Bram Stoker's Dracula - The Pinball Resurrection

This game was rescued from a container of re-imports from Argentina in 2003. It is now at my workshop being "resurrected"- literally from the ground up!

First thing I noticed was the smell - that dank, musty, this-game-has-water- damage-smell. A quick look at the bottom confirmed the problem and so the first thing to do was replace the bottom of the cabinet. I read Clay Harrell's version of how to replace a cabinet bottom - but frankly the idea of hammering out the back end of the game seemed a bit risky to me. I'm sure it works, but the edging of the cabinet was weak and brittle - obviously it too had seen some damage. And I felt that removing the back end would result in more catastrophic damage.

Using a sawzle and a jigsaw, I removed the bottom of the cabinet (after removing hardware, coin door and electrical wiring). Sure enough, the edging was splintering, so I had to reglue several areas with Super Bond wood glue. Off to Rona to find a suitable replacement. I decided to try a particle board for $3 versus getting a solid wood at $20 plus, and had them cut the width for me at the store. It fit perfectly, so I glued and screwed it into place.

Next came the PC boards in the backbox. They all had to be cleaned. Tracings all looked ok - except for the DMD high voltage board. Similar to other games of this era, the entire back area of the high voltage section was black and burned. I added a DMD-HVP board that I had a spare of to bypass the burnt section. This board is a must for all early 90's WPC games and is available from www.pinballinc.com for about $60 USD.

The battery holder also needed replacing, so I have added a remote holder to protect from acid leakage.

Next thing to do was start the playfield disassembly. With the playfield already out of the game, I propped it up and started to disassemble the entire top part of the game, plastics, ramps, posts, etc. To help me I used the shop out guide available here.

Then the tougher part - the underside of the playfield. Some parts of this game are completely missing, including the Myst Multiball Magnet coil and motor assembly. This game had obviously been used as a parts game, as lane switches  and coils were missing all over. A circuit board, the 24 opto switch assembly was also missing, and I was able to order that from eBay. Mike Roberts of Texas was able to supply the missing magnet assembly as well as some helpful pictures to guide me along. Some more pictures of the restoration are here.

 Parts & Prices This is a complete list of parts that were replaced or purchased, along with a complete cost breakdown for the entire restoration

I had Jay Richardson come over and do some troubleshooting for me as I am now close to the end on this game. He spent about 2 hours and we swapped out many dead boards, but finally got power to the game. Final issue seems to be that the motor and magnet are not working properly - this is something fairly well detailed in RGP, so i will search for my answer there.

Update July 2008: I traded this game and others to a fellow collector. The game was not fully working yet, but the other collector also had a non-working Dracula and hoped by putting the 2 together could end up with one decent game.