Bram Stoker's DRACULA Refurbishment Completed! (Dr. Dave's Pinball Restorations)

Freshly refurbished 1993 Bram Stocker's Dracula. Over 30 hours of restortion work was performed on this game. Many issues were plaguing this copy of the game from repair attempts in it's past as well as broken parts, rubber and the game just needing a lot of love to bring it back to play like new condition. Reworked the driver board: new 5v reg, 5 v cap C5 and 12v cap
J122 repinned and MPU worked on (battery remote)
Found bubble wrap stuffed in rear left VUK blocking balls from entering from subway. Subway mount cracked (Repaired), middle pop bumper solenoid mount loose, stand up targets needed addressing as all were loose.
Took top 1/2 of game apart and deep cleaned. Fixed many broken parts and wrong hardware and broken rubber and posts. Coffin light sockets were melted. Cleaned all red plastics and installed red leds and white leds. Rebuilt 2 pop bumpers and replaced rubber with premium silicone grade and some hardware including melted damaged coffin light sockets.
Auto shooter was loose and only had one screw holding it in. Tightened and installed all the screws for it.
Cleaned and installed top side ramps and buildings as well as more hardware that was missing. Created and printed out new instruction and title cards for the game. Set up software options.
Replaced broken red target face with proper yellow new one. All 3 center target mountings were loose, rectified with larger screws. Cleaned 6 standups, replaced yellow target face for middle bank left. Soldered bad connection on video mode popper solenoid, cleaned all under playfield lenses, cleaned and replaced all playfield insert bulbs and reworked all playfield insert pcbs. Spacer for middle small ramp for clearance as it was blocking the ball from going up the ramp as well as ball getting stuck on ramp under coffin, top left and right lanes switches needed to be swapped around AS THEY WERE FOUND TO BE INSTALLED BACKWARDS at some point in its history.
Adjusted height of main ramp via upper right tall post shimming and clear plastic cover over ramp, swapped left and right top lane switches to correct them. Rebuilt flippers, 2 plunger links and flipper parts, took out slam switch and repurposed for left EOS switch (AS INCORRECT ONE WAS INSTALLED PREVIOUSLY), extra ball light at bottom of playfield installed wrong side of diode making it always come on, attached wire to proper side of diode. Shooter lane ball serve coil installed incorrectly and grounded out/shorted when lifting playfield, reoriented coil the correct way. Installed new flasher bulbs. Installed 4 new standard balls and original glass.
After many hours under playtest, game developed an opto switch intermittent issue which would give a left ramp hit with flipper movement as well as lose track of balls in the trough and cause erratic multiball behavior. Repaired original opto board by replacing the suspect comparetor that was linked to these switches.
If you'd like your game restored or if you are looking to purchase a restored game:
www.pinballdoctor.com
[e-mail]
We talked about this restoration on our monthly podcast here:
open.spotify.c...
Cheers!
Dr. Dave

[@DaveGVideo]

Looks like it plays great now! 👌

[@RodsPinballVideos]

Nice! Fish Tales also had the lightning flippers, and maybe Dr Who?

[@pinballdoctor]

Yes you are correct! I should've done a bit more research into these before I filmed the video. Fishtails, Popeye, Dracula, Dr. Who all had them. BUT: They were a European opertator's invention to cause shorter ball times. Williams changed to them for a short time, but quickly opted to go back, hence machines were not designed for them, but fitted when they came out around this time. It doesn't seem like such a small amount makes a difference, but it seems huge when playing.