Take a friend that knows a bit about pinball with. Remove the balls.

LTG : )

Fold the backbox onto a blanket over the playfield glass. Remove the legs. Tie it down in the truck. There are other threads about this -- try this one: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/transporting-a-machine

Post your city. You may have a friend or two you haven't met yet.

LTG : )

Slide glass off and take all balls out. Glass back on, lock coin door. Put key and balls in baggie in pocket. Make sure backglass latch is locked. Undo head latch with large Allen wrench. Fold head down on glass, preferably with cardboard or blanket between. Strap head to body. Then undo back legs (preferably while propped safely on high stool or similar item). I always bring a wrench just in case for leg bolts. Then pull stool out and set back down carefully (so you don’t throw your back out). Tip up so front legs are off ground and horizontal. Remove legs and you’re good to hand truck (you brought one, right?) it to your vehicle. Tip and slide in bed horizontal. Close gate, toss in legs and bagged leg bolts. Good to go. Reverse process to set back up.

Congrats. That was my first pin also.... Look out, I bet it won't be your last. Enjoy!

Someone in Atlanta help this guy out!

Fantastic first pin! I agree with LTG; post your city, you'll be shocked how many pinheads live near you! Take someone knowledgable with you. There is too much that can go wrong and quickly turn into a disaster!
Always take the legs off, don't be one of those guys who thinks "it's just down the road..." and end up dumping it when you turn in the driveway.
There's also a lot that goes into newer pins like that! Ask a lot of questions here.
There is tons of knowledge avaiable.

Yes. The head should be folded down, balls safely stored, legs off, this ensures that while driving the balls, which are just heavy steel bearings, don't fling around and destroy all the plastics and parts in the game. The motions while driving can send balls flying up into delicate things that they would normally never hit when it's set up for play.

Also, why sleep when you have pinball?

The right ramp gets cracked at the entrance where the upper flipper will shoot a ball into it, but cliffy makes a protector that will probably cover any damage. The EAT plastic also gets broken (above the bottom right scoop).

Both of these issues should not prevent you from purchasing. Mine has worked great and I have had little issues with mine besides changing a few bulbs and faulty switches.

Lloyd was dead on with this. Pinheads will surprise you. The first thing I did when I saw your first post was to look at your location. Because a lot of the things you will need to learn doing this are just easier to show you. If you can find someone that knows how to break down and transport a game, it just goes easier. And pinheads are (generally) a pretty helpful bunch.

Take a friend - a pinhead is better but even an able body. Always helps to have some moving power, as you can't always rely on the seller to provide. They can help make sure you don't forget things as you take things apart - such as leg bolts and keys. Take plenty of tools, you'll never know what you need. Take a camera or cell phone - take pictures of things you disassemble. Take removable masking tape to write notes and lable cables you might disconnect. Take plenty of blankets to cover and protect things, even sheets of cardboard to separate and protect things or to provide sliding surfaces to maneuver parts into a vehicle.

There's no such thing as being over prepared when transporting pins.

Welcome to the pin owning club. If you stay away from the frothy pinside topics you will find lots of people willing to help. Esp if you seem willing to listen, take time, advice and do things logically.
Im from a rural area and there are still several pinball peeps around that can help.

If you have to go up stairs, that will be the hard part and you will need some help. The vehicle-loading and driving are the easy parts.

Where are you in Atlanta? Which side? I'm in Dallas and may be able to help.

You have to take it "apart" to check it out. It's not as scary as you may think. You are going to want to know how to slide the glass out,lift the play field, take the back glass out, etc...Just for simple checks, maintenance, or repairs later on.

Make sure the upper drop target at the top of the shooter lane ramp works.
Make sure the ghost target drops during boo back time.
Rt ramp entrance look for damage, cliffy and I made a fix if it is.

Other than that its a solid first game. I have had two looking for another.

this was one of my first games.

Mine was broken and that was exactly how I fixed it and it is simple and cheap to do.

Dude... You have no idea... hahaha

But congrats on your first game! I hope someone local can help you out. Good luck!

Just a few locals, lol:

https://pinside.com/pinball/map/pinsiders

Screen Shot 2017-11-07 at 11.15.01 AM (resized).png

It’s way easier to move Pinball’s with legs off - they designed them to transport that way. Unless you’re just shuffling them around your game room or something.

If you take the legs off, absolutely take balls out first because they bang around otherwise or get lost in weird places. It’s really easy — again, they are designed for easy glass removal to service the game. Open coin door, open latch lever on right side, pop off lockdown bar, then glass slides out towards you. Be careful setting it down. Balls can be manually popped out of ball trough, or thru service menu.

Honestly, I’d take others advice and find someone to come with you. Very very helpful your first time, and either way you’ll want 2 people to move it. Pinball’s are 250-300lb beasts.

Close door when taking glass off. Easy to scratch otherwise. Don't learn the hard way. Take balls out, the won't break plastics above the playfield that were never supposed to be hit.

This animation is short and sweet but it gives you a good idea of how to prepare the machine for transport and it will make sense of the process some of the people already suggested.

thats great to hear. Its such a fun game!

I wrote the rules in a thread if your interested.

This game on normal seemed pretty easy to me, so you may want to do the Hard installs.

Normally I agree. RCT needs extra hard settings to make it fun... most of the time. However, it is John’s first game. And that changes things. Just playing pinball in your house is the rush. No need to turn it into a tough game to keep interest. That all comes with time.

Most games have settings to change how difficult it is. From old EMs there would be liberal and conservative holes where you could slightly move posts to make the ball drain easier.

SS games had those, plus electronic settings for things like extra balls being on or off.

Modern games added a ton of settings. For instance, on RCT, the Handyman target at the top right. Normally that is up at the beginning of a ball and you can plunge right behind it to start a mode. But on extra hard, it is down at the start. And to light it you have to hit targets, and to light fun, and then hit the ramp to raise it. So instead of an easy run to Park Tycoon through modes, it is a struggle to get through a few.

All modern games have these. On easy settings maybe you hit a target twice to do something, but on hard it needs 6 times. As you own games longer, easy ones tend to get boring quickly. They are fun at first, but beating it over and over gets old. So you start speaking out the challenge of tougher games.

But for now, I wouldn’t worry about that if I was you. I think you should do a factory reset on the game. That will get rid of any odd settings, it will remove any high scores, and you will be ready to rock on your first game. Then later, if you feel like you are just beating up the game, start making it tougher.

Solid state electronics. Using transistors and integrated circuits in place of relays and other mechanical devices.

Also used for an abbreviation of Bally Midways "Scared Stiff" pinball machine title.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rollercoaster-tycoon-rules#post-3316622

I should have included the link, this is the RCT rules thread. Sounds like you have a real nice machine! We love ours.

I don’t think it has been mentioned but check the batteries 3 AAA in the backbox and replace them. You will want to get an off the circuit board battery holder or a nvram soon. Hopefully the current ones did not leak.

If pulling full force it should always go to the abc lanes. I think it would be a plunger issue. It is probably not making full contact with the ball everytime. With the glass off pull the plunger and make sure it is not hitting the auto plunger. If it does you can move the playfield to the left or right. Mine will do this to after I lift the playfield if I don’t remember to check it. Batteries are behind the translite ton the circuit boards.

Oh an on volume...open the coin door and you will see three buttons. While powered on hit the far left red one to access volume control...then hit the left to lower and middle to raise it.

Rule of thumb....figure that any pinball machine you buy has batteries installed on the MPU board to power the RAM chip when the machine is off so high scores and settings are preserved. Many people don't know there's batteries in these games until it's too late. The batteries eventually leak (if they haven't already) and ruin boards that cost a few hundred dollars to replace.

There's a few options to get the batteries off the board.. remote battery packs are one, but any more NVRAM is your best bet since it's once-and-done and pretty inexpensive these days. NVRAM is a chip/adapter that replaces your RAM chip and saves high scores and settings for your game without the use of batteries. More info @ http://www.pinitech.com/products/6264_nvram.php

On Roller Coaster Tycoon upgrading to NVRAM is easy, but if you aren't comfortable pulling a chip out of an IC socket and replacing it with another chip, you may want to have someone do that for you.

So who's going to volunteer to stop over and give this fine fellow the pinball ownership 101 class?

The translite is the big "poster" above the score display with the art and game name. If you look inside the coin door above the buttons, you should find a hook holding a pair of keys. Those keys will open the lock at the top/center above the translite. Lift from the bottom and pull towards you to remove the translite, reveal the boards and batteries.

Your game looks like it was well loved but is now in need of some cleaning and maintenance. The issue with your plunger should be low priority for now. Looks like it's just not centered on the ball. You shouldn't be full plunging anyway, you want to plunge so the ball falls behind the drop target. That's a bit of advanced strategy for you.

The broken post in your pictures can be replaced. You'll be making a big parts order soon, so don't worry about that quite yet either.

It isn’t against etiquette. Don’t worry about it at all. When you first start getting games there are tons of questions as you learn. Keep asking them, and people will keep answering them.

Lots of good sites.
Action pinball.
Pinball life.
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/554

And congrats on your first pin.

And clean and wax the playfield once you replace that post. It will play even better cleaned up. The missing post part # should be in the playfield parts list in the manual. If not someone here will know what exact part goes there.

And you made need a new t-nut if that has/had one. Or replace the t-nut with a regular nut.
It's one of the first few posts in these 2 links.

http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=catalog&parent=69&pg=1

http://www.actionpinball.com/hardware.php#posts

http://www.pinitech.com/products/6264_nvram.php

As far as the scratches... It happens. Just try to pull out the playfield straight and smoothly.

You can touch it up with black lacquer from home depot and a foam brush. It will let you blend it in so it doesn't look like it's been fixed.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/best-touch-up-paint-to-match-black-cabinet-and-black-sides-in-pins

Here is the location of the ram that needs switching out to nvram.

Screenshot_20171115-232056 (resized).png

Check these out at PBL, I just bought them and they are great. I can move them from game to game when needed so I never have to worry about scratching my mirror blades of side art blades. http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=4575

Can you explain how these work? How do they adhere? It sounds like they are easy to move from machine to machine or just 1 time install on one machine? I have tight clearance with my blades on a game.. pulled the felt off already but wondering if this is a possibility..

OP— clean with something easy going like simple green. Then wax with carnuba pure wax. Ideally you would partially strip Playfield top to get full access for cleaning, and remove subway ramps for cleaning and also install new rubbers at the same time and replace bulbs that are out. It’s a fair amount of work though for someone starting out so maybe hold off on all that and do a quick clean and have some fun first

if you place a order, get some new pinballs as well.