Hi all,

This is my first post since joining Pinside a week or two ago. I grew up with Gottlieb's Gridiron in our house. My father gave it to my uncle a few years back, and now it is back in my possession and have started working on it. My Uncle did not take care of the machine. Jet bumpers aren't working, motor would constantly run and the game wouldn't start, coin door lock is drilled out and rubbers are completely shot.

The motor spinning was caused by (if I remember correctly) a leaf switch on the AX relay was not adjusted properly. My memory on this problem is a little vague as I fixed it two weeks ago and have spent the last two weeks in Louisiana on a job site.

I replaced the rubbers on the playfield, I am pretty sure that the machine had original rubbers. I dismantled the playfield and cleaned it off before doing this. As I was putting the playfield back together with the new rubbers I ran into the problem with the football spinner. I am at work so I don't have a picture of the spinner, but I will try and get one tonight. My problem is I can't get it to spin freely anymore. There is a weight with an Allen key underneath the playfield that I was sure sat between two leaf switches, as the spinner moved the weight would move up or down operating either of the leaf switches. However, there seems to be too much friction now, so a picture of how that weight should be installed would be great, if possible. It doesn’t have to be a Gridiron photo; I am assuming Gottlieb used the same design, or something close to it for most of their spinners.

The jet bumpers are stuck with both coils pulled in. My DMM has been at the office for the last two weeks so I haven't measured the resistance of the coil. But when I operated the switch for the jet bumper manually the machine basically blacks out for a second and immediately comes back on in tilt. I am sure that the coils are shorted and pulling the line voltage down. The first time this happened I checked the fuses and they were all 30A fuses, I changed them all to the right amperage, I should have checked that first. I am going to order some coils tonight after I check the resistance on them.

The coin door lock is pretty straight forward, and I will order that with the coils.

But I also want to change the free play scores. I opened up the back board door and I don't understand how to change the settings, there are some tags showing some plugs to adjust, but it just doesn't make sense to me. I will post a picture of that tonight too.

I am also missing two posts, that I didn’t know were missing, I don’t remember them being installed ever. I noticed this while cleaning the playfield and found two holes in the playfield and upon looking at some photos on IPDB that they are missing (even though a couple photos on IPDB show them missing too).

This post looks like it got a little long winded, and I apologize. Basically I am just looking for some help on the spinner, and kind of introducing my machine.

Thanks for the replies.

The spinner was just jammed up a little bit on one of the siamese posts it rides on, I re-adjusted it and now it spins freely. The posts are all a yellowish color from discolouring over time, since I had to add the two missing posts I didn't want two posts screaming "brand-new" while the rest looked old and dated, so I ordered all new posts for the PF.

The jet bumpers are still both locked down, even without power, I haven't had much time to look at them as I am renovating the laundry room for the wife. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can deal with that.

But I am not too happy with how dull the legs and all the metal around the PF glass is. I am looking at getting them plated. Any one have some pictures of an EM with the metal re-done? I am not sure what process to use (i.e. Chrome or brushed nickel etc etc)

I was also looking at the translight, and it's not in great shape. Is there someway or someone that repairs or repaints them?