Midway Wild Kingdom Restoration

I thought I would post some details on a Midway Wild Kingdom EM game I recently picked up. It has been more of a repair than a restoration. The game had already been fully restored/repainted but during shipping the backglass and mirror were broken. The damage to the cabinet was fairly superficial. First job was to remove all the broken pieces of glass and mirror from the cabinet. Large pieces were lifted out and the rest was brushed out using a small paint brush and vacuum cleaner. There was only one piece of a scenery which had come away. After re-viewing the flyer for the game, I could see where the piece belonged and it was glued back in place.

The game was still set to 110V and with this particular game there are no adjustments available on the transformer so I needed to run it from a stepdown transformer.

I was unsure if my transformer was sufficient to power the game so I connected it up to the game and measured the current being drawn. My unit was a 550 watt unit so this was fine for the job.

With the game now on, I was able to place a few credits. The start button was sticking in so I removed it, cleaned and adjusted the position using the screws on the back.

Next I could see the score reels were not resetting properly but couldn't at first why they were not working. The spot welds around the score reel mounting frame had broken and the score reels were sagging slightly! Rather than try to weld these, which would require stripping of all the components, I decided to drill the welds out and replace them with screws/nuts. I covered up any electrical components and the playfield beneath, centre punched the welds, then using a drill bit dipped in grease (to catch some swarf) slowly drilled out each weld. Then used screws with nylocs to make sure they would not come loose.

While the game was on I noticed that Charlie the Hunter was also running at full speed and could not be adjusted. With this game, you get the first shot and then it is a race between the game (Charlie the Hunter) and yourself to hit the targets first. The circuit for the motor control board is reasonable simple and there is not much to go wrong. I checked the SCRs first and they were OK but found one of the 2N4871 faulty. Replaced this and was now able to slow the game down for testing purposes.

I have measured the frame to get the mirror W x H and was able to get the thickness from leftover piece of glass.

The doors were secured with screws which were just starting to crack the edge of the timber so I removed these and fitted some new locks to the cabinet. I squirted a bit of liquid nails into the small cracks to prevent any further splitting.

Replaced a couple of #44 bulbs and fitted the replacement backglass. The replacement backglass is probably a 8.5 with just a bit of flaking towards the top.

One of the legs mounting brackets had also broken so I just need to source a few of these.

I just need the mirror and the leg mounting brackets to finish the game off. You can shoot a couple of the animals if your lucky but am looking forward to trying the game out.

More photos

The game is fully running now but I have yet to document the rest of the work, which will come later.

coool, cool, coool cool cool.

Loving all the EM porn lately.

Nice looking game too... Thanks for posting!

Cheers

Jacob

That is seriously cool.

Good luck with finishing it off.

Midway Wild Kingdom Restoration

I actual bought this machine off dj10555 a few years back for my collection, I currently still have it and its working 100% I did manage to get a hold of an original 8 track tape player and have the noises recorded onto the tape.

I also bought the flying circus as well.