Inside Dan Ferguson’s “Lone Star Pinball Museum”

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A friend and a true legend in the pinball community passed away this week. Dan Ferguson, owner of the “Lone Star Pinball Museum” and one of the iconic enthusiasts in the region. Dan was a fixture at all the Texas pinball shows and had one of the most amazing collections of games and memorabilia anywhere. Eight years ago was one of the first times I got a chance to take a peek inside his infamous private museum, that was typically only open by invitation (and was an inspiration for our own PinChurch facility).

Here’s is a video I shot of a quick walk-thru of his amazing place. We miss you Dan!

How to fix stripped pinball legs/bolts

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If you over-tighten the bolts on modern pinball legs, you can strip both the bolts and the assembly you screw into, making it a real pain to firmly attach legs. I go over the process of replacing the inner plate to fix stripped pinball leg assemblies.

Installing a dollar bill acceptor (DBA) in a pinball machine

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This is a short video demonstrating how to add a DBA (dollar bill acceptor) to a new Stern game (in this case, Jurassic Park). The older Stern games came with the cable necessary but now they’re not bundling them. I take a cable from Iron Maiden, along with a DBA I pulled from Wizard of Oz, and install it in Jurassic Park before I put the game on location.

Rebuilding pinball flipper assembly (Gottlieb System 3)

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Here are two videos of me completely rebuilding the flippers and flipper assembly on a Gottlieb System 3 pinball machine (Waterworld) – many of this information will basically pertain to most flipper systems on other machines like Bally and WMS, Stern, etc. I go through the whole process of replacing all the major wear parts on the flipper assembly even including the base plate and end-of-stroke switches.

Here’s part 2 (sorry I rarely edit these videos so sometimes my camera breaks it into separate files)

Part 3

If the above is too slow, check out this time-lapse of rebuilding the flipper:

Rebuilding a Gottlieb VUK (vertical up kicker)

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As work continues restoring this Gottlieb system 3 pinball machine, “Waterworld”, I rebuild the broken VUK (vertical up-kicker). This is from a series of videos where I rebuild a number of the core components on this game that’s been on location for probably more than a decade.

Diagnosing and testing optos on a Gottlieb System 3: Waterworld

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Another video from my restoration work on this Gottlieb Waterworld pinball machine – actually two videos in this series where I talk about trying to isolate a problem with the optos on the game and comment about the design of the game and how the optos work, how to test and figure out what’s wrong?

But there’s more… I discovered an issue on this particular game, and possibly on other Gottlieb games that use this style of opto bracket… more info here: