Announcing a new series: Pinball Features – Episode 1: TILT!

Posted on 2020-09-03 by admin

As more and more people discover the joy of playing pinball, I find myself getting more basic/general questions, and this seems like a good time to launch a new series I’m calling, “Pinball Features”. Each video will focus on a certain element of pinball and offer some basic information on this feature/component of pinball. While this is geared for laypeople, I hope that regardless of your skill level, you may find it informative.

The first episode is dedicated to the Tilt Mechanism. I go into how it works, why it’s there and the different types of tilt devices found in pinball machines.

Should You Buy A Pinball Machine? A guide for beginners.

Posted on 2020-07-26 by admin

Lately I’ve been putting some of my games up for sale, and I get a lot of people who have never owned pinball machines contacting me. They have a romantic idea of setting up a game room for their kids and remember pinball machines fondly and want to have one at home. Sounds great right? I agree it can be very rewarding… but you have to know what you’re potentially getting yourself into. A pinball machine is not like a regular modern amusement device. Let’s go over the pros, cons and pitfalls of owning pinball machines, and while you think your kids will enjoy it, are you sure? Let’s dive in and talk about it!

How to break down a pinball machine for storage or shipping

Posted on 2020-06-07 by admin

If you have a game you are looking to store temporarily, or ship, here are some tips on how to break it down and store it to make sure it stays in good condition.

Pinball flipper doesn’t work? Here’s a checklist of where to look.

Posted on 2020-05-14 by admin

As soon as I thought I had the game operational, I waxed the playfield and got ready to put it back together only to find out one of the flippers was out. This was a rather tricky issue that took a little bit to figure out — not your typical flipper problem, so I thought I’d do a video of it and go through the process of diagnosing why a flipper might not work (on a Bally-35 early solid state game).

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” – how to disassemble the coffin and service the pop bumper underneath

Posted on 2020-01-31 by admin

I recently had a pop bumper bracket on BSD break and I realized this wasn’t an easy fix. To get to the top of the pop bumper you have to almost completely disassemble the coffin assembly, which isn’t obvious. So I made a video on this process. Enjoy!

Below is a time-lapse of the process:

For the third part, here’s a nice video on how to rebuild a pop bumper assembly. There are some tricks to this and many times people put these things together wrong.

Pinball Stories #1: My first game, “Genie” by Gottlieb

Posted on 2020-01-16 by admin

One of the things us pinball enthusiasts love to do is tell stories about how we acquired games. Each game has its own unique provenance and history, and there’s almost always an interesting story behind them. This is the first episode in an ongoing series were we talk about the stories behind the games and how they came to be. I start the series off with the very first pinball machine I purchased, a Gottlieb “Genie” – before I knew anything about how to repair and restore games. It was the game that got me on this path. I hope you enjoy the story – be sure to subscribe on Youtube! Thanks for watching!

Here are some pictures from early on when I got the game and began to restore it.

Problems with coil stops in newer Stern games

Posted on 2020-01-10 by admin

Lately there’s been a bit of a hullabaloo (is that how it’s spelled?) regarding coil stops on newer Stern games. I had it happen to me as well, and I made a video to describe what’s happening. It appears whoever is manufacturing the coil stops for Stern has used inferior materials and they prematurely come apart. I’ve reported this to Stern and will let you all know what they are doing about it. I expect this supply issue to be resolved soon and if you encounter this problem, contact Stern support. They should be able to send out replacement coil stops.

coil stop literally fell apart. There’s a non-ferrous “washer” that separates the stop from the bracket that appears to be made of low quality alloy that disintegrates.

The next day I returned with the right parts. Here are two videos covering the repair.

https://youtu.be/rWnNejDq-uI

https://youtu.be/dtC6Sg-8tq4

Pinball Help

The adventures of a pinball enthusiast (all original content)

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