John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

I bought an old Bally Wild Wheels pinball machine from a guy who restored pinball machines. He said he always cleaned all the terminals and connections before ever plugging in. I bought it before he cleaned it...so it has not been plugged in. I want to clean and restore before I plug in. Any help in doing my own restoring, instructions, manuals, etc to get it running would be appreciated. I do not want to plug it in until I feel it is ready to plug in. Thoughts?

ooh a 1966 em. I'd plug it in and fire it up to see what does or does not work.

see if reset triggers the steppers and score reels all to zero and go from there.

Quick question. The guy I bought it from restored many machines and he said I could "fry" some components if I was not careful to clean before plugging in??

if you are really worried about "frying" something, use an ohm meter to start looking for shorts. As long as the fuses are intact any "frying" is going to hit the fuse before anything else.

this thing is an EM, its all mechanical, no electronics to fry.

lots of relays and leaf switches. you can fry stuff but its not like blowing up electronics.

the biggest thing is some relays get stuck, things like if the score reel does not get back to 0, the machine goes into a continue spiral of trying to move the score wheel etc.

you'll see these things right away and you can turn it off.

EM's are pretty hardy machines. good luck working on them.

Thanks for comments. I guess since it is so old I want to minimize issues before the first plug in so looking for advice (clean connectors, etc, etc). It is hieroglyphics to me when I open it up and I am not versed in electronics or electricity so have to walk through it slow. Appreciate those that have given comments and any future comments.

My advice would be, if you smell a smokey burning smell its likely a locked on coil, power off and check the coils. I would suggest checking the coils before turning on, and cleaning the leaf switches and coils anyways. It doesn't hurt to open the machine up and look for loose wires and bolts in the bottom of the machine too its nearly 50 year old saulder holding everything together things are bound to come loose. The score reels on these old machines get gummed up as well either because a operator put WD-40 or something in it that might of cleaned it in the short term but attracted dirt later on.

In short give the machine a good cleaning before turning it on and it will save you the work of having to do it later. The logic being it will have to be done sometime and it helps narrow down issue points later when "my game no workie" you sort of have an idea of what everything is, what YOU have done with it so far and generally limits the issues you encounter down to areas you might not of touched yet or looked over throughly.

What is the best cleaning agent? or what should I use to clean all the coils, terminals, etc? Thanks

some pure alch. wet some sandpaper with alch and give the contacts a clean with that.

let it all evap + dry before turning back on

no wd40, no 'contact cleaner', no grease PERIOD!

Specifically why no WD-40 and Grease is that those trap dirt and grime in whatever your cleaning. In short it might work for a day two days maybe even a week or month. but eventually it will clog up and it can do a lot of damage to your machine. Though what is ALCH Bloodycactus? I'm not familiar with it.

alcohol. cleans and evaporates with no residue.

Ah ok, im guessing higher grade alcohol is better sense it leaves less? im guessing 90% +?

you can guy 99% isopropyl alcohol everywhere, 91% even. qtips and some alc.

its quite flammable so use in well ventilated area.

you'd think on the everywhere but not around where i live. best ive got is 91% which will work fine. XD just saying