Big Progress

It's been a couple of weeks from my last post. Since then there have been some big things completed around the workshop:

• The Addams Family is complete and has been posted on eBay
• All of the parts came in from TwoBits.com for the Pac-Man, and it's complete
• Twilight Zone is up in the shop and has been torn down
• My powered winch hook-up's are in place to assist in getting machines up the stairs

On The Addams Family front, there were lots of views on eBay, but the auction ended with no bids. I'm afraid that it's too expensive for this time of the year, and with the money I have in it, I really can't afford to drop the price much. I did get one offer after the end of the auction, but would have lost money on the deal. I made a counter-offer on the deal to at least break-even, but I've heard nothing as yet. In the meantime, it's up in the game room and providing entertainment.

On the Pac-Man front, I am absolutely thrilled with the stuff I received from TwoBits. The top glass underlay that they provide is absolutely of premium quality. One thing I was a bit surprised about is that the new clips they provide only had one hole in them, where the originals had two. Overall the end result was very impressive.

Oh yeah, I forgot the control shelves. I picked up some spray primer and spray semi-gloss black paint from Home Depot (both Rust-Oleum). I was able to apply three coats of each in one evening, and after three days of curing, they looked great! In my prior posting, I mentioned removing the existing CPO's without any problems. A quick shot of spray-on adhesive to the back of them and careful positioning resulted in brand-new looking control panels!

On a side note, having the game room and my shop upstairs has translated into some significant logistical issues with getting machines up 16' of stairs. The last straw was my wife and I manhandling Theatre of Magic. I swear that thing weighs in at 300#. Once that was in place and I had completed Addams Family, it was time to move Twilight Zone upstairs. Just moving it using a two-wheeler showed that it weighs even more than TZ. There was no freakin' way that I was going to haul that up the stairs. Time to implement the "hoist".

Basically, I had the bright idea that, since my stairs are a straight shot, it should be possible to just pull the machines up the stairs on a two-wheeler with a hoist if I had something solid enough to attach to. After a little bit of investigation, I found that the ceiling joists at the top of the stairs appeared to be positioned correctly and large enough to support the weight.

Between a couple of large eye bolts attached to the ceiling, two more attached to my two-wheeler, and some 3/8" stranded cable, I had a setup that I could test. I went ahead and hooked everything up, hung the hoist from the ceiling at the top of the stairs and extended the cable down to the bottom of the stairs to attach to the two-wheeler... WRONG! I ran into the first snag in my plans at this point. Granted, the hoist had a 25' cable on it, and the stairs are only 16' long; however, hanging it from the ceiling made it fall short by about 6'. Unfortunatley, this meant that I have to pull the two-wheeler up the first two steps before I can hook it up. This beats doing the whole thing, but it sucks.

Anyway, the test worked out great, so it was time to test with my Twilight Zone, which I was itching to get upstairs. So, out comes the straps, and whip, whip, whip, the TZ is hooked up to the dolly and at the base of the stairs. Now, to get it up a couple of stairs so that I can hook it up to the hoist. Grunt... Strain... Phew! OK. Everything is hooked up and ready to go. Just one logisital issue: because of the orientation of the handles on the dolly, someone has to be raising up the dolly so that they don't catch on the stairs each time it rises another stair. OK, fine. I need to operate the hoist, and my wife can handle keeping the handles from catching.

Hmm... Well, there's a problem. The handles are at the top of the two-wheeler, and my wife is at the foot of the stairs. And there's a pinball machine blocking the stairs. OK, fine. Grunt... Strain... Cuss! The wife crawls over the machine. Finally! Now it's time to do the test...

Now, keep in mind that I'm using components rated for 250-300#. The winch is capable of pulling about 1000#, so overall I'm in good shape on ratings; however, there's still a question of whether I'm going to pull the bolts out of the ceiling, and keep in mind that steel cable makes some noise when it's under a strain. Finally, consider that I'm pulling a two-wheeler up a 16' flight of stairs. This means there's a big load as it's being pulled up the riser, then there's a relaxation when it reaches the top, at which time the top of the two-wheeler tends to come down as slack comes into the line. At this point, the top of the two-wheeler has to be manually raised up for the next step, and the whole process repeats...

Needless to say, my wife doesn't have a lot of faith in my rigging, and the noise coming from the cables doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Add to this the fact that she's the one having to be in close proximity to the actual load... she wasn't happy. After a bit of struggling, though, we had it up the stairs with little concern and risk. Woo hoo!

So, fast-forward to today. The game room has been rearranged and now has four pins, one cocktail and three uprights. Twilight Zone is in the shop being torn down, Dr. Dude is still downstairs awaiting its lift up the steps and I still need to get Space Invaders up to the shop.

I can't wait to see my wife trying to climb over that...