piksmart

Williams Banzai Run for sale

Hi Everyone

Just to let you know I am having to sell my Williams Banzai Run Pinball machine.

Currently listed on ebay if anyone is interested:-

Ebay Listing

Needs some work - was going to be my pet project, but after moving house to somewhere there is no room for it, and with an impending wedding to pay for, it's got to go :-(

Collection from West Sussex, UK.
accent shadow

shipping cost effectiveness/care in humid environments.

HI all,

i currently own an Addam's Family pin, but it's been in storage in Oregon ever since i moved to New Orleans two years ago. The person who has generously decided to watch over it is going to be moving to Japan fairly soon, and i think i'm in a place now where i'd like to have it with me again.

my questions are twofold:

1. My friend is in a transition state between oregon and japan with very little obligation, so she has stated that she is open to the idea of uHauling/road tripping it to me and then spending some time here before flying back to Oregon. What's the opinion of this comm. about something like that vs. shipping it professionally in terms of cost-effectiveness and/or care of the pin? How much would shipping a pin from Oregon to Louisiana cost in any case? I'm assuming a ballpark of $400-500.

2. Once i get it here, is there any special constant care i should do given that i live in a pretty humid environment? Would buying a dehumidifier for the room be enough, is there something that i can install in the machine itself maybe? Any thoughts on that front?

Thanks!

pinball
  • xtingu

What to do with a dead pinball machine...

I was very lucky as a kid to have a pinball machine in the basement: Gottlieb's Hit the Deck.  It was made in 1978, and only 375 were made. 

My dad's friend bought it after my brother and I moved out, and it sat in his damp basement for the last 20 years, falling apart.  It is unplayable.  Unless I want to spend the next 87623 years of my life cleaning corrosion off of thousands of contacts with a fine emory board, this machine is officially kaput. 

My dad's friend is looking to clean out his basement, and he wanted to know if I wanted the pinball machine.  Part of me says Hell yes!  I'll refurb it and love it and hug it and call it George, and the other part of me says Who am I kidding? I can't even unpack boxes from when I moved into this house 2 years ago.   But I can't bear to think of that machine sitting on the side of the road for the trash guys.

Soooooo... I'm thinking about turning it into a rad coffee table.  I've seen this done before (Seattle folks have surely seen the tables at Shorty's), and it looks way cool, and I think it'd be a neat way to keep it in the family without stressing over the upkeep.   We do have a great workspace in our basement, and with my beau's woodworking skillz, it could be a fun project.

Or I could call around to some of the pinball resources in my area to see if they think it's fixable, and to see how much it would cost to get it fixed up.  Or, I could take my dad's approach: Fix it myself.  It's not like I'm gonna break it worse-- it's already dead.

Bleagh, I dunno. 

Thoughts, dear pinball geeks?

(x-posted to my own journal.)
  • Current Location
    19810

(no subject)

Hi Everyone! A couple years back I got a Williams Space Shuttle from a client for whom I'd been doing computer work.

I'd been fixing it for them as much as I could just to play it (originally it was dead, then live but no play, then live with play but only one flipper and no displays... It got better every time their PC broke. ;))... Anyhow, eventually they traded me the machine for some construction supplies I had lying around.

Anyhow once it was mine I went insane on it, replaced myriad bulbs, the rubber, some plastics on the table, a coin-door-lock, etc. I also performed the safety upgrades by adding fuses to the general lighting circuit and putting AC input MOV surge arrestors at the power supply. It now plays 100% and me and friends have put a few hundred hours on it.

It'd been stored in an unheated barn forever, and the backglass had peeled into a heap of flakes in the bottom of the CPU box. Being the repairman I am, I taped all the flakes back together. It looks passable but gives the impression of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. I've spoken to the gent who makes those "translights" for Space Shuttle but they seem a tad pricey for something of this... Uh, caliber. So I'm wondering, has anybody got a backglass for this thing that's not a hundred bucks?

BTW... My top score on 5-ball easy is 5,700,000. Closest rival is 4 million. The fun-factor's way up there on this machine! :)
  • Current Mood
    curious
Twilight Zone Pinball

(no subject)

Has anyone here run into a Global VR UltraPin machine yet?


I've heard about them, but have yet to see one in person.

Does anybody that has tried one have any opinions - bad or good? They look cool as hell, and comes with some classic tables (Xenon, Funhouse, Attack From Mars, and BK 2000, to name a few). But I was a bit disappointed to hear it doesn't include my faves, Twilight Zone or Judge Dredd.