1978 Bally Black Jack SS

I’ll credit this Black Jack with one thing….it taught me how to use Bondo. Up to this point, I’d never used that before. It took some trial and error (and I used too much in spots on this pin, making it more work to sand down flat and even), but I got the hang of it and now it’s no big deal to use.

Looking back, I can’t believe I left in the steel bumpers on the back of the lower cab and the metal grounding straps below the neck, allowing them to be painted over. Also - I didn’t realize the holes and bolts in the cab on either side of the coin door were for a security bar that an operator put in (not factory). Had I known that, I would’ve filled in the holes and returned it back to factory-looking. This was my first restoration and I didn’t know any better at the time.

I also learned about how to tumble metal bits and what media to use to get off the rust, corrosion, and make them shiny. Again, Black Jack proved to be a great training exercise. I also had fun reproducing the tech cards , warning labels, and inspection labels that go in the cab.

The boards cleaned up well. The issue with MPU went away after I put in a new CPU, new RAM, and freshly programmed game ROMs. For the game ROMs, I went with a custom set provided by a fellow Pinsider. The custom game ROMs have an expanded rule set making it a bit more fun (and challenging) to play.