Bingo Overhaul - Surf Club

Generally speaking, the process is identical to the one followed on the Magic Ring, so rather than repeating a bunch of information, I'll just hit the highlights of what I found/fixed.

Inspection

OK, I'm going to try and be nice and just say that it is possible to take a game with cosmetic problems and make it worse. Here is some hints on things to avoid if you don't like the blemishes:
  • don't assume that all shades of yellow paint are identical. poor color matching is worse than worn spots.
  • if you clearcoat a playfield:
    1. remove everything, including the pins and the spring bumpers and the top and bottom arch.
    2. don't spray the playfield hole switches. cover them up.
    3. clean the playfield first.
    4. toss the cat out the back door. we don't need hair embedded in the playfield for posterity.
    5. spray evenly in multiple coats, and sand in between. The end result should be flat, not bumpy.
    6. make sure the rollover button inserts are level with the playfield surface.
    7. don't repaint the rings around the playfield holes by hand.
  • don't paint the bolt heads or hinges.
  • don't stain the wood rails and legs a dark color.
Other than the cosmetics, the game was mostly complete and reasonably clean. The usual oil around the motors, but not too bad. The playfield will need to be replaced or the clearcoat sanded off.

Problems

As usual, I was intending on disassembling the mixers and control unit anyway, so I unsoldered the motors and used a power cord to plug them directly into the wall. The control unit shaft spun ok, the mixer shaft was pretty much frozen. When I took apart the mixer unit, I found that dried grease had welded the score extra step pulse generator to the shaft. I had to use a hammer to loosen it. this unit should spin freely on the shaft. Had the mixers not been disassembled and cleaned, the motor would almost certainly burn up.

knocker
Surf Club
knocker
The knocker had been removed. This is a coil and a plunger rod that just makes noise at certain times, like when the score advance. I scrounged the pieces off a parts machine.

The corners score should pay 200, but it only payed 100. A cheap operator moved the corners replay counter step-up switch from replay cam stack 10 to stack 12, which cut the payout in half (see the timing diagram).

The reflex unit had been "plugged" so the fully reset position was not at the most liberal. This is done by removing the wipers and the contact plate, and screwing a bolt through the reflex unit housing. The bolt acts as a stop - a pin on the internal gears in the reflex unit hits the bolt and stops the gears from turning. Bally thoughtfully provided a couple holes to allow this, and the operator took advantage of it.

The return spring on the score unit was wound too tight. The unit could not step up to the highest odd position.

The previous owner had replaced the shutter motor, and he installed the new one incorrectly. You have a 50-50 chance of getting it right. If you screw it up, the shutter cams are 180 degrees out of phase with the position of the shutter panel (i.e. when the shutter is open, the switches on the shutter cams are mostly wrong). Actually, I fixed this at the guys house a few months before I acquired the machine.

Shorted wires in the trip bank relay assembly. The usual pulled-back insulation and the exposed wire touching an adjacent switch blade solder lug. The plastic insulating tubes were missing, so someone had unsoldered the wires in the past and didn't put the insulators back on.

A washer from the replay register unit was wedged in some lamp sockets. Fortunately, it was only shorting together the outer casing of the sockets, which are all tied together anyway.

The coin door door was missing the coin lockout relay and the coin kicker relay. While not mandatory, I swapped in parts from a spare door.

switch plate
Surf Club
Odd/Even/All switches
The switches under the odd/even/all buttons and the mounting plate they sit on were corroded and rusty, probably due to beveraged being spilled down into them. I disassembled all of it and cleaned/spray painted the metal parts.

Conclusion

Not too bad. I went through cleaning all the units and connectors, and the game pretty much worked. You can see how simple the game is by looking at the pics of the game internals.

It's a reasonably simple game, and the details of how it functions is being covered in the game components area.

The hold/double hold feature makes this game interesting, especially if you have the spot numbers/super line feature and/or the supercards lit as well. You must decide after shooting three balls what number you wish to spot, or what range of three numbers in the super line you want. The hold/double hold kicks in after you shoot five balls, so you need decide after three balls whether you will most likely hold the odd numbers or the even numbers.