Here is a quick video of two new machines that are in the shop to be brought back to 100%. Usually I run across games that are not this nice. This was a pleasant surprise. Take a look along with me as I examine the games after unloading them.
Here’s a quick video of a new machine that entered the club today. It’s pretty rare to find this machine especially one in such good condition, so it’s a treat to bring this to you.. check out this early Gottlieb Wedgehead, Domino.
I’ve been on the lookout for more 60s-era Gottliebs with the small flippers. We don’t have hardly any in the collection and after hearing Bowen Kerins say “Target Pool” was his favorite game from the 60s, I knew I’d made the right choice in picking this machine up. Unfortunately, I never turned it on or checked it out electrically/operationally before I bought it. But I could see the game was complete and the seller said it did work. This was one of those times where I knew I was going to get it any way. So here’s the first look so far, a playlist of 3 video clips covering the initial examination of the game, and finding out what’s wrong and fixing some issues. This is a good example of how to fix certain problems with stepper units.
If you watched the previous story on the Target Pool you may see the same first-two videos. I am keeping them all together in case someone sees this story by itself. If you’ve watched some of the videos in the series before, just hit next on the player to skip to the next video.
In this episode I go about repairing broken flipper switches on a Gottlieb electro-mechanical pinball machine, and take the opportunity to discuss how flippers work and why hitting the flipper buttons harder actually does the opposite of what you might think.
A friend of mine who is a lawyer has been looking for his first game and asking me to scout one for him. When a Gottlieb “Lawman” showed up locally, he liked the idea of the theme and we picked it up. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be getting the game in good playing condition. In the meantime, while I have a few parts on order, I shot a short video giving you a “first look” at the game before it’s been cleaned, as I picked it up.
I’ve been very excited about one of my latest acquisitions. A much-coveted Bally 4 Million BC pinball machine that I drove almost 1200 miles to acquire. The game is in great condition but was having a very unusual problem whereby it would kick out extra balls into play constantly. After going after the most obvious places and cleaning relays, then looking at the schematics and expanding my search, then finally going through every relay in the machine and cleaning contacts, the problem still persisted.
Here’s a description of the issue:
Then finally, it dawned on me. How obvious the solution was! But a very rare thing to see in an EM: a glitch that was the result of the logic design of the game and me being careless when I went to wax the playfield!
The other day one of my games stopped working.. A Gottlieb “300” 4-player EM game. What was happening was it would only do 1-player games and not any 2-3-4 player games. I don’t know if it had been not doing it for awhile since I usually play just one-player games but it wasn’t working. I checked various things and ended up being stumped. Clay gave me a few suggestions and eventually we narrowed the issue down to a stepper unit near the front that ratcheted from 1-2-3-4 players. Duh! This video series is pretty embarrassing, but hey, that’s the way it goes… at least I fixed it…
You’ll notice in the first video in the playlist, I’m basically describing the problem, and then for the second, I’m already well into tearing the culprit stepper motor apart. I don’t remember if I lost part of the video series, or (more likely) I felt like I should have caught this myself and not needed help so I quickly dived into it before I realized some others might benefit from my trials and tribulations.