Joined the club yesterday. I’ve been on the lookout for one for a while. One popped up on Facebook marketplace and was only 30 minutes from me. The seller said it was a barn find. Water damaged back box, no backglass, and he said it tuned on but wouldn’t eject a ball into play. But he was asking $800, and in this day and age of pinball pricing I figured as long as all the parts are there (except a backglass) it was worth it. So I told him I would be there in a half hour. I wasn’t going to let this sit for a day and let someone else grab it.

The playfield isn’t terrible, but not great. It had some crazy wood looking Mylar? around the pop bumpers. I was able to take it up today without losing paint. It was covering some wear, but I would rather look at that on a fifty year old pin than this crazy Mylar. One flipper bat is broken, and a mushroom cap is gone. But I was able to test play it today and every seems to work.

The not ejecting problem…only two pinballs in the machine. Added another and it works.

I spent $400 today on a backglass, mushroom targets, flippers caps, and other various parts needed to get it at least playing correctly.

Next will be addressing the cabinet.

Looking forward to this project. I almost like fixing up pins that have been neglected better than playing them.

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Yes, the score reels on three of them are Williams.

I bought the machine from a guy that said he has repaired pins for 30 years. He had a workshop with tons of spare parts laying around. Because the head was the worst part, he started repairing that first. He had to repair some wires, you can see in the bottom left of the backside picture. And he said he replaced the score reels because he said the originals were peeling or flaked off. He just used what he had laying around.

It’s a bit of a Frankenstein, but I’m going to have a playing Fireball. My plan is to wait until the weather is a little warmer in Ohio when I can work in my garage with some airflow so clean the playfield really well and see if I can repair the head.

I need to locate a metal back panel for the head. Measured the one on my Bow and Arrow and it seems like the opening is a little smaller on the fireball. Does anyone know the exact size that the Fireball back panel should be? I’m going to post on the Ohio Pinbrew forum and see if anyone has an extra one they might sell.

I’ve been trying to work on and tweak a few things to get my new project Fireball playing correct. I’m not experienced at EM repair, but I can take things apart to clean and usually narrow down a problem.

My tens score reel on player one stopped working after a few games. Ended up the plunger actually broke in half. I borrowed the one off the player four reel until I can order the part. We he back box is pretty cruddy and I will eventually need to go through all of the score reels to clean them. Hopefully this broken plunger was just a one off problem. I guess the tens score reel on player 1 is probably the most used out of all 16.

One question I have for other owners is how loud is the Flash Motor supposed to be for the lights on the Odin kickout hole? Mine seems a little too loud to me. I can’t tell what the noise is? The motor or a coil? The whole thing is loose to the cabinet because the rubber grommets are dried up. Could that cause excessive noise? It works correctly and the noise is just when the flash motor is activated. Any advice on what to do first? Or is this just normal?

Thanks

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