Good Morning all!

I have made the odd post in the "Show your EM thread" and thought I'd place everything in one spot here.

A few months back I received an e-mail inquiring about some pins and from that conversation came this Hearts and Spades. It was in tough condition but the price was fair considering the numbers produced and I started on it with some breaks to work on A Time Machine and a Melody. After bringing it home, an hours work had everything working and then proceeded to take it apart.

Cabinet; Head and cab were rough, at some time someone had used a number of large 4" brads to make repairs to the head. They were all pulled out and everything was carefully repaired and glued back together with judicious use of much smaller brads to make sure everything stayed that way. Used Citrus strip to get the old nasty yellow paint off. Currently both have a nice coat of oil based paint and is awaiting webbing and stencils. The coin door and upper trim and shooter all went in a Evap-o-rust bath and hit by the buffing wheel, for my purposes good enough. Legs are actually in decent shape, though painted which I might strip off to see what is under there or apply a fresh coat of silver.

Playfield; Playfield is rough, lots of time cleaning with magic eraser and naphtha. Really agonized over a complete repaint vs just shooting with clear and enjoying it. I have not done a complete playfield refurb yes and didn't have the time at the moment so settled on clearcoating and future repaint, time permitting. First step in that is clear coating anyways! This is my first playfield clearcoat and I'm pleased with how it came out.

I let the playfield sit for two weeks after the final coat of 2k and then assembled. New poppers, popper domes, popper links and fibers, popper skirts, 38 posts, flippers, flipper bushings, target decal, coin slot plastic and decal and elastics from PBR, LEDs from Comet.

Backglass is pretty good condition aside from some red fade and lost paint in spots, will need minor touch up and sealing.

Currently the playfield is finished, lamps all tested, contacts cleaned and adjusted. I'm hoping to start practicing webbing this Sunday. Going the lacquer and glue route out of a proper paint gun. Never done it before so looking forward to it and stepping up my game.

Gary
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Funny thing is till this one came home and I got it to fire up I have never played one! Someone pointed out the oddball non-wedgehead design of the head once and I looked up a video of gameplay and was intrigued enough to obtain one. Even with dead elastics and other issues my first impression was confirmed, fun game! Like Domino it sounds wonderful and has a simple but endearing theme.

H&S has a better backglass though IMHO!

So I'm bouncing back and forth between two projects, I get held up on one and bounce over to the other and back. Soon as I hit the road block on the other I decided to put H&S back together to check things out and make adjustments. Not bad, had one or two switches that were too tight and swapped out the slingshot elastics for ones a 1/2" smaller. Number five socket looks fussy, need to replace that one. All and all very pleased.

Going to order some different LED for a more incandescent look, these are a touch too white (Comet daylight 1SMD)

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Busy weekend! Had some time to work on H&S and here is what happened..

Touched up backglass, still need to seal

AS Relay repaired and installed. Works great 90% of the time, once in a great while falls between 2 cards which irritates me. Still picking at it, not sure if I'll be able to adjust that out.

Lamp sockets #2 and #5 fixed

Installed power switch (was missing)

Installed replay button (red) and switch stack.

Wife while play testing asked, is this one a keeper? Good. She likes it.

We have a fair number of pins so good in the lineup for some time at least. I'm considering unspooling the pop bumper coils a few turns to add to the zip factor.

Sealed the backglass, AS Relay is all set, re-sleeved the knocker coil, played with some different color LED for the backglass.

Wow 3" flippers would be too much. I can get the top of the playfield no problem with the stock ones on high tap. There is one direct shot where you can get the number 5 & 10 target with some authority.

The pop bumpers leave much to be desired though even rebuilt. I think I'm going to unwind 2 turns of wire off the coils and see how that changes things. Never done it before but people state 2.5 to 3 coils off livens things up.

Oh on the AS relay I made the lamp side PCB adjustable by filing the rear mounting hole. I'm running 47 bulbs on the cards in the backbox, with the AS relay wiper design there is too much voltage bleed between the pads, enough to make all of the cards glow a bit.

LED's don't take much to light them, soon as I went to incandescent the problem was gone.

I planned on it.

Yes.

Going to trace out a machine tomorrow, painting soon!

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Thanks! Still have some distance to go but the list of things to be addressed is getting smaller by the day.

Pattern! I'm going to scan in at work and provide as PDF when done.

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Webbing done! On to the next hurdle!

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lacquer with added thinner and a touch of glue in a 30 year old Sharpe siphon gun.

The pictures don't do it justice, camera really would not pick out the fine details in the lighting.

The end is almost in sight..

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If things continue to go well, will be done this weekend.

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Have about half a days work left- Removing the paint off the original legs (not shown,) making some tweaks to the backglass, fixing a few lamp connections, wiring the coin mech lamp, tweaking a mech or two.

So far pretty pleased on how it is coming out.
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Thanks; I really try and up my game on each one I do. The webbing (which really does not show well except in a few close up photos) came out perfect. Grand Tour which I have been waiting to finish for 2 years is next, now that I have webbing down pat. It is going to be a stencil job I'm going to try and make out of aluminum sheeting.

So on my last day off this week it rained so no work on the shed, pinball happened instead!

1) Soldered up all 10 sockets for score display.
2) Made harness for "10 cent" coin display lamp socket.
3) Scraped off some paint areas on backglass, touched up and sealed score mask area.
4) Replaced frosted GI playfield lamps with clear dome, soft white color from Comet.
5) Tossed the metal push nuts for the PF plastics in the polisher. Ball too while I was at it.
6) Replaced tilt bob screws and one or two missing ones.
7) Adjusted flipper return spring tension 1 position.
8 ) Cleaned last of puke yellow paint off rear door track, installed.

Aside from cleaning up the original legs, which I'll do tomorrow, she is done.

Playfield with clear dome warm white LED, backglass touched up and close up of webbing.

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Comparison of the area around the score reels; as received, first touch up and final touch up.

The middle picture you can clearly see where the white paint was clearly leaking into the black areas, I think the backglass was sealed up just in time! These voids were not visible to the naked eye. The plan was to do a thin layer of paint and then mask of the area for a blocker.

For the third one and final I actually very carefully scraped off the white paint that intruded into the black areas and then repainted the black. After it dried I went over the whole area with a oil based white stain block paint and as a whole pretty pleased with it. Standing in front of the machine you notice nothing. My only issue with the blackglass at this point is the red is faded in "Hearts and Spades" And I'm considering several ideas if I address it, if at all. On my Domino I actually scanned and printed out "Domino" which was then attached to the back of the glass which worked out pretty well. In this case I'm considering doing the same with waterslide decal materiel and see how that works.
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I hope to have an update on this tomorrow, found something odd and waiting for parts to come in before commenting further.

Hearts and Spades uses the same pop bumper coil A-4893 as most Gottliebs so should have similar action. One bumper in particular does not actuate as fast as the others, even after tinkering with the skirt height and several other factors. Think I have it figured out and will let you know after work.

Even tried pulling 2 layers of windings off the coil which as far as I can tell did nothing/little. Interesting experiment at any rate.

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I'm glad you thought of me and touched base! And thank you for the tracing, I still have to scan them in at work and post.

Finished cleaning up the legs this morning- Stripped the paint, dunked in Evaporust overnight, cleaned with SOS pads and then gone over with chrome polish. Looks about the same as new chrome legs being sold today so will call it good unless I see an exceptional set in the future.

Edit; New flipper buttons and red start button on the way from PBR. For the record, I added the current credit/start button. Being an add-a-ball game and setup for dimes the game did not originally have a button.

Some operator in the past stripped all the coin mechs, removed the coin lamp wiring and even the power switch and rigged the coin return button to "start game" which I did away with. I made up a coin lamp harness, added the start button and switch stack and installed a proper power switch again.

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1) If painted, clean off with acetone or similar solvent.

2) Evaporust bath overnight (I have some PVC tubing from Home Depot that is capped at one end for the job)

3) Go over with fresh SOS pad, the kind with soap. This will polish and remove stubborn spots.

4) Mothers chrome polish to finish.

So buttons came in from PBR so thats all set, very nice.

The pop bumper- Remember that brass tube shown above? That is what was in the pop bumper for the sleeve & stop assembly. Franky I don't recall seeing one before. I replaced this with a plunger, plastic sleeve and coil stop from PBR and all is well with the world. The left most pop bumper works at the same speed as the others now. The fit between the plunger and sleeve was so tight that you could almost use them as an air cylinder! Suction and pressure of the plunger going up and down was slowing down the action.

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Just a follow up on this as I took apart the other 3 pop bumpers, only the one had the odd brass tube and coil stop. The other three were bog standard Gottlieb issue. I'm assuming someone fixed the one at one time with parts they had on hand, I wonder what application it was from?

I have two, but this is the first time I have seen a sleeve and stop as a single unit.

I have TOO.

Two? I must have been asleep while posting.

Thanks for the kind words!

I actually tried red and blue, red and white and even just 2 red led up top but thought it bled too much color into the lower blue area.

Arch lights look very cool, I like them as well!