machine rebuilds

[Guest]

Hey fellow wrench turners, I was wondering how often you do rebuilds. I am talking about pits, lifts, fingers, chassis, front ends and whatever else there is. Seems like the only time that I can do this is summer, and that is only 2 months. Also, what are your favorite kind of grease that you use to lube all of those lovely zerk fittings. I am looking forward to your replies. Mark.

[Universal Revolutions]

Re: machine rebuilds

Mark,

The house that I worked at was and is on quite a thin budget, so we didn't do much replacing of parts unless the old ones where pretty much used up.
It's been many moons since I worked on bowling machines but I do remember how we decided when to tear things apart.

What we did was make careful observations of the machines. About once a week or so, as the leagues started finishing up, we would crawl into the machines and check all of the bolts and other hardware in the pit, cushion and plow areas. We would also clean and inspect the pin-deck and flat gutters. Next we would clean and check the lower parts of the ball return area including the paddle. We would continue to use parts that we new where in poor condition, but learned to recognize when they where nearing there retirement age (we kept notes so we would not forget to check the weakening parts). When it was determined that it was getting risky we would wait for the last league of the day to finish, and that is when we would have at it.

To be prepared for this activity we spent much of our time preparing spare assembles (distributors, ball lifts, bounce plates, ect). We didn't use all new parts everywhere, we would reused parts that had some life left in them.

We used blue grease from Kendell, but that was years ago.

It's amazing how beat up the machines can get and still run good every night. The ones I worked on where installed in the 1950's. The same proprietor is on the same budget and still putting on leagues. You nostalgia fans would like this house, it's still got the above ground ball returns.



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Chris
Universal Revolutions