About 8 years ago, I bought a Paragon. The seller included a nicer populated playfield that he hadn’t swapped in yet. I got it home, put the nicer playfield in, and stripped the mechs off the spare playfield to make it easier to store. I forgot all about it.

Recently I saw a nice Viking at a friend’s house. I loved playing it, so I looked up recent prices and despaired. I’d passed up a rough Viking for $1000 about 10 years ago, and a nice one for $2400 a few years ago. So I thought, no Viking for me. Then I remembered that pile of Bally parts from the spare Paragon playfield. I pulled them out and laid them out on the floor to see if they looked like a Viking. I got excited when I realized that most of what I needed was there, and even more excited when I found the 2-way kicker on eBay for $50.

Right now, I don’t plan to build a complete Viking. I just want a playfield and backglass that I can put into Skateball or Rolling Stones when I’m getting bored with them. I’ll make a playfield storage box to keep the inactive playfield under the game. I do have a nice spare Bally coin door, so if a spare Bally cabinet shows up I’ll grab it. I also have pretty decent woodworking skills, so I may build one.

Huge thanks to Kevin and Stu for making “the trifecta” for Viking - playfield, plastics and backglass. I’ve done 6 swaps with their playfields, and I enjoy those games. I’ve kept them all except Centaur.

I’ll post updates here as the project progresses. Here are a few links:

BOM: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Tybzb9ru0nR8_zOjN2Yq22pCTSK8df-OLygg89IBRI/edit?usp=sharing
Great resto pics: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/why-not-a-viking-restoration
Manual: https://www.ipdb.org/files/2737/Bally_1980_Viking_Manual.pdf
Club thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/man-the-longboats-the-official-viking-club

Here are the major mechs. The left saucer is bidirectional, so the one pictured here won’t work. EBay to the rescue. Paragon used the older hinged slingshot mechs, and they’ll work here. Still, I’ve ordered one linear sling mech off eBay, and will keep an eye out for another.

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My next challenge is to find a standard Bally trough assembly, or to cut down the one for Paragon, which is a little too well endowed. It’s also missing the flanges at the shooter lane, but I can substitute ball guides here pretty easily.

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After 5 minutes at the angle grinder, I think it’s good! I’ll make a short metal wall to keep the ball from going back under the apron.

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Ha, no - that’s paint from the old Skateball rails.

Here’s the bad Paragon playfield. Too far gone to use in a game. I just didn’t want anyone to think I decommissioned a perfectly good Paragon playfield.

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I have a plan for that. I have that mechanism in my Rolling Stones, so I’ll pull it out and see what it takes to repro the bracket and actuators. The coils should be standard. I’ve got a friend who loves a challenge like this, so we’ll figure it out together.

However - I don't think that feature is all that important for game play. The resets are only used at the beginning of a ball, to restore whatever progress you made toward 1-2-3 on the previous ball. I think I can live without that. Rolling Stones has the same thing, and it seems like a "nice to have, but not critical" there too.

I'm working on the harness today. I'm reusing the one from my old ratty Paragon playfield. It came out of the dishwasher nice and clean, but is it long enough?

Measuring from where the wire bundle forks off on each end (backbox and playfield), this harness is 8" shorter than the one on my Rolling Stones. But I can easily pull my RS playfield 26" back, way more than necessary to stand it up. The RS harness could be 10" shorter and still stand up in the cutouts, so the Paragon harness has a few inches to spare. At the playfield, the wires will either be too short or too long. I'll need to splice the ones that are too short, and I can just cut the ones that are too long.

My goal for today is to start mapping out the wires at the playfield. I added tabs to my spreadsheet for Lamps, Switches and Coils, with human-friendly colors instead of the Bally color codes. It will be tricky, because the same color combinations get reused frequently. I'll need to ring them out with my DVM.

Here’s what the harness looks like after I cut all the zip ties. The lamp and coil wires are daisy-chained, so as expected a lot of loose wires fell out. I’ll try to reuse those when I get to that point. For now, I’ll focus on the insert lights. I’m hoping I can use 75% of those wires without extending them.

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Well it took about 3 hours, but the harness is ready to try on the playfield. I ended up with 4 unused wires (because Paragon has 4 more inserts), and one wire (A5J2-15) that’s missing from the harness. I‘ll probably grab one of the unused wires from J1 or J3. I’m optimistic about the wire length, and I hope to be ready to test the inserts and GI by next Friday.

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More eBay good luck - I got this powder-coated apron and shooter gauge for $80 shipped. I know it’s not the right color for the game, but it will look nice until I have time to fully restore one.

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I took a little time to make a connector for the 3-drop bank switches. These are great when you need to service the assembly, because all you have to remove is the coil. The Z-connectors can be found here:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/045-5012-24

I had one in my Molex kit that was the perfect size - 12 pins. But I’ll need to get another for the in-line drops.

Can’t wait for the playfield to get here, so I can see where things stand with the harness.

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Here’s a good source for the KK100 housings:

https://www.arcadepartsandrepair.com/product-category/connectors-sockets-pins/100-kk-molex/

Mouser is cheaper on the pins and housings, but they don’t have the larger ones (like 24 pin) anymore.

Marco seems to be the only place with the .100 Z connectors now.

Yeah, I just realized I was being dumb. A 6-pin .156 mate-and-lock connector would work better here.

Upgrading the flippers to linear mechs added $87 (+ shipping) to the project cost. But it’ll be nice to have plenty of power to make the right orbit shot to the saucer.

$60 - BFKIT88 - Flipper rebuild kit Bally 5/80-11/88
$17 - ASE-982-1285 - Flipper assembly linear switch bracket (2)
$10 - P-6665-636 and -638 - Flipper plunger brackets right and left

Every time I work on this, my hands are covered in black soot.

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Interesting. I’ve been pretty happy with them on my other 79-81 Bally pins. I guess I should have done a little more research before I jumped in with that mod.

Great thread. I won’t disagree with Vid, he’s the man. But, it wasn’t a total loss - I can switch to the extension springs with the new switch bracket. And I’ll use the linear cranks to refresh one of my other games.

My Paragon has the older style flippers, and the rest (Embryon, Skateball, Rolling Stones) have linear. I can’t seem to tap pass on any of them, but that’s my lack of skill. The flippers are plenty strong on all of them. Just to take one example, the shots to the upper saucer and the spinner on Embryon are both pretty satisfying. I’ll try to have some better players over to see if they can tell a difference.

Getting back to the build, I just found Vid’s thread on making ball guides. I ordered three 36” metal strips from McMaster-Carr, and will probably get the $200 Grizzly slip roll to bend it properly. I’ve got a rivet press, so I’m ready on that front.

My “old guy in pinball” story is that I got an NOS Space Station playfield for $150 back in the day (~2003), and I’ve gotten 2 free populated playfields. The early 2000’s were definitely were great times for collecting older pins. And I’m sure the 90’s were even better.

Tonight I cleaned up the old playfield posts. There was a lot of old wax in the fins, so I soaked them in really hot water and Dawn for about 30 minutes, then cleaned them with an ultrasonic toothbrush. Bonus pic of my favorite Dirty Donny poster, which hangs over the toilet so I can enjoy it every day.

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It’s go time! I’m really happy with this playfield. I’ll start with T-nuts and playfield posts.

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I’m not sure what to think of the mirrored backglass. I ordered the non-mirrored version, but this one is growing on me. It looks better than I would have expected. The art looks fantastic.

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I asked my wife her opinion on the mirrored glass, and she prefers it to the non-mirrored. She said that removing the art from around the Celtic-looking border makes it stand out more, and that’s her favorite part of the backglass. So we’ll be keeping it - it’s a happy mistake.

I got a lot of practice cleaning out the star rollovers on Fathom and Rolling Stones last month. Viking only has one, so it’s not too bad. I clean the 10 slots with a needle file, and try to clean out the middle with a stone Dremel - by hand, I’m afraid to use power here. When it’s good, the star will lay almost level with the playfield when it’s down. I came up a little short of that goal here, but it should be fine.

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Didn’t get much else done tonight. My wife and I watched a movie, and I got my mom online in her new apartment. Tomorrow I’ll be antisocial so I can make more progress.

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Warm white Yoppsicles all the way! I generally don’t use color for inserts unless the insert is a pale blue or green and needs a little boost. I’m going to make rails today (wood and metal).

Yeah, that’s a great color scheme. I definitely prefer that brick red to primary red.

I just finished ripping all my oak playfield rails on the table saw, and sanded them down to 220. I’m going to stain them using a dark red or brown, to echo the wood beams in the backglass. The biggest challenge is cutting the notches for the arch rail at the top. I think I’ll need to make a small ramp for my palm router to ease it in. That’s probably how they made them back in the day.

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I’m not big on rotisseries, but I made myself a “caddy” that’ll let me work on either side of the game. It’s actually the 2nd one of these I’ve made, but I like this design much better. Only reason I used PVC and threaded rod is that’s what I had laying around. But I like that I can switch to widebodies with this approach if I ever need to.

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I made a fair amount of progress today. I started by making Yoppsicles for the pop bumpers, and I assembled all 4 of those.

I decided to grind down the rings and skirts for the 2 pop bumpers next to the rails, rather than cut notches in the rails.

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Next. I cleaned all the inserts and got down to screwing the 50+ Yoppsicles in place. Before I ran the 5V braid, I traced all the major mechs and installed most of the switches so I wouldn’t interfere with them.

Next, I started stapling in the GI. I realized that I can afford to get creative here, and I can make as many GI “strings” as I need to, then I’ll chain them all together when I make the harness. But I’m trying to get 5-7 lights on each string.

Had to stop here because I have a ticket to see “Beau is Afraid” tonight. It’s directed by Ari Astor (“Midsommar”, “Hereditary”), so I’m expecting another memorable feel-bad movie.
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I finished the supply braids for the GI and inserts, and got all my switches installed. It may not be pretty, but it’s done.

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What the hell have I gotten myself into

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