Hello everyone,

I am not exactly new to owning pinball machines however over time the machines I do own have run into issues that have caused them to stop running properly for one reason or another. I have been watching YouTube videos and trying to familiarize myself with how to go about repairing the machines myself however I guess I'm just creating this forum post to give myself that extra push to actually start working on them as I've been a little hesitant to get my hands dirty as of yet.

The machines I need to work on are mostly Gottlieb System 3, a couple of Williams and a Stern machine. The list of machines are the following:

Street Fighter II, Freddy: A Nightmare On Elm Street, Gladiators, Party Zone, Hyperball, and Sharkey's Shootout.

The issues range from not too bad like Hyperball's sound not always working which I believe might be a board connector to more peculiar issues like the tournament switch not working on Gladiators which prevents it from entering free play.

I had already started to take apart Freddy since it only had one noticeable issue which was that the boiler room wouldn't move up and down when starting a game during the skill shot but that seems to have fixed itself after I removed some additional features off the machine. I am therefore wondering if anyone can give me any indications of why this might happen and if it's maybe as a result of me taking off some of the mechanisms on the playfield or if there's anything I can do to ensure it won't reoccur.

Thanks for any replies in this topic and I plan to continue to document my repair journey as I go through and hopefully fix all the issues that have occurred with my machines over time.

Scott,