Category Archives: Gottlieb

Bringing a Gottlieb Haunted House pinball back to life (parts 1-3)

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I’ve had this game now for many years. It’s always been on my list to get it working but life has a way of creating lots of distractions. I finally decided the best approach was to move the game from my shop to the living room in my house, so it will hover over me and remind me of my failure to get it working… eventually that strategy started to work and I am diving in to getting the game working. First an initial look…

Gottlieb’s Haunted House is an amazing engineering achievement: 8 flippers, three separate playfields, four different flipper buttons. Pop bumpers everywhere. The bill of materials of this game must have been quite substantive. But what’s even cooler is how well engineered the game is despite having so many different levels. Usually multi-level playfields are a real pain to service, but each level can be gotten to without having to remove hardly any parts.

In the second video of the series, I show how to access the lower playfield, and cover the work I’ve done to the power supply/rectifier section:

In part 3, I continue my work, fixing stuff, replacing rubbers, minor wiring issues and how to access the upper playfield:

Here are some more images of the work in progress:

Rebuilding/Bulletproofing Gottlieb Pop Bumper Driver Boards

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This is a series of three videos covering before, during and after, demonstrating problems with Gottlieb System 80 pop bumper driver boards. There are some basic things you want to do to make them work better and more reliably.

Summary of Pop bumper board mods:

  • First, check to see if you have older, or revised boards and convert older versions to the new revised version
  • Replace 47uf cap with 100-200uf cap
  • Add a 4.7uf 10v cap on underside to help with “phantom pops”
  • Re-flow pin headers and make sure to remove any oxidation from the pins
  • Test the driver and replace with a Tip102 if needed
  • To reduce “ghost pops” you can add a 47uf (10v-16v) cap between the pins displayed below:
Location of optional 47uf cap
Location of optional 47uf cap

EM Pinball 101: Strange Buzz and Scoring Problems?

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This is a common problem that happens with old electro-mechanical pinball machines. One minute it’s playing fine, then the next there’s a loud buzz and/or the scoring runs continuously or doesn’t score properly. What’s the deal with that? I’m going to show you one of the most common causes.

How to replace or repair EM pinball latch relay parts/articulating arm/rollers

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Ok, that’s a mouthful huh? This is a continuation of a previous series of videos I’ve done on fixing deep ruleset issues in EM games, and now that we’ve found what’s wrong, let’s fix it!

First, here’s a video on how to replace the latch relay – there’s another post where I demonstrate how to remove the backplane from the game so it’s easier to work on.

And in this next video, if you don’t have a replacement part, I show how with a little ingenuity and a #4 tap, you can fabricate your own roller for the articulating arm.

[Show picture list]

Now that it’s fixed… let’s see how the game plays!

How to remove the inside/backplane from an EM pinball machine?

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Sometimes when you have to do more extensive work to relays in an old electro-mechanical game, you can’t bend over the cabinet. You need to get all those assemblies on a bench to service. I go over how you can remove the insides of a game so you can more easily access the components.

The next video in this series goes into repairing a broken latch relay.

The backplane (bottom panel) is typically held in place by a few specific things that need to be un-bolted before it can be removed: Several bolts on the panel itself, then some Jones plugs that attach to the wiring harness going to the playfield and backbox, then the power button, and finally, the board holding the tilt/plumb bob and Jones plug going to the coin door.
The tilt board is removed with a few screws, then detach the coin door Jones plug.
Also don’t forget the power cable has to go too, which may require unbolting the head to pull it through the inside.