So I’m playing my beloved Old Chicago the other day when I think I hear a “clunk” in the cabinet. Next thing I know, the score motor won’t stop running, the outhole kicker keeps kicking and the drop targets keep resetting. Weird. I turn the game off, pop the hood and start poking around. Nothing jumps out at me. No obvious parts on the cabinet floor, so I start to think that I imagined the clunk sound.

I start thinking it’s probably a switch that’s gone out of adjustment. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) But after looking carefully at all of the obvious suspects, everything looks perfectly gapped. I get out the schematic and scratch my head. What the heck?!?

Then I start googling. I find an old pinside thread where someone was struggling with the exact same behavior. One of the posts suggests checking the bonus unit. I go back and look at mine:

Oh crap! Where’s the coil plunger??

A8917E66-A90E-4CB0-8AB9-CB0A8AFC09F6 (resized).jpeg

Amazingly, it had landed on the coin box and rolled into the crack between the coin box and the cabinet. The sheared off pin from the arm on the bonus unit was still with it.

E607C94D-81C1-4266-9F47-BB7FC3C730C6 (resized).jpeg

Not the kind of thing that’s repairable (at least I don’t think so). My first thought is to post a parts wanted ad here, but then I remember the two boxes of junk em parts I’ve had stashed for years. I dig through it and voilà - a crusty old Bally stepper unit with a very similar arm reveals itself.

68BDE00B-31E7-4A00-B6A2-BD8BFF011991 (resized).jpeg

The arms are a little different and the junk box arm didn’t clean up as well as I’d hoped in the ultrasonic, but it works! Boy am I glad I didn’t give in to my wife repeatedly suggesting that I get rid of those boxes of parts. There were definitely a few times I almost gave them away.

I’ve come up with the solution to a problem via the wonders of having parts and materials on hand way more times than I can count (both in pinball and other walks of life). Sometimes, after the initial glow of victory fades, I wonder if it’s worth it though. I likely would’ve been able to source the part. It just would’ve been more of a pain in the ass.

Do you keep a mini junk yard and hardware store on hand? Does it save your bacon often enough to be worth it?

I keep my stash of random parts under a staircase in my workshop. I feel that’s a reasonable spot and amount of space. My minimalist wife might not see it that way. I was super stoked to have a reason to crow about how handy that stash was in solving this breakdown