I will be picking up my first pinball tomorrow... like the title says I went retro but have some work to do. I found this game locally and am 100% pleased with the condition with a single proviso, thus this post.

The back glass is 100% perfect, amazing, like new. This sold the game.
The game is also fully functional although the flippers are VERY weak.

Question is related to play field and restoration. Here goes-

Play field is "rough" in two ways... one- the colors are pretty muted and it appears to be covered with a varnish or dirt layer that is very yellowed- I am not worried about this. Second reason I think its rough, in a few sections- principally near the flippers in the center of the play field the wood grain is raised and the paint is cracked. There is a single minor divot with missing pain near a kicker (this should be easy to fix).

How should I approach the raised grain of the play field and the cracked paint, I am not overly worried about having to spend some time repainting so here is my plan... can you offer some help/suggestions/revisions.

1) Clean the play field throughly, using Magic eraser and isopropanol (91%) in areas with no raised wood grain. Then clean it with Novus 2, then sand and prep for touch up and clear.

2) for areas with wood grain... I was going to go with a prewax car cleaning solution to work on the regions with raised wood grain (worried the magic eraser will do more damage than good) as well as maybe a solvent so get the dirt out and the yellowing out, as well as Novus with a foam pad.

2a) Then- I was going to "power sand" this to near level, but carefully so as to not strip paint from adjacent "good areas". Then, touch up/paint as needed.

So... good or bad?

Finally, inserts are slightly cupped- I cannot get a ball to sit in them its slight... so after touch up I was going to clear coat them using the "puddle" method, spray the playfield and THEN sand them to level and repeat puddle if needed. Then sand to 600 grit wet and finish coat 2x using an automotive clear. I have a very high quality HVLP sprayer and some experience finishing furniture so I am not too worried about the clear... but have never played with touchup/restoration work on anything at all...

Thanks!

I almost want to tune the flippers and enjoy it a bit, but somehow, the project is calling and I think I will just take it apart the moment I get it home. I ordered up new coils for the flippers (probably not even the problem from my reading, but it can't hurt I figure) and will swap those in somewhere along the line.

Ok...So I can begin to oblige with some pictures, I just picked up the game and its in the garage and is actually in better shape than I had thought... It was in a PACKED TO THE GILLS storage shed with little light when I had the chance to view it prior to purchase. So... here are a few pictures of the game in the next post... mostly eye candy but two close ups of the area near the flippers in the center of the playfield that has the most problems with cracking and wood grain (possibly, now I am not certain its even that bad). There is one wear through in the play field where the ball lands after ejecting- this part I could not photograph due to glare but I know how to fix that and its only the size of a quarter- Asside from the pictures I will post showing wear, the rest of the play field seems to be
"perfect" but for yellowing in the varnish (or whatever its currently coated with). So... next post will be an attempt to put a picture up (never did this, just started here so I need to see if its even possible and figure it out).

First question now is, what is the best method to "strip" the yellowing from the play field... will that come out with magic eraser and alcohol or with Novus #2? Is there a better way to remove more of the clear coat (factory original I can guarantee this) without going down to the paint?. The game was from a private home that had it for 25 years and they did not touch anything but hired out a few repairs (I even have receipts and invoices) and all that was done was to wax the play field a few times in the last 15 years as well as change bulbs and go through and clean and fix a few things (very few parts were used, just adjustments). The game has 33,000 (or so) plays, shows almost NO water damage to the inside of the coin door etc, its amazingly clean. I am thinking I might have found a bit of a gem... curious what others think about condition.

BackGlass.jpg Playfield_front.jpg Playfield_detail.jpg

Here are a few more.
Pic of Coin door illustrates smeared decal (new one ordered) but generally OK metal (quite good) this part of the cabinet is a little rough but not too bad.

Side shot illustrates the "Bad" side of the cabinet, you can see big scratches on the tower and some on the side, luckily they are in the white and not really hitting art work.

Then, shot of the whole thing from the front.

CoinDoor.jpg CabinetSide_Bad.jpg FullFront.jpg

Thanks for the help!

So I had sorta started this with the idea of a clear coat refinish and wax over the top. Had not heard of the hot wax technique. No knowledge but wanted to ensure longevity of original art thus the clear coat... comments with respect to wax?

I guess I will have to wait and see, probably wait to get the novus in the mail before trying ME/alcohol. Can I use Naptha to strip the wax and dirt before I try anything else on this original playfield? Some advocate using this to remove wax and clean playfields but I am not certain if this is only after clear coat or appropriate for a 1977 finish...

Awesome. Headed to Home Depot for Naptha. See how it goes and my other pinball specific stuff is in the mail. Will post back pics but start with naptha.... then novus.. then ME/alcohol where needed. Thanks, should be in progress by the weekend I hope.

Gonna be FUN. Paint matching is delightful by reputation.... this will be a PERFECT opportunity to get my wife involved, she will be very good at this. I will suck at matching colors I KNOW that.

Thanks for all the help, very nice to get a plan in place knowing what order to attempt things.

I guess its a matter of what you want the machine to look like. I am wanting to restore and preserve this with the idea that it will continue to be functional and "pretty" for a long time to come as well as possibly accrue some value (bonus, don't care- not a collector, not why I did this... but stupid to ignore). So- I am not planning on repainting the play field and restoring colors to factory NEW. Thats not (in my mind) what a 1977 game should look like (although I can appreciate how awesome this would be its over my head, this is a very complex play field in terms of paint for a 1970's game).

I want to end up with a play field that is visually clean, well protected from yellowing or cracking (thus the automotive clear coat) and that will essentially be "locked" in. Since the wood is all ready showing some planking, I personally do not believe that wax will fix this, once the grain is raised its going to be subject to serious wear- its a high spot- period. So... the only way to "fix" this is to clear coat the playfield and level the clear so its all above the planking... and if I am going to go through that, seems like there is no sense in clearing a play field thats obviously damaged (although minor), so I will try to touch up the parts that I am confident I can do such that its undetectable. That may mean that I am able to do this thing full on to near perfect with color matches etc... or that I simply fix the big easy stuff and decide I am not capable of fixing details, in which case they will be polished with Novus like you say and locked in to avoid further degradation with a clear coat.

My rule is "DO NO DAMAGE"- I will not work on something with paint if I cannot make it basically invisible- I personally would rather see an appropriately aged play field nicely preserved v.s. a somewhat botched blotchy repaired play field preserved for eternity... now I hope I can live up to this goal.. never done it before, but this is where I want to go and I will stop when its clear I am heading to the slightly botched obviously retouched end of things (I hope I can recognize this...).

Any how, its just a pinball (HAHHA- don't flame me...)... for me I got it AS A PROJECT- that was kinda the point. So I have ZERO interest in waxing it and playing it. I WANT to get into this and see how it goes, how well I can do it, basically play and enjoy the process. I do however appreciate your perspective... its just different from mine and at odds with why I even purchased the game in the first place. I looked at MANY pins until I found one that I liked visually, was in good condition for areas I was not willing to try restoring (back glass) and in good enough condition to attempt restoration without being 100% over my head on the areas that needed work. I hope I had good judgement.

I am slightly intimidated..... for sure!

THERE are sure a whole lot of different things going on with the art on this play field... this will be *interesting* work on I cannot even imagine taking on some of the restores I have seen well chronicled where they end up repainting actual ART WORK and blending it perfectly into the existing... you really need to be an artist... not a description anyone who knows me would apply in terms of creativity with pens/paint.. but I think I can probably copy pretty well... you all can laugh watching this progress-

Well... I spent my first serious time looking this over, and I am impressed. Pictures speak for themselves.

I cleaned the play field gently with windex on microfiber. Cleaned the backglass (FRONT ONLY) with slightly damp windex towel, wiped down cabinet with slightly damp windex (worked like a charm for some spots) and then basically just toweled off the stainless rails (which i need to do a tiny bit of work on in a few spots)... here it is in and out.

071212_cleanedUP_BackGlass.jpg 071212_cleanedUP_full.jpg 071212_Untouched_BackGlass_paintedSurf.jpg

And here are the goodies inside this beast... I didn't even BLOW on this... its amazingly clean.

Now I am wondering if I ended up with a great find... and maybe a very good price.

Curious... does 500 sound fair for this game? Thats what I paid and I kinda feel OK with it- even a bit with a grin, but I may be overestimating the quality of this but it sure looks good compared to all the other stuff I had seen... at similar prices. Just don't know... I also went through and tested every single component with my hands when its on... didn't have the rule set down, but everything works, scoring works perfectly and even the 100,000 decal lights up when you roll its 100,000 the first time, it goes to zero but the light behind the 100,000 in blue under the score reel comes on. ITS AWESOME. I actually LOVE that. You roll the wheels once and get a very cool light with 100,000 lit up and then the game stops if you make it to 100,000 again, which is not going to happen for a very long time if I am the only one playing it... I SUCK.

071212_Untouched_Interior.jpg 071212_Untouched_CoinDoorInterior.jpg 071212_Untouched_RearTower.jpg

Ok...
So I spent the evenings and some hours during the days over the last weekend.... POLISHING the coin door and the top rail and the front (stainless I think... possibly chromed) legs. HOLY COW. I started cleaning with a metal polish which works WONDERS at taking off all matter of grime, corrosion etc then moved to polish on a cleaning pad and discovered that there was NO WAY I would be able to buff it by hand.

So... one trip to Home Depot, and a high speed cloth polishing wheel for my drill and three compounds later... and probably 3+ hours polishing. The coin door looks like this.

My question is, I have now taken it to not quite a mirror finish, but I have gone (on purpose) PAST the brushed finish that was original. My reading indicated that my best bet for a near factory finish was to polish to near mirror, then brush it with a 3M pad or similar. I am re-reading and now thinking that my next move will be to use 600 grit wet sandpaper with a solvent (something like Naptha) to re-introduce the typical brushed finish.

Anyone done this. hints before I ruin it and have to spend another 3 hours with the buffer to bring it back and try again. The coin return flap/door was not buffed and the orientation of the grain in the stainless finish is VERTICAL so thats what I was going to do to the entire door. Anyone? Is this correct?

Door_polish.JPG

You can see some swirl marks from polishing, and I pulled the old bad decal off (I have a replacement that I will put on WHEN its TOTALLY done). I think I am good to go forward from here as the polishing swirl marks will go away when I use the rougher compound to introduce the brushed finish. I was looking at a kit but they want 50 bucks for three foam pads and a solution that assists in re-oxidizing the finish. I think I can do this on my own for 1.50... am I right?

And on to the next phase.

I decided to tackle the paint on the front and side panels of the case. The front is by FAR the worse for wear. Here is the plan...

Go to Michaels crafts and get a bunch of acrylic paints to color match to the paint as it exists ON THE back glass "tower" which is in very good shape. Then, carefully mask the stenciled part of the front door and basically repaint the entire front of the cabinet, apply a speckle to match, then remove stencil and hand paint (color match again, thank god its only two colors) the stencils... then I was thinking of locking it all in place with a very light coat of a satin varnish from a spray can (I know how to do this well, no need for my HVLP gun to paint 3 inch strips). I am some what concerned with lead paint (its old enough) and am thinking that although I want to keep as much original as possible, I will end up clear coating the entire cabinet to eliminate lead concerns from flaking).

SHould I use a satin? or go with something with less gloss.

Ok.. So I went ahead and took the polished door and finished it to about what a #4 brushed stainless steel plate should look like using a Scratch-B-Gone kit to re-scratch the finish in carefully vertically oriented scratches. I have to say, it was worth spending 10-12 hours on the metal restoration on this cabinet. The coin door now looks pretty near to new condition, seriously happy. Is it dead perfect, not quite but I am very very pleased, if everything turns out this well I will finish this well better than I am hoping for... so for now, I can check off 1 of my to do lists on what is basically a three part restore. Metal... check.

Cabinet... now starting on this.
Play field... waiting to gain some paint color match skills on the cabinet... thats last.

I also got in my replacement pop-bumper caps. I FOUND some factory original replacements, they are SWEET! Also decided, I am going LED baby! I know its way off the restore path... but I cannot resist I have quite a bit of experience building LED's for Reef Tanks and I am just hooked on them, and they plug and play so no mods and it can be put back to 1977 original in 30 minutes with a few boxes of lights... so I plan on adding some cool colors to make it kinda futuristic matching the back glass... the play field and design for this cabinet almost screams for some cool LED lighting, its a VERY space/jet/future theme with great colors to light with LED. Cool orange and reds (warm white led through the back glass), blues and yellows (cool white through the back glass) and then mostly warm light LED for GI, but I am going to make one pop bumper glow blue and the other red (the caps are a blue and red star)... just a little pop... Can't wait to finish this and bring it into the game room. Spent an hour playing with a friend tonight- first real game session and starting to at least get the hang of a few rules... its a very very fun game, certainly challenging to the beginner but I can see that it its well within possible to roll it and max the score. We had one game (not mine) go to 110,000... max is 199,999. SUPER cool, super fun playing game.

Here is the finished coin door without and with a flash so you can see the finish.

finalDoor_flash.jpg FinalDoor_noFlash.jpg

Question, can you wire these so that it will accept coins but also will accept an input from the red button (currently the red button adds credits)... I assume you can? I am looking for a coin box for this... any ideas where to get one? Cannot find one on the interweb currently?

Cool! Enjoy-

So I have been working on the cabinet. I pulled the coin door completely out, masked off the opening and the entire machine and sanded the front lightly, sprayed it with a color match to the tower base (as it exists today- which is actually a very slightly faded white- nice) and then applied the speckle using a brush and black acrylic. Super happy, looks stock and very nice. I need to spray the stencils that I cut and I have a exact match for the orange and blue. I also masked off the front 1/4 of the side of the cabinet (on each side)- basically I masked off the stencil that runs along the cabinet (its a circle) and repainted whatever was in front of that. It turned out great, but the sides are quite yellowed and now the front is fairly obviously a whiter shade than the last 3/4.... I tried another color but that ended up too yellow and so I re-sprayed it in the lighter shade that matches exactly (its uncanny how exact) the tower. My Question is, is there some treatment I can use to kinda create a yellow/aged fade to blend the new paint on the front of the sides of the cabinet with the aged yellow paint on the last 3/4? I dont want to repaint it because I really want it to be original as MUCH as possible, but the front bit on the sides was hammered (lots of handling there).

I also began going over the art work with a fine brush and ended up repainting most of the blue and I have to say its looking so nice. I am going to finish up the blue, then the orange, and then touch up the many peeling spots on the sides... when Its done, what is the best product to top coat the entire thing so that it stops peeling etc. Was going to go with a Krylon Satin Acrylic top coat?

So I am nearly finished with the cabinet work. I needed to totally repaint the front. The head was in reasonably good shape but scratched fairly badly in a few places and the sides of the cabinet were severely yellowed with very bad flaking of the paint. I decided I was not going to repaint the sides (as in not a total repaint) and went with an attempt to touch them up. Here are the results. Before and after or look at prior pics to see progress. I have to say that I am pleased. Is it perfect and does it look like new.. absolutely not. (The front and the head actually basically look new) but for the sides, they lost a lot of paint in cleaning them (I decided that if it was going to fall off with slight contact it was better to take it off and touch it up, if its that loose and I spray it with a satin acrylic top coat it will just be a bubble and crack out. So- I lightly sanded and repainted with front 1/4 of each side and then tried to to a bit of a color blend. The sides look aged, and they are 35 years old... but the stenciling and the finish is still 95% original and looks sweet. I am very glad I didn't try to repaint it- I think that would have diminished the game- now it looks like a old pinball machine but one thats it quite good shape.

Front_prePaint.jpg FrontPaint_Done.jpg RightRear_PaintDone.jpg

Here is the right side (same as last pic above but showing entire cabinet side).

RightSide_PaintDone.jpg

Thanks!

So I actually finished the cabinet last night. Going to clear coat it in a satin water based acrylic UV protectant/gloss. I tried matte (on the back of the cabinet- using a solvent based clear... and its going to be a problem- lifting the new paint)...

For the stencils... I only made stencils for the front of the cabinet. I got some "Martha Stewart" crafts stencil material.... which was the only thing I could find (I am not a frequent customer of either fabric or craft stores but it was the only place I could think of that would have this type of thing).

First- NEVER buy this complete piece of garbage that is labeled a stencil kit. I used it, because thats what I had. BUT. It comes rolled- it NEVER sits flat and I had it under the pinball glass on a table for a week... and its still rolls up (P.O.S.). However, working with what I had. I taped the material to the cabinet (which just ended up lifting off even more of the bad paint that was on it- fine... whatever) and carefully traced the graphics making note of which color was where. Then, I used an Exacto knife to cut the stencil. This is kinda tricky but its the only way I had- get it as close as possible and correct major defects but leave it alone if its pretty good (easy to run into... the enemy of good is better... ). Then-

Because it rolls up as soon as you let go... I had a friend come over and wear some latex gloves. Between his two hands, and my one hand (the other had a can of spray paint in it) we were able to hold small sections flat enough to spray... and we did. You could NEVER EVER do anything more than about 1 hand width long because it rolls up so bad. After it was lightly sprayed we immediately pulled up the stencil. I let the paint dry and touched up by hand the inevitable small defects in my trace... just made it look right.

For the sides, I never used a stencil. I simply started with color blending and matching the white paint, then re-did the black splatter, then the red using a small brush and being very careful to fully blend (color match was quite excellent) and then blue. For regions that were missing (like the top of one head) I basically would paint a little bit, run around to the other side take note of the way the lines connected and then paint a tiny bit more... repeat. It ended up pretty good and I was lucky that even in the worst places there was *Just* enough remaining paint to kinda provide a very rough connect the dots for some of the shape.

My idea, if I had to do this again... would be to get some of the heaviest gauge aluminum foil you can find, and some tracing paper. Then, trace the graphics, transfer to foil (easy to do with a very dull intentionally rounded pencil tip (don't rip it) and then cut the stainless with the Exacto... tape it to the cabinet and away you go. I think this would be MUCH better... but you cannot see through the foil so it would be marginally harder to align- this would be an acceptable compromise. However, I did not try this... but I would at LEAST attempt it on a test piece, I would bet that if you were careful it would work really well... but only a few times per stencil. Unsure how it would cut... I think ok. Anyhow, NEVER get the rolled stencil material of the brand I mention- unless your stenciling a barber pole and need it to wrap around it.

Hey Steve-

I read your thread on the machine you restored and see that you have some knowledge on the inner workings.. Can you help me get mine back to accepting coins. As near as I can tell the mechanism works, the coin door coil (continuous duty) works and that one or two wires have been shifted. As it is now, I push the red credit button on the front to add credits. I would like to have to feed quarters, I got an authentic coin box, polished it up and loaded it with a hundred quarters or so I had in my coin jar. Now I need to know what wire goes where? Could you post a pic of your gottlieb so I can see the wiring pattern, I think we have similar vintage machines and I am certain they are wired identically.

I believe that nothing was removed, or cut, looks like a "pro" changed the wiring to remove coins and use the credit button. I am guessing I only need to move a few (maybe 2) wires back- but I just don't know.

THANKS!

I am sorry if I don't know exactly the answer. Here is what happens. When I press the red start button the game goes through its reset sequence, and you can start as a single player game or I can hit the button again and it adds a second player and you play a 2 player game. I am almost embarased to say that I have not hit it a third time so I am unsure about credits. I also am not sure where credits would be displayed, I am assuming that the small wheel that goes from 0-(10 or maybe as high as 15) in the lower right side of the display in the head indicates either credits or possibly extra balls... I am not sure, its usually on 0- and I have seen it move to 1 and even 2 but I am not even sure what the heck its indicating as we just push the red button to get it to play again. Since you would need to do that to take advantage of any credits.. but its wired now so that you also get a free play its hard to say what the wheel is indicating and I cannot find any information on line. Look up in the thread, there is a reasonably nice picture of the door interior and you can see clearly two white wires that are disconnected and tied up in the middle. I can take more pics. The pics of the glass show what I am assuming is the credit wheel in the lower right corner. You can see that its indicating 2 in the pictures I took.

As for the coin return, if you put in a coin it goes back to the return slot, but if I hold the bar back, as if the coil was activated, the coin drops into the machine (into my hand on the back of the door) and I assume the switches are activated but I do not know this... I will watch this tonight.. and post back.

Thanks-

I will look carefully for any jumpers or permanently closed switches (hope not). I guess the way I am envisioning this is that you basically wire it such that it continually "sees" a coin. Thus, it would then automatically start a game when you hit the start button. So this also means that there is no way for these to count credits in terms of knowing how many coins you added... else it would be counting indefinitely if I am understanding this. To be honest I have forgotten how this worked as the last time I put a quarter in a EM game I was probably so small as to have forgotten the experience. But... if its working as a coin machine, you put one in... hit start and then put another in and hit start for each additional player? Cause it would seem like if you fed it 3 at once without hitting start... it would not count.... I only am saying this as a logical extension of my supposition that jumping the wires across a coin switch is what you suggest would yield permanent free play. I do not see the credit wheel at max... that seems to change during game play, thus its clearly not counting credits from the coin door that way.. or at least not continuously.

Sorry.. this sounds rambling, I guess I don't "get" electrically and mechanically exactly how it counts how many quarters your adding.. or if it in fact does not (which makes more sense in some ways) but instead simply senses that one has been added and then enables the start button to begin a game or add a player. Obviously, were I probably 10 years older I would know this.. but sadly I was still very young when they stopped making EM games and was not much of an arcade kid as I grew up with consoles games in the house like atari etc...

THANKS!

THANK YOU. You are an incredible help and clearly know exactly how these work. I have the manual and read that part but to be honest I could not work out exactly what the heck the jumpers actually did until I read your explanation above.

I would also like to thank you for posting those pictures. I found two things in my machine, one of which I knew about and the other which was discovered from your picture and which I believe tells me exactly how this machine was set to free play.

See the picture, but to be honest its really hard to make out whats going on and I tried taking like 20 different pics and this is as good as I could get. Basically, I found what looks to be a nearly original wire but obviously newer solder joint with a yellow wire just looping between the top two terminals of a switch in the back of the machine in the head, attached to the credit wheel and replay unit... on one of the SW switches EXACTLY the ones you pictured and had suggested. None of the coin switches were altered. So I think mine is set to free play by virtue of the fact that it sees that switch as closed and thus a credit existing.

I also note (which I knew) that the coin door continuous duty coil (fine wire no paper wrap) which is used to pull on the thin wire connected to both coin chutes and that directs the coin through the counting switch rather than the return door has a single black wire soldered to it, but is missing what I think is a white wire that is kinda tied up in the picture of the coin door way up on top of the thread. I cannot find any other wires cut or missing from the bundle coming to the door, but you had mentioned this might be for a third coin chute.... I was just going to plug it into the relay as it looks like its the correct connector and comes down as 1 or 2 wires from the bundle and the other is on the relay...

So, I will unsolder one end of the jumper in the back, plug in the likely missing wire on the door relay and feed it a coin and see what happens tonight! THANKS!

If It takes coins, I will tape off the jumper (leave one end still connected should I ever want to switch it back) and get to work on the play field restoration. Cabinet is 100% done. Only thing I am slightly disappointed with, after I cleared it with the UV protectant archival varnish I noted that on one of the jet boards on the right side of the cabinet I can make out a few brush strokes where the blue was not put on quite heavily enough to repair a very damaged section... oh well. I just didn't see it until it got cleared. VERY minor and I am almost certain that the only reason I see it is cause I was on my hands and knees trying to find errors. I doubt anyone will ever notice it- you need to look for it and be in the right light to see it. Else the color blends came out very very nice.

THANKS!

CreditJumperWire.jpg LeftCabinet_FINAL_Cured.jpg

Just a heads up... the next question I am going to ask is how to interpret the jumpers to modify the extra ball/credit/match/ stuff! I will re-read the manual with new focus given your explanation of the credit system and perhaps I can see through the words a bit better. Else.. not... thanks in advance for your help.

Am I simply missing a vast resource that explains all this... cause I don't see it using search or google etc... but could be term dependent I may be using the wrong words. Don't want to re-ask what amount to FAQ questions for EM. But seems like some of this is just assumed or not widely available.

ok... So I am calling it an evening after maybe 2 hours. I succeeded in one part and failed another. basically I resoldered the constant duty coin door coin chute relay, so when I power up this comes on and pulls the deflector wires out of the coin chutes so the coins hit the coin box, whereas when its off hey just get spit back to the change refund drawer. I also had to completely rework a totally mangled deflector wire which took a few tries but now the coin door is working mechanically so I am happy.

fail-

I unsoldered one end of the wire that is clearly jumping a switch on the credit wheel in the head unit. however, that did not alter the free play setting on the game, which is weird. I am wondering if I have some mangled switches as well that we're either adjusted to be permenant free play or what. I do not know if the coin door switches are working, with the machine on and adding quarters that are going into the coin box now, I don't get a credit wheel movement... But I am thinking this may be because somehow I still have a jumped switch. need to pull out the credit wheel assembly but there are a decent number of what appear to be adjustable set points for the mount so I bailed out this evening. also need to check and see if I can figure out what the power off positions on those three switches should be because mine are all closed which seems wrong but I didn't look with the machine powered on and the cam would change them...

any ideas to help narrow down will be pursued.

I agree, the wire that very clearly is jumping across a single switch (the middle one) on the credit wheel assembly looks original, its fabric coated, yellow and appears to match at least one other wire I can find in the machine, but its also clearly an add as the solder joint is not factory... so at least that mod was made. Then, when I was fixing the coin door constant duty coil, someone had cut the wire from the coil on the negative lead so I had to re-wrap that and re-solder the wire to the lead among other things I need to fix that had been "fixed" in the past... That said, I have been through a fair amount of the machine and thus far the ONLY things I see that are clearly not acting correctly is the credit/coin circuit/mechanism and this is the one part of any EM pin that is almost guaranteed to be subject to modification.

No complaints!

I am going to pull the credit assembly out tonight and clean it and take pics, will post them when I get it out, cleaned and have a chance to look it over.

Very much appreciate all the help. Thanks

very happy to report completion of coin operation. there were many things wrong and totally bent to hell and back. here we're the errors I had to correct to get this to accept coins...holy cow! it's really fun workin on these, you don't need much of a manual if you just start to play with it and see what the mechanism is designed to do too the switches etc. I suspect I will face yet more challenging repairs but this one was great as an intro to working on these in terms of electrical/performance issues

1. credit wheel middle switch was soldered closed
2. credit wheel SW switch 1-3 contacts were severely bent and permanently closed.
3. both coin door switches were bent closed
4. The internal coin trip wires were both severely torqued out of line and non functional. So no coin sensing
5. the coin constant duty coil was disconnected and wire wrap undone at one lead
6. Coin return internal wire hook that allows constant duty coil to trigger coin acceptance were in upside down and of course severely bent in attempt to make that work (palm slap)
7. The coin door switches were bent way up in attempt to align to all the other previously wrong misaligned crap.

but it's good one one side of the coin door and I am reassembling the other half with aligned components. the machine now requires you feed it coins and registers 1 credit per quarter through either door! I took one apart after I had it working to clean it final and now have the other cleaned. Zso it's working! I also may have found the region of the playfield responsible for random scoring and am working on identifying the misaligned switch, that must exist because if I hit the playfield in 1 spot it awards points.

Ok, a little more progress.

I decided to completely disassemble the credit wheel and polished all parts etc etc, it was working fine but its amazing how smooth things are now... I imagine its like new. I also decided to deal with the score wheel and managed to clean that more or less in place, it was dirty, had black (likely very old white grease) all over the wheel but thankfully Gottlieb was using metal score wheels... so Q-tips and degreaser took it to shiny metal, Brasso metal polish made it look new, and some Teflon oil got it running very very smooth! The actual motor and metal gears were pristine, and I did nothing but drop a tiny bit of teflon oil onto the shaft where it penetrates metal plates but did not lubricate the gears etc, just perfect like new as it was. Amazingly, all the switches were in perfect alignment and now have new shiny contacts. I tried the machine out and its 100% functional now, with a possible stuck switch on the root target 10x scoring as every time I hit the center target it scores 10x value... but the 10x light is not on (could be burnt... not testing as all are being replaced) but I think its a stuck switch as I hit it (using my hands) a bunch of time as well as hitting other targets in-between, and it always scores 10x... which would explain my ability to score well! hahah!!!

Play field is now 95% stripped and I will be ME/Isopropanol this evening.

Only "negative" surprise in stripping the play field. The wood under the plastic domes that hold up all the plastic inserts (they are maybe 1/2 inch circles at the base) is slightly depressed where the plastic sat (in a perfect circle shape just where the insert presses on the play field) and then raised up somewhat significantly towards the center with a very high spot where the screw hole is.... I am never going to be able to clear this and obtain a nice finish if I don't sand this down... but then I will probably loose even a little bit of the wood... but its under the screw tower so no one will ever see it... what have people done about this, I assume its pretty much 100% common. I was actually thinking of lightly tapping it down with a wood block and a rubber mallet, then sand it flat but probably wait to sand it until the first coat of clear is on as a protectant for the rest of the play field.

Here is what I am talking about. If you look you can tell that the wood and play field region around the screw hole for each of the "Faceted Plastic Posts" were removed is fairly significantly raised and that the circle shaped base of the posts has put a circle divot into the play field.

Basically, I am not worried about the divot, I can fill it or just clear over it, the raised wood around the screw hole is a much bigger issue. Its FOR SURE high enough that I will need to sand through wood to get that level, and probably end up needing to retouch ever single one (albeit under where the plastic posts sits).

Just curious if this is common or what? I don't see it as an issue in many (none that I have seen) restoration threads... is this odd or just not mentioned?

I put a red arrow (over kill, likely not needed) pointing to each section that was previously covered by an insert (obvious not faded white circles mostly!)

PlayField_RaisedInserts.jpg