess the force was just too much for it.  I went ahead and replaced all four screws (2 on each side) and we set the playfield back in the machine without any damage.

Ever since I've been very weary about raising a playfield for the first time, and I always check the screws to make sure they're all present and tight.

Now that I could work on the roulette wheel, I took it off and took as much of it apart as I could.  Unfortunately, the disk with the contacts is a solid piece, so there wasn't any way to work with it.  I tried checking it with the continuity tester, and found out that if the roulette wheel isn't exactly level (within less than half a degree), that some contacts wouldn't register depending on what position they're in.  So then it became a point of just adjusting the screws that held up the roulette wheel over and over until it was finally level and all the switches started working again.

I got bored with this game about a week after I got it, and it's now sitting in my brother's game room.

Eventually I ended up trading or selling this one, I forget which.