1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula Pinball Machine.

One of my pinball buddies picked this game up from an operator where it had been sitting for some time. It was cosmetically really nice, and actually the boards were quite clean as well. Just needed a few minor things to get up to speed.

At some point, the speaker wires had been cut. I stripped those and soldered them back on which got the sound back up and running. The “Love Never Dies” flash lamps weren’t working either due to some wires that had come out of the IDC connector. I hate IDC connectors, so I replaced this with a molex .156 female connector and crimped in the wires with trifurcon terminals.

The display that was in the game was dead, so we replaced it as well. The game was having a reset issue when both flippers were pushed, which is actually really common on WPC games after 20 some odd years. There’s a long list of things to check when WPC resets start happening, the most extensive and thorough I’ve found can be found here on the PinWiki: http://pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#Game_resets

This game had good line voltage, thermistor, AC cabling, seated connectors, etc. We got

BR2 and C5 replacement before heat sink over bridge rectifiers added back.

down to the BR2/C5 replacement. I replaced both and ran jumper wires to strengthen the connection, which cleared up the reset issue.

On BSD, the center three drop targets are supposed to all be round targets. However, at some point, this game had two oblong targets put in for the outer two. So, I soldered in two round targets to match the original game spec properly.

The last issue we noticed were a couple rollover switches not registering. Most of the time these micro switches aren’t actually broken, just need some adjustments. When adjusted properly, you should here a little click when they are depressed. Always test with a ball, however, as sometimes you can get the rollover to register with your hand but it might not with a ball traveling over it. Occasionally, it takes multiple adjustments to get these switches just right and, sometimes, even if the switch isn’t faulty per se, it might still need replacement. The original part for these rollovers with Cherry DA3, but that part is now obsolete, so if you replace use Cherry DB3.

Replaced oblong targets with round targets.

That wrapped everything up on this one. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a brutal pinball machine, but when you master the stacked multi-ball it can be a real blast. I owned one for about 6 months before trading for a Shadow, and wouldn’t be opposed to another one day down the line.