Something no pinball owner wants to see when they take the backglass off their machine is a set of bleeding batteries. The damage they cause can be fixable, but is often expensive either with board repairs or replacement boards. This is preventable with regular changing of the batteries, but is something so easily forgotten. (photo courtesy of peakpinball.com)
Pinball
Documenting my adventures into pinball repair and restoration
Back for the second episode in the series covering my work on two Sopranos pinball machines. To kick off this episode, I wanted to sort out a missing piece from the keeper machine. On the right side of the playfield there should be a spot light attached just above the two targets. This was completely missing and so will need to be replaced.
After finishing work on Baywatch recently and sending the machine on its way back home to the owner, it was time to advance to the next game in the queue. Only this time it’s not one, but two machines, making this a double repair & service log for The Sopranos. I have to admit – I’ve never watched the show and haven’t really been interested in it. But the game looks like it’s got some fun shots and lots of things to do during play. The owner of these machines will be keeping one (the machine on the right) and the other will be sold once my work on it is complete. Working on two of the same game at the same time makes sense as it saves the owner money in parts postage and also some time as I can do the same task on both machines together. Similar to my other threads, this isn’t a restore, but the game will be pulled apart, cleaned, serviced and rebuilt. Broken and worn parts will be replaced. Missing parts will be sourced where possible and anything interesting will be pointed out. The games arrived to me mostly working, with only a few minor faults to address before I get stuck in to them. They are in reasonably good condition (mainly dirty) – so should come up looking great for the owner once done.
Time has gotten away from me lately, with my attention being drawn to family, along with a string of projects all wanting my attention at once. I managed to finish off the final few things on Baywatch a few weeks back, so want to close off the work with a short update. In the last update, the playfield had been put back together after a full strip and clean, ready for testing. One issue I noticed when the machine first arrived was the auto launcher. Sometimes it would not shoot the ball all the way into play, and the ball would roll back to the shooter lane (this isn’t to be confused with the ball serve I issue I reported on and fixed in an earlier update). I thought perhaps cleaning the assembly would be enough, but after testing with the playfield rebuilt, I was convinced it was more of a mechanical issue. So I lifted the apron off the playfield to take a look.
Getting everything back onto the playfield is one of my favorite parts of the pinball service as you see all the cleaning effort really come together. In this update, I want to get all the playfield parts cleaned up and installed back onto the machine so I can begin testing it. First up, several rails had been set aside for cleaning.
