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.
coils
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It’s time to look at the last set of assemblies on the playfield that have not yet had my attention – the three pop bumpers. These guys get a decent work out in just about every game played on the machine, so their assemblies are crying out for a clean.
The drop target bank has waited, or more accurately, been put off for, long enough. Time to pull the assembly to pieces and clean it all. When I first got the machine home, the 6th and 7th yellow drop targets were broken. I replaced these back in update #2 so I could start a game and test out the switches. At this point, the drop target bank functions correctly. That includes all switches. So this is a good starting point. If I mess anything up in rebuilding the assembly, I’ll know it’s my fault. The plastic, posts and old rubber had been removed awhile back. This photo is also from awhile ago too as you can see all the areas around the drop targets are incomplete (but have since been finished in previous updates).
I’ve managed to build up a backlog of crap boxes to get through. I’ve been focusing on various projects and the spare parts boxes are a low priority. That means they have been sitting around collecting dust. I’ve stopped buying them now as I’ve got more spare parts than I know what to do with. The boxes have come in handy on recent projects, so purchasing them has been worth it. But with my shelves full, there is no need add to it. This post will cover crap box #4 which will be followed by #5 and #6 when I get to them. At a grand total of $21 for the content in this post, it makes the box the most expensive crap box to date, but there was one part here I really wanted. This box looks to have a nice mix of things in it too, so time to dig in 🙂
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.
