Getting closer to finishing a mild restoration and rebuild of this so I thought I would recap some of my work. It's been a combination of frustration and exhilaration, but I'm excited to add a gun game to my small line up.

First a little history......

When I did some online checking before going to look at the game, pinrepair.com (great site) and everything else I found on the game said it was a 1964 model, Midway's last before the dreaded "Motorized Score Reel Era".

The game had not been started in who knows how long, and had no keys, but cosmetically, it was pretty nice. However, when I opened it up, it did have motorized score reels. Hmmmm....

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When I went back to the pinrepair.com site and looked closer, Space Gun seemed more like a 1967 model based on the similarity of the front door to Midway's 'Flying Saucer' from September of 1967.

I found an old ad from Billboard magazine from June of 1967 and then noticed that the schematic is dated 5/67!

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When I drilled out the locks and opened the game, I found the chain for the bouncing ball wheel and the plastic sprocket that drives it lying on the bottom panel.

The sprocket was sheared off (I think because the wheel had became stuck when some of the coils became jammed). I looked everywhere and could not find any NOS or reproduction of the sprocket. Another challenge with Midway games.

After exploring a bunch of options (existing metal sprockets, bike sprockets, etc.), a great fellow Pinsider was able to 3-D print me a new sprocket. After a couple of iterations and with a little Dremel tool modification, it worked perfectly! Without doing this, the restoration was dead in the water!

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About this same time I had my second lucky break with the game...

When I brought it home, the game was missing the right hand access panel (that you use to adjust the wiper, etc.). I figured this was just something I would have to reproduce. Out of the blue I get a message from Chris at St Louis Ball Bowlers who says he thinks he has my access panel!

He had made a bulk purchase of old arcade games years ago and found the panel in a pile of parts. When he saw the picture that I posted of my Space Gun, he recognized it and said he had it for me.

It looks great and certainly matches the patina way more than any reproduction ever could.

Onward to the spin wheel mechanics.....

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Quinntopia -

I actually finished it, played it for a few months and have sold it! It turned out nice, worked 100% (with a few occasional glitches) and was fun to play.

Hope yours is coming along nicely. I had a lot to do on mine including rebuilding most of the ball-pop coils and mechanisms but it was a fun process. I will say it is much more difficult to work on gun games than on a pinball game since you have to 'pull out' the bottom mechanism to work on it and therefore cannot easily play it and work on it at the same time.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to help.

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