Fixing Afterburner —
Today, I replaced the bushings in my Tempest spinner assembly so I don’t have any more “BRRrrrrrRRRRR” noise.
But the majority of the day was spent getting an After Burner machine that I paid too much for working. First of all, I am an idiot. I paid way too much for this machine in the condition it was in. I will be much more cautious when buying games from now on. I’ll be consulting my friends at KLOV from now on concerning what I should pay instead of assuming all of the other collectors may swoop in and steal my prize. 
To give you an idea of the types of things that were wrong, about 80% of the screws for the machine were missing or replaced by incorrect standard screws. Sega uses metric screws in all of their games so this can be extremely problematic. The stick had been rewired because the previous owner apparently didn’t realize that flight simulator games reverse the vertical movement on the yoke or flight stick to give the user a more realistic feel. If you’re a flight sim player having this one detail reversed is murder on your game play. In addition, all of the mounts for the flight stick motor were completely gone. Someone had taken a piece of metal, jammed it between the control panel and the motor and tied a ground wire around a hole in the motor to keep it from moving around.
The day I picked this up, the exact same game went up for sale in much better condition for $175 less than I paid. I decided I would try and appeal to seller and explain to him what I discovered after I was able to strip the machine down. Though when I contacted him and explained everything–I got the standard “A deal is a deal” attitude followed by accusations of “How do I know this stuff didn’t happen when you moved it?” Seriously? What a colossal jack wagon.
Feeling defeated, my first inclination was to part it out. I posted a “Make me an offer” thread on KLOV but I kept receiving less than desirable offers on the parts for the machine–which discouraged me further. After a much needed pep talk I decided should just cowboy up and make this thing work. After all, I do enjoy the game. It was a favorite of mine in the late 80s.
I went to the hardware store and bought about $50 in bolts, screws, washers and other misc parts. I spent 5 hours and it’s up and running. Solid. I still have probably $20-$30 more to put into it.
Repairs: (So far)
- He had used standard bolts in several places. There was even some cross-threading I had to re-thread.
- Stick motor mounts were completely missing. Used a set of washers cascading down from very large to size 4 hole and secured the back side of the mount. I’m surprised the motor still works since there was literally nothing at all holding it in place.
- Secured the front side of the mount with two 5mm bolts on the underside (both missing.)
- Removed the cage. There was one screw holding the cage to the base. The rest were in the bottom of the machine or in the coin bucket. I put the dip switches back to defaults (1 coin, 1 credit, normal difficulty) and reassembled the cage putting all of the screws that belong back in.
- Rewired the vertical pot for proper flight sim behavior. (Up is down, Down is up.)
- Replaced two missing screws in stick’s conduit/cowling.
- Left coin chute was damaged due to the fact that was how they preferred coining up the machine. They had bent the pin that detects the coin and nearly wrecked the clear plastic housing that protected it. Also at that time I replaced both 25 cent mechs with .900 token mechs. (also had to repair one of my mechs so that slowed the process a bit.)
- Replaced missing screws for the top of the bezel. (There was one screw holding it in.)
- Replaced both 555 25 cent lamps.
- Prettied up the empty holes in the smoked plexi bezel with some nice plastic black plugs.
- Used Novus 3, 2 and 1 to try and get the big nasty scratch out of the plexi. I’ll need to apply and reapply a few more times but I spent a good 30 minutes on that process alone and my arms were tired.
Next:
- Replace the handle’s mismatched bolts and screws with proper sized matching metric hex key accessible bolts.
- Repair missile launch button. It works but the spring is broken inside so there is no spring action on the button.
- My washer solution for the base is temporary. I bought a piece of heavy gauge sheet metal and I intend to cut a new piece, drill the proper holes and mount it under the wood base for the stick.
(Monitor looks washed out but it’s just the camera.)
