Enclosing some pix and a video of my restoration:
I’m partial to the ‘50s woodrails and particularly fond of the Genco, Gottlieb and Williams games. I know one is taking their chances when trying to restore these old woodies as replacement parts are very hard to find. However, this was a title I had been quietly searching for and it appeared from the seller’s pictures that this machine was in nice original condition. The seller did say he had it in storage and it hadn’t been played in years. As such, I took a chance that the game would be restorable with some effort.
Not surprisingly, there was the expected amount of work to free frozen steppers, reflow some solder joints, replace bulbs and tidy up. The game did have enough good bones that the playfield cleaned up nicely and all the wood was lightly sanded and polished. The previous owner(s) had worked on the game over its past…someone knew to put in a solid state bridge to bypass the old selenium rectifier. Clearly makes a difference with the power to the flippers and pop bumpers. They also added an on/off switch to the power cord…not how I would do it, but it works fine and doesn’t beg to be replaced. Apparently, the ball lift assembly had been missing and was cleverly replaced with a modified bolt which works perfectly.
As common with some of the older games, there is an “egg timer” assembly that will start ticking each time the game is started and after a few minutes, if no additional play is initiated, the timer will shut off the electric to the playfield. Was pleased to see this timer actually working, since it is a common feature that breaks down over time.
The backbox, by design, had three incandescent bulbs to light up the backglass It was evident that the heat of the bulbs had started to crack the paint of the glass as there is some flecking close to the old bulbs. I promptly replaced then with no heat LED bulbs. The game has two large bells in the cabinet that sound when different activity takes place, ie, hits and runs, and both bell assemblies, fortunately came back to life with some cleaning.
A cute feature of the game are the two ball player figurines at the top of the playfield that oscillate when the score motor moves. The game did not come with the original figurines, but a suitable replacement was used.
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