Excellent quality on three I have purchased. You will need to swap the guts but everything lines up and the machine holes are all done perfectly. Make sure you get the striker plate as well.

Agree with gearheaddropping

As close to factory new as you can get. I was very happy with mine. Get a red start button also - it really pops with that!

as good as new... agree with hoov on making sure you get a new start button too, and a new coin door flap... this pic is with one of the pbr coin entry plates, as well as a new door strike plate and hinge... i've since cleaned the fingerprints off of it...

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PBR sells the hinge too? I was unaware of that, and I've never heard that they do.

That hinge design on Gottlieb coin doors was double dumb.

yup, a royal guard...

nope... i'll keep my eyes peeled at a-town for you though, as well as other places... we had come across an entire world fair head before, so we will come across one of these for you...

yup... i replaced everything... door, strike plate, hinge, flap, coin return shafts, etc. anything i could get my paws on...

inside shot...

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Good to know Chris as I plan to get everything as well for my Coin Door on Abra Ca Dabra when I get to Texas.

Ken

PBR's metal door parts are pure sexy. Make sure you get the red start button and coin ejector rods etc. The bottom bend at the bottom right was my fault. I got it bent slightly while moving it either to or from Texas Pinball festival.

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Yeah, it looks like the leg got dinged too. Careful with the merchandise!

Why do you say that? I've never had a problem with the hinge.

Well, I'll say congratulations to you, because most guys I know hate having to try and line up the hinge, the door and that plate that goes inside the door, and then keeping it lined up while you try and get the button screws in place.

Obviously, once you've got a couple in it's smooth sailing, but it's not necessarily the easiest way to attach the hinge to the door.

I always have the door and the hinge out on the bench, and they get disassembled/assembled there. Then I only attach the hinge to the cabinet with the door already on. For alignment, I only loosen the hinge door screws a bit, just enough to tweak the door angle as needed, and then tighten them back up.

With the backing bar that's on the inside of the door skin to receive the hinge screws, trying to put that on with the hinge still attached to the cab would be painful. On the bench, it's pretty easy.

I've always done it with the door off also. I would never even dream of trying it with the hinge on the cab. It's just not real simple to get that bar to stay in place. I just don't think it's a real good design.

We must have differing ideas of what's easy.

I use a little wedge to keep the backing bar in place after I position it.

Well, the next time I have to do one, I'll certainly give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

Maybe difficult isn't really the right word. Maybe "fiddly" is what I was looking for.

I appreciate Gottlieb games, I own more of them than any other manufacturer, but some of the things they did make me scratch my head. Decagon reels are probably one of the biggest ones. Their complexity and reliability, compared to Williams and Bally reel designs of the same period, is, in my mind, not real good. Much harder to get adjusted, and keep adjusted.

Those miserable small short throw relays are next in line. Especially Ax/Bx.

Put the backing bar in and attach it with one Allen screw in the top hole. Then fit the door usinng another screw in the bottom hole, don't tighten the screws, just a few turns in will do. When the door is on, remove the top screw and put 'em all in though the hinge. It's a piece of cake.

i struggled with the hinge as well... although once i enlisted another pair of hands it was easier...

as long as we are talking about misery, let us not forget...

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And I have no idea how I did forget that. The source of much misery and frustration.

I had a Big Indian that occasionally would light up two adjacent match numbers, which I figured was just an alignment problem. I checked and checked it, never did find it. Wiper aligned properly, nothing apparent that would connect the traces together.

But I was trumped by a friend of mine who had three adjacent match lights light up on an Atlantis. I couldn't even begin to figure how that was even possible.

What also makes that unit a mess is that it is often used to control other features on the game. Operators in AAB only places took it out and never put it back, so you have to find one.

Not one of Gottlieb's better moments.

the one in pro-football that controls the lights for the ball moving down the field as well as scoring the td when you get to the end zone has been "fun" on occasion, so it immediately sprung to mind...

at least the hinge is easier to deal with than that...

The one that baffles me is that goofy flipper actuator wire thingy that Gottlieb used in the 50s-60s. You know the one. Bent wire like thing that when you push the flipper button reaches out to close a switch 5 inches away. It's like some oddball Rube Goldberg inspired wackiness.

My Pro Football was lighting two ball inserts at once. The stepper was, as with yours, stepping to every contact perfectly, and I'd cleaned the circuit board as well. It turned out to be some sort of conductive material between the copper conductors. I couldn't work it out for a while, but in the end and in desperation, I cleaned the Bakelite between them with the edge of a screwdriver. Hey presto, problem cured, and it hasn't returned. There isn't much of a gap between those Copper conductors, so I guess a little bit of contamination is enough.

As an owner of both Bank A Ball and Royal Guard, I know those only too well.

If you have one, you kind of live in fear of the spring on that thing. I'm sure it can be fixed somehow, but I don't really want to find out.

That's the thing. There's things in games that you look at and you think, there is sheer genius at work on that. And then there's things like this that you look at and you go, "WTF?"

I reckon Gottlieb must have had a good reason to design it like that. Maybe it gave a better feel, maybe it allowed for a range of adjustment and the springiness of the wire evened it out, maybe it allowed for shorter cable runs to the coils, making the flippers a bit more energetic. I really have no idea why it was designed like that but I'm sure there was a good reason. It certainly wasn't cost, it would have been mach less expensive, and much simpler, to put the switches on the cabinet sides, right by the buttons. As they made the games less expensive to manufacture, that is exactly what they did.

Yeah, they just moved the flipper switches from the underside of the playfield directly to the buttons.

There is definitely a different feel to games that have the wireforms to actuate the switches. They have a looser feeling to them, the switches on the cab sides feel more solid and substantial.

I'd have to look, but I seem to remember, when I did the switches on my Royal Guard restore, that the switches had two contacts on them. I haven't even looked at them since I did the game. I wonder if that was also just an issue to make sure good current got to the coils?

I think, in this case, simpler and less expensive equals better, at least to me. Now, replacing trip banks with the Ax/Bx? Nah...

Yup, that's the trick, you got it! Just snug the screws a little, close the door, tap it in place with your fist, then gently open it and tighten the button head screws. No problem!

Be patient. Yours will likely turn up. Mine, well that's a long shot for sure!

gotta be one somewhere... it will pop up sooner or later...

thanks... the "dirtflipper approved method" of cleaning those "bronze" parts works great... the combination of the zep heavy duty orange degreaser followed by a bit of elbow grease with mothers mag and aluminum polish makes them shine like new... as an example, a before/after shot of the coin troughs...

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