Regular Maintenance
Games affected: all
Lubrication
Backglass
Playfield
Balls
Lubrication
Tim with a Silver Sails asks about lubrication, so here is my opinion this week. There are only a couple places where lubrication really matters, and in general, the less oil and grease laying around, the less crud you'll have building up. When in doubt, don't lubricate. The amount of wear a home machine gets is minimal. However, here is what you can keep an eye one (every year or so :-)), in order of most to least important.Motors
Some of the motors have sealed gearboxes, and if they work, they are probably best left alone. If they are getting noisy or sticking, drill out the rivets in the gearbox and open it up.The multiproducts motors (mixer/control unit) are typically the motors that will go bad, as they got the most use. Usually it's the gear on the motor shaft itself that drives the rest of the gearbox that wears. In the good old days, you could buy another motor shaft with gear. Maybe you still can. If not, multiproducts is still around, and they sound like they can sell you a new motor (see resources).
Oh wait, this is supposed to be lubrication...so inside the gearboxes, try the Mobil HP grease that multiproducts uses. Clean out the old grease with carb cleaner or other degreaser, and repack the gearbox. The only thing to watch out for is the very thin spacer washers that may be between some of the gears. They need to go back in the same places.
For open motors like the ball lifter, I use some of the teflon-based spray lube (dura-lube or whatever).
Some of the multiproducts motors have a couple brass tubes sticking out for oiling the motor bearings. I use a little of the teflon lube in there as well, assuming there isn't any oil already in them (mixing lubricant types is generally discouraged).
Clutch Washers
The leather clutch washers in the control unit, mixer unit, and some game feature units (magic square, magic screen, etc) can dry out. When this happens, the leather will start to shave off resulting in a buildup of particles around the edge of the clutch washers.Bally specified neatsfoot oil (available in hardware stores...look around the cleaning products). The problem is that I have always taken the units apart, and when the leather is sitting there, it is easy to keep applying neatsfoot oil until it stops soaking in, and then you wipe off the excess oil. When the washers are on the game, you only have access to the edge, which may or may not soak up the oil. I'll try it on the next game I overhaul before I take it apart.
Due to springs on the shafts, it is possible to slide the cam assemblies horizontally a little bit and squirt oil onto the face of the clutch. Most will get squeezed back out again, so be prepared to mop up. If you can't move the cams horizontally, the shaft is probably too cruddy. Don't bust the cams by levering them a lot!
Metal-on-metal Moving Parts
I use (sparingly) some of the teflon-based spray lube on things like shafts, step-up mechanisms, and the ball lift assembly. Keep the lube out of the coils and electronics, and you should be ok.Contact Plates/Wiper boards
This is a little more controversial, but I like the contact cleaner/lubricant (not TV tuner stuff...try and fine something that purports to resist crud buildup). I generally use MG Chemicals "Nu-Tron". As usual, wipe off the excess...you just want a thin coat. If you don't lube, that's ok, but check to make sure the unit resets easily. The wrong solution is to increase the spring tension...the right solution is to clean the contact plate. If nobody sprayed WD-40 on the ratchet, you probably will never need to take the unit apart to clean off the sticky mess.Backglass
Keep you eye on it for signs of burning from the lamps behind the glass (you did replace the #55 bulbs with #47's, right?). The other problem will be lifting/bubbling/flaking of the ink. Humidity and changing temperature is your real enemy. If you have the time, coating the back of the glass with a clearcoat (like Krylon triple-thick) may help keep the glass in good shape from all the elements except the occasional beer bottle that cruises by.Playfield
Well, what can I say. The current thinking is you either strip the playfield and clearcoat/varathane it, or you use a nice HARD paste wax on it. The Novus products are for plastics and plastic coated playfields (late model bingos had these). The creamy waxes/cleaners like Millswax seem ok, but the hard wax lasts longer amd probably protects better. Varathaning/clearcoating is probably overkill for the amount of ball travel you get on a bingo.Replace the rubber rings when they start cracking or just lose their bounce. The rings are so cheap that it's not worth trying to clean/reuse the old ones.
