#lazarian

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Lazarian mini, all put back together. I managed to mostly wrap this up yesterday. I was going to swap monitors, since I have a freshly rebuilt & tube swapped K4700, but for some reason, it didn't seem to work with the game, producing a washed out, terrible looking image. The K4800 which came with it was having some intermittent issues with the red output. After poking at some things, I suspected it was the cable connecting the video to the monitor, so I removed that and repinned it, and tried again after putting it back. Unfortunately, the problem persisted, but that meant that the culprit was the header on the monitor chassis. Since I'd have to pull the chassis to fix that, I went ahead and recapped it, reflowing the input headers and anything else that looked like it might need it. The input had an obvious cold solder joint, so I felt confident that the issue with red would be fixed. I put the monitor back in and adjusted it, getting a nice looking image with red and without the left side fold over it initially had. I'll still tube swap this at some point, but didn't have the time for it. After that, I reinstalled the plastic trim and glass bezel, now sealed up with triple thick so it won't flake anymore. Then time for some details — I like all my Midway games to have the original Fort double bitted locks, so I installed a set of those. I also put some 194 bulbs in the coin door, and reinstalled the cashbox, which I had removed and run through the dishwasher. There are a few other things to address, the main one being the rusty marquee brackets, but all the major things which are hard to access are looking good.

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Lazarian mini (cabaret) pickup.

Local collector Tony J. asked if anyone was interested in a Lazarian the other day. There were no photos, but I had a hunch, and sure enough, it was a mini! I went to check it out, confirmed that it was complete, and took it home for $150.

This is a very uncommon game, likely because it wasn’t very successful. It’s a Zaccaria title which was licensed to Midway, released in the US in 1982, a year after the European release. Being a year out of date and hitting the same year as the market crash started likely meant that it didn’t last long in arcades.

The guy selling it is a scrap dealer of some sort, and the whole front yard/driveway/sidewalk was covered in salvaged stuff. The top photos is the game as it sat when I came by.

After getting it home, I popped the back door and checked things over to make sure there wasn’t anything dangerous looking, that the fuses weren’t blown, and so on. You never know if there’s a loose quarter or screw kicking around the bottom of the cabinet that’s fallen across the fuse block when you move the game — ALWAYS check this first.

The inside was filthy, but there was nothing dangerous looking, so I applied power and was surprised and delighted when it fired right up. A previous owner had mounted a credit switch on the coin door, so I coined it up and played a game.

The game is complete, but has some signs of moisture damage — rusty marquee brackets, some flaking / shredding on the cabinet edges & corners, and the like. The worst is the bezel, which is flaking away to nothing due to poor storage — lots of hot/cool cycles seem to stress the paint and make it crack and flake.

Here’s the first game. Doesn’t look too good due to grime all over everything.

I took it apart today and vacuumed out a ton of dust, grime, and cobwebs. For some reason, the smoked plexi that goes on top of the plastic monitor trim bezel was missing. This seems to be the case with a lot of these Midway machines, I’m not sure why.

This is how grimy the monitor was:

This is a 13″ Wells-Gardner K4800, the smaller cousin of the K4900. A solid monitor, the second best, right after the K7000. There’s a little foldover visible on the left side, so I’ll probably pull it and recap. There’s some mild burn visible, I’m not sure if it’s worth swapping in a TV tube, but I might if I’m going to pull it anyway.

The game looks much nicer without all that gunk in the way.

Next up was to get the bezel under control by sealing it with triple thick. I gently tried to get some of the dust off it, but not much would dislodge without risking the art, so it’s just going to get sealed inside. I don’t want to get the clearcoat on the unprinted center of the bezel, which is a challenge, since some of it extends outside the border. I decided to attack the bottom, since that was the worst part, and arresting the damage there is a priority. I masked off all but the bottom strip and hit it with a good amount of triple thick.

After that dries, I’ll see what other areas need some protection and hit them as well, then clean off the center area and reinstall it.

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