See Ya Later, Ya Big Palooka

I had a small issue with my Palooka pinball machine on Saturday night. I fixed that, and I cleaned a step up unit with the new brush I ordered for my Dremel.

 I took some pictures of the machine since I had it out of the lineup.

And then I sold it. 

I suppose you could call it a whim, but I've been thinking about putting Palooka on Craigslist for awhile. I had it working as well as it ever had, and I felt the time had come to let the machine go. 

I bought Palooka from a guy in Mason City who bought it from a guy in Wisconsin. The guy in Mason City made the pinball machine work again. I cleaned off the rust and added a power switch. I installed new legs, new bumper caps, a new start button, and new coin door bolts. The backglass was terrible, but I replaced it with a translite that was custom made in California. The decal on the door is meant for a jukebox, and it conveniently covers a rust stain.

I roughly figured out how much money I spent on this project and set the price accordingly. I either made or lost 25 bucks in the end. After two years and two weeks of playing Palooka, I got my money's worth. I didn't get into this hobby to make money. Breaking about even feels pretty good.

The new owner is a local guy who already has more machines than me. I am confident he'll take good care of it. After 54 years, Palooka is still trading hands. I'm happy to be part of this game's history. (I may or may not have written my name somewhere inside it.)

Pinball Switch Hitter

I haven't blogged about pinball for a while. The record collecting bug bit me pretty hard. I have been playing my records more than my pinball machines. When a pinball machine is played, the switches keep themselves clean by being active. If you don't play a machine for awhile, issues that weren't there before can arise as dirt and dust settles in.

In other words, use it or lose it.

The Full House pin has been a bit of a stinker lately. Last month I had a problem with the score motor. It wouldn't complete a cycle, and so the game was stuck after the first ball drained. The ball wouldn't kick out. I was able to to find the switch that wasn't making with some help from the guys on the Pinside EM forum.

I'm going to write this so I can remember what I did and what I learned.

The score motor is basically a tube with notches in it that rotates and moves various switches to open or to close while it turns. You can see that there are seven stacks of switches.

The schematic identifies each switch stack, tells you what each switch does, and tells you if the switch should be open or closed when it is activated.

My problem was that the switch that tells the motor when to stop wasn't doing its job. It is called the "motor run" switch and it is on the "Index" switch stack (far right). Let's zoom in.

So, by looking at the diagram, you can see that there are four switches labeled A, B, C, and D. The "motor run" switch is "D", and it is at the top of the stack. Also, you can see that one of its wires is orange and green, and the other is solid yellow. When this switch is at rest in the notch in the score motor's wheel (bottom right)- the switches D and C are open. Switches B and A are closed.

That means when the score motor turns and raises the switch stack, the bottom two switches open, and the top two close.

My D switch wasn't closing all the way. Once that was corrected, the Full House was playing as it should. To be honest, I would have never known to look at the motor switch, the advice from Pinside pointed me there.

Okay, problem number two.

When you start a game the backglass shows a number 1 lit up. This means you are on ball one. After you lose that ball, the ball count unit moves and lights up the number 2. This continues until all five balls are played and the words "Game Over" glow.

Sometimes my ball count won’t advance, and I get stuck playing the same ball for a few times. It doesn't matter what ball I'm on. This has been an intermittent problem since I brought the Full House to a working condition. Last week the machine got stuck on ball three, and that was it.

I knew the ball count unit was clean. I've cleaned that several times. After learning to use the schematic for the problem with the motor run switch, I looked at the schematic to see what switch controls the ball count unit.

The switch that pulses (activates) the ball count unit to "step up" (S.U.) is in the number 1 stack in position B. Out of the four switch positions D, C, B, A, switch 1B is third from the top.

The problem is that my switch stack only has three switches. How is that possible? I took it apart to make sure. Yep. There are only three switches. Those round, plastic guys on the end of the switch blades either lift to close a switch or lift to open a switch. There's only three.

Then for the first time I noticed that the index switch stack has five switches. Count the plastic lifts on the switch stack on the left. It has five. The stack next to it has the aforementioned three. It looks like someone put the 1B switch in the wrong stack.

Now I know why those screws wouldn't tighten the stack down. The stack was too tall with an extra switch. How did this happen? No clue. All I know is that I didn't do it, and it must be corrected.

I want to move the 1B switch back into the right position, but which one is 1B? Well, use the color listed on the schematic. One wire is blue with a yellow stripe, and the other is green. Simple, right? Not if you are colorblind.

I don't think about being colorblind very often. How I see the world is how I have always seen it. I don't wake up in the morning, look out the window and say, "Dang it. I'm still colorblind." Actually, I feel like I am lying when I tell people. But then I look at a nest of wires like this and I think, "Dang it. I am colorblind."

With Daphne's help, we located the misplaced 1B switch. The switches are complete units, and you can move them around like building blocks. It only took 15 minutes to move and adjust the switch.

The index stack on the left now has four switches. The same goes for the 1 stack next door.

Did that fix my problem? Mostly. I played 15 games in a row, and out of those 75 balls, the Full House only gave me one "extra" ball. Not too bad. I'll call that a win, and take what I can get.

Spring Break '18: Wednesday in the Park: I Think We'll Have to Go and Get Dry

Daphne had it all planned out. On Wednesday morning we'd follow the streets lined with notable Victorian homes, stop at a park where Char could play, and then have lunch. She just didn't plan on the rain.

That was okay, we weren't going to let some water get in our way.

Wet, steep hills are even harder to climb than dry, steep hills.

Here's the park. You'd think it would be crawling with kids, but it was empty because of the rain.

That meant that one kid, who was "too old" to play at parks, had run of the place.

Sure, you can play with the water. You're already wet.

Umm, that's gonna make your pants really, umm, never mind.

When it was time to go, the blue skies started to make their way towards us.

When the rain stopped, Char noticed this sign. She thought it was funny; I thought it was probably necessary.

Lunch was an unplanned stop at Dino Santino's.

"You, young lady, are going to eat every bite of that garic and clam pizza. And you are going to like it!"

Yeah, right. There's no way Char would eat that. Daphne and I did, though. I can count the number of times I've had clam pizza on one finger, but this was awesome. I would rank this in my top five pizzas of all time. 

After lunch Daphne spotted a bakery, Sift, across the street. Dessert time is nigh!

I had the Stud Muffin. You are what you eat.

Daphne picked the Irish Dream, and Charlotte had the Lemony Snicket. (Char can't wait for A Series of Unfortuante Events to return to Netflix on 3/30.) 

The cups are complimentary. 

No wonder the cupcakes were so good.

We do a lot of research on what are the "best" places to visit before we take a vacation. But if we only went to the places that made the "Top Ten" lists, we wouldn't have found Dino's or Sift. True, we wouldn't have known what we were mising, but we would have missed a lot.

Spring Break '18: Hey Ladies!

Fortified by clams and cupcakes, we went in search of the famous "Painted Ladies" - the multicolored Victorian homes near Alamo Square.

On the way I spotted my favorite store. Those pointy things keep birds off the sign and the building.

I only brought one paperback book with me on this trip, and I was done with Ready Player One by Monday night. I needed another book if I was going to make it through Thursday's flights home.

The last GW was a bust for me, and this one didn't look much better.  Just before I gave up hope, I spotted this on a bottom shelf of the books section.

Looks like Neil Gaiman would accompany me home. A beat up copy of American Gods is a great fit for my backpack. Two of the book's themes are traveling and what gets lost when one travels.

We were standing in front of the Painted Ladies 20 minutes later. The view is great.

I like these ladies better.

There are beautiful of examples of these Victorian homes all around Alamo Square.

Victorian homes are all over the place.

Even the park's playground has Victorian touches.

We stopped by this morning's park as we made our way back to the the cable cars. The park is much busier when the sun is shining.

And that is the end of the trip. On Friday we had a flight to Chicago, we were delayed three hours in O'Hare, and then we flew to Des Moines. We opened the door to our house around 11PM.

We still had three days to recover before school started again, so that was good.

Spring Break '18: Tuesday Morning's Otter Highlight

Char was excited to visit the city's aquarium.

Lumpsucker is going to be the name of my next pop punk band.

This shark attack video makes quite an impression.

See what I mean?

That was a real reaction from Charlotte. She had no idea my phone was trained on her. This is what her fake reaction looks like. You can see the difference. 

It was safe in here.

Daphne enjoyed touching the bat rays on their wings, but Char wasn't too sure about doing that herself.

Honestly, the bat rays seemed playful. They would come to the surface and splash around.

The touch pools are more Char's style. They were her highlight of our vacation to Seattle. 

This trip's highlight was all about Ryer.

When Charlotte rounded the corner to the otter exhibit, her eyes lit up. Ryer the otter was flying around his tank. She ran past the glass, and he followed her. She ran the other direction, and he did likewise. When she ran to another section of the exhibit, he zoomed there, too. When she stopped and put her hand on the glass, he zipped to that spot and swam circles around her hand. This went on for ten minutes. 

Daphne and I watched this unfold with wonder. He was really playing with Charlotte! I didn't get out my phone until the two were beginning to get tired, so my videos don't really show how active the two of them were. But you will get the idea.

After two hours, we were getting hungry. Char said her goodbyes to Ryer, and we moved on. 

Lunch was mussels, mischief, and ice cream for dessert.