Demolition Man

Demolition Man Pinball Restoration Project (more on page 2)

After we finished the arcade in our basement, I decided to buy a solid state pinball machine to round out our collection. This was something I had wished to do for many years. I set up an rss feed from craigslist into my email client and started to monitor pinball machines sales daily. I came very close to buying a Stargate - but after a one hour drive to the seller's storage locker, it turned out that he did not actually have that game, grrr! Finally, in October of 2011 I purchased a a 1995 Williams Demolition Man. The pin looked to be in good shape and relatively clean (or so I thought). Functionally, all seemed to be working with the exception of the Cryo Claw and a few switches errors.

Demolition Man is one of William's wide-body series machines. It weighs a TON, possibly the heaviest pin I've ever moved! I used a refrigerator dolly to get it down the stairs into my basement (plus two friends).

After the DM was situated in my basement, I powered it up and ran through the diagnostics. As I already knew, the Cryo Claw feature would move left and right but the magnet that held the ball was not working. Not only that, I got a decent shock when I touched the claw arm. So my first lesson with solid state pins was that the playfield has high voltage! There were two switch errors - one caused by a missing gate across the wide center ramp. And a number of flashers were not working, but the bulbs were good.

A close visual inspection revealed that the machine was missing some parts, had a couple broken plastics, and although the open areas of the playfield had been cleaned and waxed, the areas under the maze of ramps along with just about every other part was filthy. This machine needed a lot of work to get it fully reconditioned.

Here's a pictorial montage of the playfield strip-down. Click on any picture to get a close up of the grime!