Documenting my adventures into pinball repair and restoration
I had put off looking at the spinner, but decided today I’d pull it out of the play field and take a look. It was running a little loud, so figured a clean and some grease should be all it needed.
From the photo too you can see where I’ve started trying to match the orange paint around the spinner to tidy it up a bit. The colour on the left is getting pretty close, while the colour at the bottom is a little light. Once it’s done, I doubt many people will notice.
Fireball has 8 small roll over targets in the middle of the play field. They surround the large spinning fireball and can toggle the ball save kicker on and off (along with award points).
They probably haven’t been pulled out of the machine since it was constructed 29 years ago, so figured I might as well spend half an hour giving them a clean and polish.
There is quite a bit of work to be done in the top area. Two saucers, an upper ramp section, pop bumpers, messenger ball, gates, mylar and a few plastics. I decided to work on the right side of the play field first, and then work back around to the left. I’m waiting on parts for the pop bumpers to arrive before I can properly service them, so i’ll be skipping them for now.
First up is the ball saucers, which allows you to trap a ball. There are two on the play field, one on each side – which allows for a 3 ball multiball during game play.
Fireball Classic has 3 mushroom bumpers on the play field. These are small ‘passive’ pop bumpers. No coil attached, and are simply hooked up to a switch below the play field. The yellow cap sits just high enough so the ball gets under it and lifts it up. That causes the switch below the play field to close. I had never seen them before, so was curious to pull one a part to see what it was made up of. Plus, there was one missing on my play field, so was going to have to track the parts down.
With the removal of the mylar covering the play field, some paint was lifted around the edges of some inserts. I wanted to touch this up with some paint before I clear coat or wax.
During the week I went down to a local game/hobby shop and picked up some small enamel paints. I picked up these, along with a few variations in colour to try and match the blue, orange, yellow, red and white as best as possible.
