Welcome to 2010!

I'm going to make an effort to update the blog site more often.

We'll see how well that goes... ;)

AMV From the Archives

I created this AMV almost ten years ago. Footage is from three Lupin III movies; Castle of Cagliostro, Mystery of Mamo and Plot of the Fuma Clan. The music is by "Weird Al" Yankovic, "This is the Life" which was the theme from the Michael Keton movie, Johnny Dangerously.

I think it holds up pretty well, but there are all sorts of spots I now see where it could use some improvement. Enjoy.

Repairing High Speed's Ramp

Cracks in the black plastic ramp on the William's High Speed pinball machine are a pretty common problem. My High Speed is no exception.

It looked like the previous owner repaired the ramp with a combination of super glue and hot glue. I removed the residue so I could take a stab at repairing it myself. There is a replacement ramp for sale on eBay, but at $99, I'd rather DIY. (or DIM?)

I took two small pieces of Wonderflex and heat shaped them to form bracing on the under side of the ramp. Once it cooled, the Wondeflex formed a solid brace.

For the inside of the ramp, I took a thin strip of wonderflex and fitted it as tightly into the corner of the ramp as I could. It is soft enough when hot to easily mold against the inside of the broken corner. I made it small enough so it won't interfere with the path of the ball.

The next step was to carefully remove the wonderflex pieces so they could be painted then glued back in place. Wonderflex will stick to itself without glue, but doesn't really stay in place against other materials.


While not invisible, the repair is pretty solid and blends in rather innocuously. Only time will tell if it holds up to regular play.

Rebuilt Flipper

I ordered the parts I needed from Marco Specialties, a new coil and a flipper rebuild kit. Once I've cleaned the playfield, I'll reinstall this onto the bottom of the playfield.

Coil to be Rebuilt

Removed the fried coil from the bottom of the playfield. I'll try to salvage what I can from is and rebuild the flipper.

Cooked Coil

It looks like the upper right flipper in the High Speed actually caught fire. There coil itself is slagged and there is a lot of heat/flame damage to the underside of the play field.

Assembled High Speed

First off, I got the pinball head installed on the body. The machine powers up just fine, a handful of lamps are out and the rubbers are in terrible shape. The most significant problem is the upper right flipper is out.

The play field is a mess, doesn't look like it has been cleaned in a long time. Fortunately clean up is easy with Novus 2, there is some serious damage to the paint in the middle of the play field, there probably isn't much I can do about it.