Years ago my grandfather (Neil…one of the sources of my name) brought back two Pachinko machines from Japan.  He was a pilot for PanAm and did a lot of flying between the US and Japan.  One of them was a gift to me…the other was a gift for…um, I’m honestly not sure.

But as a child I LOVED this machine, and would play with it all the time.  Part of the fun was taking it apart and figuring out how it worked.  It is entirely mechanical in operation…with a couple lights that activate when certain things happen.

For years it worked perfectly.  But as time passed it worked less and less well…getting jammed up quite often.  It had sat disused in the garage for years until, on a whim, I decided to take it apart, clean it up, and make it work again.

I got all the mechanical parts all happy again but haven’t tackled the lights yet.  I had plans but other things got in the way.  I went a little crazy with the picture taking (as usual).

Here we go…

Here is where it lay for many years…surrounded by a variety of garage storage items.  It was pretty gross in there as we had a rat problem for a while.  Plus it seems a cat had babies in that general area.  Not too pretty I must admit.

Here it is out of the garage.  Note the stickers.  I put those on.  As a kid.  They made it cooler.

Here is the back of the un-clean-machine.  It’s pretty clever how it all works.  The balls were really gross (now that is something I don’t say all that often).  My father built the outer frame for it, but for the most part it seems pretty original.  There are some signs that it was worked on in the past however…I think.  It’s hard to tell really.

This is a close up of the upper section of the works in the back.  There was a lot of dirty, some rusty balls (ha) and odd wiring.

Middle works…

…lower works.  It is a well designed machine because after years of use nothing was really “broken”…just dirty and not very smooth operating anymore.

Here is the “fun” part…where the balls bounce around.  I think the Snoopy sticker adds that extra special touch of fun.

These are some nasty balls.  They need a LOT of attention.  I went a little nuts with this part but I figured the balls will be running through the entire machine quite often so they should be as clean as possible.

We start with balls in a tub.  Now…how to clean them?  What shall I use?

Of course!  The commercials tell me it cleans everything so well.

Into a bucket, add water and a scoop.

Hmmm.  Still pretty nasty.  FYI looking at this reminds me how much it hurts to stir steel balls with your bare hands.  It’s not a pleasing massage.

So what else can I use to clean these?

BINGO!  It cleans EVERYTHING.  I love this stuff.  Perfect

After multiple baths they are nice and shiny.

But now that they are clean…how shall I protect them, keep them clean, and lube the inside of the system at the same time?

The answer is obvious.  Hell, it says so right on the can!  Note how old this can is.  It seems to work just fine though.  Smells good too.

Now there are a LOT more pictures of various other bits and pieces of this thing.  I’m tempted to post them all here but that would be rather time consuming.  Plus the project isn’t entirely done yet so I think I’ll hold off on posting the rest until it is fully finished.

But I will say this…it is a HELL of a lot cleaner and mechanically works great.

And if you want to see more pictures of the whole thing, click on this link.

More to come…