Pinbot – Williams (1986)

Restoring a 1986 Williams Pinbot pinball machine

Pinbot Restoration – Headbox repair & stenciling

Posted by Andrew Burch on March 5, 2015
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This update took much longer than I expected it would, but finally the headbox has been patched and repainted. Outside of some cosmetic damage, the headbox is in good condition. While the artwork was faded in parts and there was some minor damage to the wood, it was at least strong and stable. Unlike the Fireball Classic I recently restored, the Pinbot cabinet artwork is painted on with the use of stencils. A full set are available at TwistedPins and Santa managed to deliver a set to me during the Xmas period and it was time to put them to use.

I’m going to break the process up into two parts. Firstly i’ll do the headbox, which will then be followed by the cabinet. To begin with, I removed the stencils from the packaging and flattened them out. There are two stencils per side – one for the red/orange colour and the second for the yellow. It also comes with a set of instructions which are not complicated – just common sense really.

Pinbot pinball
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Pinbot Restoration – Repinning a few connectors

Posted by Andrew Burch on December 21, 2014
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I’ve been conveniently putting this off for awhile now, but time to get some connectors repinned. Earlier posts for this project showed two lovely hack jobs on some connectors. The first appears on the J8 connectors on the power supply board.

Pinbot
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Pinbot Restoration – Rebuilding the flippers

Posted by Andrew Burch on December 4, 2014
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It feels like forever since I was last working on Pinbot (in truth it’s been about 4 weeks). A project I started last year and then set aside for 10 months while Pinball took over my life needed to be completed in November. That was successfully done and now it’s time to turn my attention back to my beloved Pinbot machine and continue its rise to awesomeness. The last part of the playfield to do is the flippers. To be more specific, rebuilding both and sorting out the right flipper (which does not work).

So the starting point. Normally Pinbot has white flipper bats. This machine came with some ribbed blue bats. They don’t really do anything for me, so i’ll be looking to replace them. The rubber is dead (and I’ve since removed it) so that will be replaced also. As mentioned, the right flipper does not work, but the left is fine. There is some playfield damage in this area, but it’s not an issue since the whole playfield be will replaced shortly.

Pinbot
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Pinbot Restoration – Mini playfield & Pop bumpers

Posted by Andrew Burch on October 26, 2014
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An area of the playfield I’ve been looking forward to working on is the mini playfield and the pop bumpers that live beneath it. I’ll also take the opportunity here to look at the bank of 5 stationary targets that sit just to the left of the pop bumpers. It’s going to be a long update I think and lots of photos to look through. So hopefully you hang in until the end 🙂 The starting point is good. All plastics and posts are there. The mini playfield itself is in one piece, although I can see some small cracks at a few point that will need to be looked at.

Pinbot mini playfield start
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Pinbot Restoration – Visor motor

Posted by Andrew Burch on October 24, 2014
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I’m really starting to run out of things to do with rebuilding the playfield. The flippers are waiting patiently, but this update will cover the motor which drives the target bank and visor. Truth be told I have put this off. Not sure why exactly, but now is the time. I need to remove the motor, clean it up and also survey any damage to the target bank. To start with though, let’s look at that motor.

It’s in working condition, raising and lowering the playfield when required by the game. So that’s a good start. A quick inspection shows a few bits of blue tape in the area which will need to be looked at (as in – why are they there). Otherwise it just needs a solid clean. I have noticed that the target bank tends to tip to one side while being raised, but I suspect that’s more to do with the target bank assembly itself than the motor.

Pinbot target bank motor start
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