First target on my hit list for this update was the broken opto on the 3 bank drop target PCB. As mentioned in my previous update, the opto component had been ripped off the board. I had originally thought the whole drop target assembly needed to be removed from the machine to work on the PCB, but on closer inspection I found the board is attached to the drop target frame with a set of e-clips. Removing these allows you to slide the board off the back of the assembly – nice! Now that I was aware of this, I decided to push this up my priority list and repair it. A replacement opto was ordered so this issue could (hopefully) be resolved sooner than I expected.
Pinball
Documenting my adventures into pinball repair and restoration
A good way to continue working on pinball machines (without going broke buying them), is to work on other peoples machines and bestow to them the same love I give mine (the machines that is, not the owners..). I’m always on the look out for a new Pinball project to work on as I love giving them a new lease on life, but pickings have been slim lately. The universe has other ideas though and through a chance message, I was asked if I could work on some machines that needed a bit of TLC, with Whirlwind being first on the list. How could I refuse? 🙂 This isn’t a restore but also not a simple service either. I’ll be doing my usual rebuilding and cleaning of all assemblies, along with fixing any game play issues and giving the machine a bit of a face lift along the way. I don’t have plans to do any board work and the owner has a few requests on specific things he wants addressed, which i’ll be following. Whirlwind is a great game and I’m very excited to be working on it. Once complete, it’s going to be hard to let the owner take it home.
There is rarely a dull moment in owning pinball machines as there’s always something that needs fixing or adjusting. A small fault was recently noticed in my Pinbot machine, where the left out lane switch would not register when the ball rolled over it. It was a quick and easy fix, but wanted to cover it for future readers anyway. First up, I put the game into test mode and activated the switch with my finger – as expected, the switch did not register. I then manually tested other switches around the playfield. Interestingly, the left in lane switch also did not register. Other switches were fine though. So two were switches (right beside each other) were misbehaving.
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A small issue began to appear in my X-Files machine recently and I wanted to share its cause since it’s something that can easily be over looked and maybe is not something the occurs often. One of the playfield insert lamps was becoming intermittent. At the base of the playfield, where the ball drains, there are a set of 7 inserts which light up and animate during play. One of these would occasionally not light up as part of the sequence. Then it became more frequent, until eventually it stopped lighting up at all. Given I had changed all the bulbs to LEDs as part of my rebuild not too long ago, I figured it wasn’t as simple as a blown globe and a quick swap over to solve.
I must really love punishment, because here I am again fixing another EM pinball machine. I can’t help it though, their tendency for faults aside, EM’s are beautiful machines and every line up should contain at least one. This time I’m looking at another baseball themed machine by Gottlieb, appropriately (maybe boringly?) named “Baseball”. It was released in 1970 with around 2350 units shipped. It came out about a year before Playball (which I fixed up recently) and both machines share a very similar playfield layout and feature set. This isn’t my machine and I’m simply repairing it for someone else (the same guy owns the Playball I fixed up and documented recently). It’s not a restoration, just a fix up for the issues it’s having.
