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    🐍 Repair log: Dodge Viper Night Drivin' (Sega, 1998)

    1998 Repair log Sega Viper Night Drivin

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    Helped a customer purchase and transport this machine back home, where he asked for help giving it a tune up. Game was mostly working except for some switches. Namely the two raccoon switches, and the standup targets on the left and right sides of the playfield. Hmm. All of those switches are on the same switch column drive. So follow the GRN-YEL wire down the playfield and see where it leads. 


    The raccoon targets were the problem here. Not only were the switch housings absolutely smashed, but the wiring had broken off both switches, causing the switches to fall out of the circuit. Now, you can buy exact replacement switches, but the original Sega switches are garbage. Replace them with regular Williams or older Data East standup targets. Yes, the style is different, but they can cop the abuse much better. 


    Minor issue with the diverter under the mountain. Some balls were not making it past the diverter, and were falling back down the ramp. Slow mo was useful to capture what was happening here. The diverter armature was not sending balls to the left ramp cleanly, and they were rattling around and losing momentum. Bent the armature to better direct the balls. Much better now.


    This game had no rubbers on any of the metal posts. Not good when you're using Glo-balls, as these can get destroyed more easily than regular pinballs. So, we decided to replace all of the rubbers with new ones. We went with "radiant rings" which fluoresce under UV light. Not many games can utilise this type of rubber effectively but it's perfect for Viper as there are UV lights mounted to the playfield.


    So everything got stripped off the topside of the playfield, playfield and parts were cleaned, new rubber rings installed, and a playfield protector was installed as well. The rings look really flash in multiball and the protector makes this game play ultra fast. Still some more upgrades and repairs to do on this machine in the future, but for now it's playing really well.


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    Repair log: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Sega, 1995)

    1995 Frankenstein Repair log Sega

    Repair logs are quick summaries of workshop and on-site repairs. If your machine needs a service, 📬 Contact Us to discuss how we can help!


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    💪 This Franky was an amputee! One of his arms had broken off. A shame, because his ball throw is the best part of the game, and he certainly can't do that without his arms! The shaft that his arm bolts to has a thread for a nut to secure the arm. The threaded section was sheared off. With some creative welding of a spare bolt to the shaft, the threaded section was back!


    With the arm back on, there was still a lot of adjustment to be done. First, the rest position of the arms needs to be adjusted so the hands sit just below the ramp exit points, otherwise the ball will get hung up, or it will fall off the hands. There is a "stop bracket" next to the arm shaft which you can use to fine-tune this. You can raise or lower the ramp slightly if you need more room.


    With the arms fixed, I moved onto the various lamp issues. None of the general illumination lamps on the playfield were working except for ONE! Some of them were blown, but most were still intact. However they weren't lighting up due to a lack of power. A dodgy lamp connector on the power supply was the problem. Some of the crimp terminals were making poor contact, and the solder on the rear side of the board had dried up and cracked. New connector, new crimps, reflowed solder, and the lamps were back.


    Then I moved onto the insert lamps. Most of these were not working, too, but this was just because most of them had blown. About 40 lamps later, they were all shining bright again. One lamp was troublesome, which was the red lamp above the shooter lane. This one has a connector adjacent to the ball trough which gets pulled quite tight. One of the wires had come loose from the connector, and needed to be reinserted to get this lamp working again.


    Another issue was the ball launch switch. It wasn't working. The launcher on Franky is a giant lever, which actuates a microswitch in the cabinet. The actuator on this switch was a little bent, so the switch wasn't being triggered when the lever was pulled. Bent it back with a switch adjuster and it was working fine again.


    The coin mechanism wasn't always accepting coins, either. The small solenoid that pulls inwards to direct coins to the "accept" path was puling in too slowly. This was a power issue; there was a poor connection in the screw terminal that supplied the credit board with power. This game had a weird credit board, too. Not an original Data East one. Never seen one of these before!


    A couple more switch adjustments and a good playfield clean and this machine was "alive" again! 🧟


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