I do 90% of of my own repairs. I do send out my cpu, sound, and ps boards. I will change a bad transistor if need be.
But most of the work I do myself. Learning to trace down issues is fun and a good learning experience. And pinside is a most awesome place for info.
I work on heavy mining equipment so the small tedious stuff seems fun to me. Matter of fact I just removed a couple diodes, resistors, and caps from a snubber board for F-14. Cleaning and updating those boards for my F-14 restore.

A complete restore of anything, pinball machines, cars, is going to be more expensive than outright purchasing it original, mainly because average Joe doesn't have the economies of scale and buys parts at market prices. If you are frugal this is not the best option. Obvious comments I know but that's what it is. For restoring objects that are no longer in production, that might be the only option, to restore.

Do as much as I can which includes board work. Luckily I got friends that can do the rest.

I mean...I COULD do it all...I'll get around to finishing them at some point.

I do all my repairs on EM machines but have others do the board repairs on any SS games I have had. I have yet to do any art related restorations such as painting play fields or cabinets.

Nobody else in my neighborhood seems to know how.

When I first started collecting I searched everywhere for a pinball tech to maintain my games and couldn't find anybody willing to do anything more than a single repair months in advance, so I said screw it- I'll do it myself.

Probably the best thing to have happened to me in pinball, because now I repair all my pins myself and know these machines far better than a lot of people. However, I don't have the patience or organization for a full playfield swap.

I buy what I can and want to work on. There are titles that I have not purchased or sold because of bad experiences in the past w their boardset/systems (Gottlieb sys80 I’m looking at you)

Either I do it or it doesn't get done

Absolutely.

I do all mine and it seems like everyone else's in a 50 mile radius from me.

I wouldn't want to be in the pinball hobby if I had to outsource all the work; way to expensive.

That said; I do everything. Board work; painting; debug; clearcoating... here in my garage'cade. Nothing is safe from my tinkering.

When it comes to house work (plumbing, furnace, ac, ect) I generally outsource as I lack the tools / experience / desire.

I very rarely *play* pinball at all, it doesnt interest me much...however repairing and restoring is something that I do and absolutely love it

I do all my ss work, em work I need help with for some reason.

Yes it apparently makes more sense and is easier to diagnose they say...but just baffling to me.

We do all our own maintenance except for PCB work. Luckily we have a fantastic board guy that lives close to us and he helps us out every time.

If we get stuck with a repair or a rebuild, fellow Pinsiders have always gladly provided info to help us get a machine going. The knowledge available on Pinside from fantastic Pinsiders is amazing. Thank you to all of you.

I don't do all my repairs but I at least attempt to repair or identify the issue before calling in a tech

I only have one machine, but I like to do all of my repairs myself. The guides on Pinside here make that possible.

Plus friends helping me.

I can do all the physical, mechanical, electrical, and electronic repairs. However, I don't do welding or significant wood working.

I can do some minor touch-ups. Mainly just the black key lines (and yes, I color match the black--it irks me when people just take the black straight out of the bottle). I'm not good at color matching, so that's pretty much the extent of what I do with paint. I sometimes make waterslide decals instead for wear spots or inserts. I don't do clear coating.

I can repair backglasses to a certain degree (gluing delaminated pieces) and seal seal them.

I also do a good amount of research, hunting for parts, and documentation on pinwiki.

No. The pinball repair fairies come by at night and fix stuff for me when I'm sleeping.

LTG : )

Are you guys saying that you have had your games break down? That never happens in pinball.
Anyway, if one of my games ever did need repairs, I would do pretty much anything besides board work myself. I'm not confident enough to tackle that yet.

I think the vast majority of it is very simple stuff, you'd be amazed how easy it is replacing caps/BRs etc.

Pinball would not be as interesting to me if I did not get to work on and maintain my machines.

Sort of like my cars. . . only its easier to keep the pins in the house.

I will do anything at this point other than clearcoating. I sent my AFM pf to Kruzman for that.

Board work i became more comfortable with - especially after i invested in the right equipment. Amazing how a proper soldering and desoldering station makes you instantly better at rework!

What i do know is i could never make any money doing this as a job. I’m waaaay to slow and maticulous. I’ll leave that to the pros!

I help maintain a route of about a dozen games as a volunteer and also shop games from time to time. It's fun, I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle that keeps my mind sharp. "Ok, to remove this ramp I need to undo this plastic, but I can't fully remove the plastic because that habitrail is in the way. So maybe I can loosen it enough to rotate it out of the way so the ramp can slip by." Etc...

I repair other peoples games all the time. My games that I own are missing parts and not working

Ditto, a big +1

I do as much as I can. Where I draw the line is boardwork, major soldering, or refurb (major cab or playfield). I agree that part of the fun is lifting the playfield to fix what I can. I feel bad for the people who don’t feel comfortable except occasionally removing the glass. I’ve seen pins with tons of burned out bulbs, and poorly adjusted fields...nobody plays those games because they are “broken”. Playing pinball is one facet of the hobby, but there is so much more.

Restoration dude over here as well. I play here and there, but restoring machines is my passion. They are so complex I love learning how they work, and better how to fix them to keep these classics around for us to enjoy.

I occasionally get board repair done by others. But 95% plus I have always done myself... not rocket science just electronics!

I now do all my own work with the help of the manuals and Pinside members.

When I first started collecting 20 years ago I'd send out pinball boards for repair and use a local guy for arcade boards. I still use a local guy for arcade board repairs, but I haven't hired anyone to do a pinball repair in 15 years. I mostly repair stuff myself, but we also do repair parties in the Seattle area and help each other out, there are people that are much more knowledgeable than me that help me figure out my harder problems and mentor me how to repair it myself. Our local pinball list-serv, FB groups and Pinside are also invaluable for advice when working through problems.

I don't do much wood repair, cab repainting or playfield painting and clear coating, I just don't care about having fully restored games and if the playfield or backglass is bad enough, I'll order a reproduction.

I came at the hobby from the angle of just wanting to play, without knowing a damn thing about fixing pinball machines or anything else for that matter. It’s surprised me how much I’ve enjoyed learning about fixing stuff and how the games work. With the help of Pinsiders and Google, so far I’ve been able to fix every issue that’s come up, although sometimes it takes a long time to get it figured out. When the day comes that I have to call someone, I’ll try to get them to teach me as much as possible while they’re here... I’m actually kind of looking forward to it for that reason!

I bought all my machines many years ago just to play them and aside from bulb replacements and fixing some burnt connectors I left them as is until this year. It was funny things that were broken and I didn't realize it on a couple that made a world of difference. What spurred it was I wanted a new machine and it didn't make sense to drop that much money on something I couldn't work on. So with the help of people here and many many hours of reading I've done all sorts of repairs and got them all up to 100% working. Space Station in particular is a completely different game when things work like they are supposed to

What I am not comfortable doing though is paint touchups or big cabinet work. I've tried my hand at woodworking and it just never works out. I have no issues with circuit board work though.

I grew up working on cars. It was because of shop classes that I managed to graduate high school. I think I took all of the shop classes.

Sheet metal, wood shop, general metals, printing, drafting, auto shop, basic electricity, plastics class.

The military taught me how to weld, rebuild auto engines, etc.

I don't like working on cars anymore. Pinball has been a great replacement hobby.

I have restored my first pin a few months ago. I took a play field I stripped to the play field restore guy for the restore of the artwork. But I laid down the clear coat. And soldered all of the play field wiring. I have rebuilt and restored a cab and learned how to replace a cabinet floor.

I can repair boards. I can fabricate many kinds of parts from wood, sheet metal, and plastic.

My Achilles heel is that I am not the best at troubleshooting board problems. You point and tell me what needs to be repaired or replaced and I can do that. Currently my solution for board problems is to install an Alltek board. I need to start spending some time on learning board troubleshooting.

No EMs, though I would need to have the opportunity to work along side of someone with much experience to teach me how to work on EMs.

+1

No oil, no filter, no coolant, no brakes, no gasoline, no insurance, no registration.

And it's cheaper!! Wife asked me what I would do if I did not have pinball. I said we would have 5 times the amount wrapped up in hot rods!!

I was born in 77, what a great year for the Firebird and Smokey!

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Thats my wish list of cars!

I do all my own work.

I was also terrified the first time I did anything with a board, but now it's no sweat. What really helped me get comfortable was a bit of practice. Go pull a junk PCB from somewhere or see if someone has one laying around, it doesn't even need to be a pinball board. Practice pulling of and soldering on a few parts, you'd be amazed how quick you get a feel for it and get wayyyyy more confident.

20 years of self teaching. I do all my own repairs (and a lot of other peoples'). Everything from simple flipper repairs up to complex board work. It's challenging and fun. I haven't had to put a repro board in a game yet.

Having good equipment is key.

Guess I better get a de soldering gun then!

My first job out of high school (FAR too long ago) was at an arcade, fixing _everything_: pins, pool tables, air hockey, foosball, jukebox, even the change machine.

I've done _small_ board repairs, and board swaps are no problem. I restored a friend's #EB a few years back.

It really is all about having the right tool these days. Tools are awesome.

LTG fairies hit my place once
there done with his....seems like they never make it her. weird huh

I do about 90-95% of my own repairs. The one thing that I absolutely cannot do is test boards after repairs as I have no test fixtures. Everything else is a piece of cake.

Nothing like a little 3rd degree burn with your soldering iron. Pain is weakness leaving the body!