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Thanks for the response! That makes sense on the ball size. The ones in it are far too small and light. Amazon will have a new one to me in 48 hours.

Is there a good way to smooth out the artwork? There is some warping. It's not horrible but would be nice to flatten. Is there normally anything behind the name Marquee? Or just an empty space? There's a divider from the mechanism portion.

I have the Fry's crunch labels on file, but not the correct size. Although the bar was quite long and wide, it was unusually thin. I'm guessing, but less than a cm. You can pretty much get the length and width from the size of the hole in the slide. Let me know if you need labels.

You can illuminate the top box and it looks good, not actually original but some operators did do it. The backflash can, I believe, be flattened and I think there is a method within the forum somewhere, much the same as correcting warped records with heat I think, but remember you need to remove everything to get at the backflash. You will find it's shrunk and pulled against the pins. Removing it might release a whole new set of problems.

My Whales 'Easy Perm' backflash is the same. I've learned to live with it; they often turn brittle, and start to crack when you handle them.
It had a MBC lamp holder in the top box, even though the artwork was almost opaque. Probably contributed to the warped top flash.
Nice machines, though. Redcar was one of my childhood haunts, so I met most of these 'in action'.

Hi, a lovely machine and I have one myself. The original sized crunch bars, as you probably know, are now not available but, Nestles animal bars should work well... they do in mine! It's worth cutting a piece of wood to go on top of the row of bars and put a weight on it - helps the bars drop down easy. I have screwed a hook into my weight block to help lift it out.

The perspex needs to go, as if left in the colours will change on the picture due to sunlight being badly filtered. I had a lot of original colour sweet prints from out of old magazines and framed them to go on the wall. Within 18 months the ones behind glass were still perfect, whereas the colours had all altered on all the ones behind perspex. Photos are the same, as behind perspex they go pink and lose their colours. The best way I find is to take the complete door to a good glass cutting shop - they should sort you out... usually £6 to £7 now. Don't forget to change the front piece of the small top flash too.

I wouldn't try fattening the backflash, as they are back painted and the paint may at the least start falling off. It doesn't look bad at all. I trust you will enjoy the machine. If you have children or relatives' children, you should find that this machine is very popular and something they will always want to go on. Their comment to me each time is first, 'can I go on the machines?', then, 'is there any chocolate bars in it!!!'



Picture of my weight block I made that helps chocolates fall after each one is vended. Just seen coppinpr's Crunch wrappers... They look good to us on dummy thin wood bars. If you print any out could I be cheeky and ask you to do me a number. If you do, I would gladly send you postages etc.
Thank you

Unless the perspex is stuck in the frame somehow, you should be able to simply lift it out without even removing the door as there is a slot at the top. Glass will be a big improvement. If the top glass is too damaged to keep, I can make you a new one.

Of course I had nearly the entire thing torn down within about 30 minutes of receiving it. It looks like I'm going to need to trim the backflash around the exit hole as it has shrunken, covering part of the hole.

I may just take the playfield and create a new one from it, leaving the original backflash attached to the original playfield. I could get a new one printed on vinyl and fit perfectly to the new playfield.

I love how easy these are to work on.

As far as the bars go, one of my sons has a horrible nut allergy, so we're limited to very few types of chocolate that aren't manufactured in any factory that uses nuts. What I did find is that if go to Canada, I can buy Kit-Kats that were made in Canada and those are 100% safe for him. I'm just outside Buffalo, NY, so Canada is just 14 miles away. I may make a new payout mechanism to handle the current small size Kit-Kats. I'll have to get out my metal brake and warm up the milling machine.





The original colors on the backflash look good.

yaksplat wrote:I may make a new payout mechanism to handle the current small size Kit-Kats

Why not just leave the existing mechanism yaksplat and sleeve the existing guides as in the photo below?

Not very attractive, but it retains the original mechanism and dispenses the Kit-Kat without any hassle.

The Kit-Kats are too thick. I could cut the mechanism to make them fit, but the slide is too thin as well. Building a new one will be a fun task.



Side note: These are the balls that came in the machine. They have designs on them. Does this mean anything to anyone?

There are at least two backflashes available on the forum. This one is, I think, a different colour to yours. I think the blue rimmed one is sharper than my old one and is on the forum.

yaksplat wrote: ↑Thu Feb 28, 2019 2:58 pmSide note: These are the balls that came in the machine. They have designs on them. Does this mean anything to anyone?

Those are Japanese pachinko balls.

As for the backflash, that's a very nice original so not sure why you would want to replace it? A repro is never going to better it. Because the plastic has shrunken over time you need to release the tension where any pins or screws attach through it and are locking those parts in place while other areas can stretch, which then causes the buckling. I just elongate the holes slightly with a Dremel or re-drill new ones in bad cases, just enough to leave a little bit of wiggle room for any further shrinkage. Looks like you have one bad split on the top lhd, which should be easy to fix by releasing that corner piece and bringing the joint back together. The plastic goes well under the side wood spacers giving you a lot to play with. I've sometimes had to use tiny brass nails to hold down cracks like that if they keep wanting to lift up and stop the ball. But I've also used a clear layer of polycarb over the top of badly warped ones to help keep them flat too.

Hopefully this doesn't make any of you cringe... This cabinet was so out of square and I'll say this; the maker of this machine was in no way a cabinet maker. The sides were different lengths, a groove was missing on one side to make the back line up nicely. The gap at the door was so wide, the lock was almost useless.



No worries though. It's back together and more solid now than ever.



I removed the backflash as it was so warped and cleaned up the playfield an all of the parts. The backflash is much nicer with the layer of dirt removed. I may have to put a layer of plexiglass on it as Gameswat suggested.

yaksplat wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:14 pm ………. the maker of this machine was in no way a cabinet maker.

Reminds me of my Grandma's response to being told a recently deceased friend's family had gone to The Co-op to do the funeral.

"The Co-op?" She snorted "His arse'll be hanging out in a fortnight"

BP

Looking better already. It took quite a bit of heat to flatten out the backflash. 300ºF in the oven. I started at 170ºF and increased at 20º increments until it would be soft enough to flatten. The paint on the backside is very delicate, so I lost a few flakes around the existing holes. I had to drill new holes through the backflash for all of the pins and screws as everything had shifted by a few millimetres.

Looking good so far. Far better in my opinion to preserve the original back flash than put in a copy. Well done!

Looks great, did you try touching up the paint from the back of the backflash? This can work well on small areas, but always add a top coat of matt white.

The look on the girl's face always makes me think she has either just stepped in something nasty or or she's tried the crunch and it tastes like something you stepped in.

That's why this will be handing out kit-kats and not crunchs. I thought about doing some painting on the back, but for the few small areas, it won't really be worth it to acquire the paint, match the colors and then get it perfect. If I leave it at is, there's some paint flecks missing and that's because it's old. If I paint it and it doesn't match perfectly, that will annoy the crap out of me. If it does start to bother me, I can always do it later.

Great job and as BF has said, better to keep the original than use a copy. Brave of you to use the oven method but by including the method it may encourage others to be equally brave.The idea of leaving the paintwork on the back as it is in case you can't match it I think is good too. Best to see if you can live with the aged look. Well done.

I think that apart from the temperature that you found necessary to bake it at, what is equally important is approximately how long before it was pliant.
And, did you place it in the oven paint up or down?
What process did you employ to even it out? Was heat and gravity enough or did you put something heavy on it?

I ask as I could imagine getting any of those steps wrong could easily nause it all up in spectacular fashion.
I think you were very brave and thank you for bearing the mantle of guinea pig on behalf of the hobby.

BP

So, as you can see in the earlier photographs, there was one corner that was cracked off and it was a pretty decent size and it was extremely warped. First thing I did was place down on a piece of paper, held it flat and traced it. At that point I had the original size. I had feared that the heat would potentially make the plastic shrink, which would be a complete disaster. I kept putting this piece back in the oven for about 10 minutes, which was long enough for the plastic to reach the temperature of the oven. Then I'd take it out and I'd lay it on the piece of paper and sandwich the piece between the counter top and a cutting board, putting my weight on it. The temperature would drop quickly and then I'd check the piece for size against the outline I took, and deformity. The size never changed, which was great. But it was still warped for many iterations. I kept doing this, over and over, while increasing the temperature until the piece was relatively flat. Once I determined that 300 was the temperature, I threw the whole thing in, left it for 10 minutes and then attempted flattening. It wasn't perfect, but worked well enough that it no longer looks deformed. All of the nail and pin holes were completely flat.

If I was to do it over again, I'd probably keep going higher and use two pieces of glass to sandwich the backflash. I'd place a 30# weight on the glass once I pulled it from the oven and then let it cool slower between the panes of glass. I'd suspect that it would flatten quite well in that scenario.

At one point I couldn't find my corner piece. It had fallen off of the rack in the oven and was sitting against the back wall, touching the bottom of the oven. I'm not sure how it didn't completely melt. But that could have been disastrous.

Wow, you did bight the bullet!
Well done, and thanks again.

BP