Brought A Freddy pinball home tonight- Some pics of the transport- used a 13' Jetta sportwagon. Had to take the backbox off of course but there was even room for the hand truck with them sitting side-by-side.
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No keys for this machine! Had to drill the lock out- however found a nice spare set of keys inside along with $3.50 in quarters (this machine had been on free play so who knows who was plugging them in there!). The spare set of keys saved me from having to drill out the backbox lock so that was nice to find. I thought it was somewhat odd that I had to drill completely through the lock to get it to even jiggle free. Figured it would go halfway through and then come loose.
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Cabinet isn't in too bad of shape- I've not looked at comparisons though to see if there is any fading.
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Glass was very dirty-
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The underside of the playfield was remarkably clean and I did not notice any obvious signs of blown coils.
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Not planning a full blown restore on this but certainly a very nice refurb. It had the ball trough error when I turned the machine on- so that will be the first order of business. Was only two balls in the trough, one in the non-operating side of the cabinet, and one in what looks like a captive position on the top right of the playfield. More pics and info to come as the work progresses!

Thanks! I think something similar has happened to this machine - but it has lost two balls in the subway. It's not been turned on since I initially looked at it and my attempt to retrieve those balls was a failure, I'll need to do some disassembly to get them out.

I did however remove the one captive ball from the upper-right corner (I've read there should be three there as a newton's cradle, guessing an op at some point robbed balls from it). Also started the cleaning. There was gum on the backbox header, it came off nicely and cleaned up the rest of that area. Mind as well just work downwards- so the next thing to clean was the plastic glass-holding guides. They were incredibly filthy and had certainly never been cleaned before. But now at least when the glass is placed back there wont be any gunk slipping down onto the playfield or glass!

Yeah it was a tight fit because I've only got 28" or so vertical clearance. I think it'd still fit a widebody but without the hand truck. Plenty of depth with a wagon, this is where you can run into problems with even mid-size suv's. I guess you can always tie down the back hatch to get that extra 2" - and just not accelerate too hard. I didn't even bother to secure anything on our ride because things were packed in tight enough - nothing even moved the slightest bit.

I did order this and it arrived today- will be posting tonight with what work I can accomplish this evening.

So there was old gum on the cabinet- I did not want to tear the paint off to remove it because it was in a silver-painted area.
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So I started slow- thought I would just apply some hot water to the area with a que-tip. It really was old so it didn't exactly "reactivate" it. However with some very careful use of a razor blade it came out quite nicely.
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With my supply order came the new lock- installed and ready to keep pesky teenagers out of my coinbox? Really it was only put there because I did not want to put something else there.
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And now the legs (or the start of one). This one was probably the dirtiest and rustiest of the bunch but none of them are in real good shape.


I know what you are thinking "was the trash can too far away? Is that why these were not just thrown out?". I guess I would rather just try to save one to see how much work would be involved. The leg levelers may be too far gone to be worth trying to save but I did ok on the first leg with a combination of sos pads and scotch brite. It's not all finished though the deep set in rust inside the leg will need to be grinded out with my dremmel and after a few seconds of trying it out in the garage I decided it may be a neighborhood disturbance and will have to be finished in the waking hours. The outside of the leg is halfway decent at least now:
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Well I was finished with the exterior cleaning- (except for the three legs) so it was time to move the machine inside. I didn't want to put the backbox back on in my workshop then have to remove it again to get the machine inside. I wanted to do the tests to see what other parts I may need to do them in a large order instead of ordering them individually. For sure going to need new leg levelers, and some sort of cabinet protection (in this picture you can see my makeshift temporary solution).
Hint- It's cardboard!
After reattaching all of the backbox wiring it was time to boot it up- the original problem was a "ball stuck" error and I figured this to be the freddy head upkicker (solenoid #12). It was indeed the problem- lucky for me it was just old junk solder that was falling to pieces.
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Took some doing with the older tools I had (the gun type soldering iron I've got is 30+ years old and is in need of a new heating element). Did happen to have some of the older lead type solder that people seem to prefer, and a new connection was made. Not the finest work but it will do for now.
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Game was playing fairly nicely considering its not even close to being level on either axis, but there was no sound. After doing some checking- re-seating connections, checking grounding etc... I finally checked the volume knob. Yep I should have checked there first it was the issue. Strange because the volume knob hadn't been touched by me and the sound was working when it left its former home.

Now on to the next issue- this ball guide near the glove flipper/left center VUK.
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I've done quite a bit of looking around at several sites trying to locate a replacement for this part with no luck. Does anyone know where to find one of these? If so that would be much appreciated. If I cant find one I will have to repair it and I've got several ideas on how to go about this- does anyone want to volunteer some suggestions? It does get a lot of direct ball hits and will need to be strong (or stronger) than the original piece.

One picture of the pre-shopped playfield:
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On a side note when I was checking the ground connections I saw a tag at the bottom of the cabinet saying "sample cabinet" and some numbers. Is that an indication this may be a sample game (or cab?).

Yeah this was one of the first places I checked since I know he has tons of gottleib parts, but I don't see it anywhere on the website. Luckily I do have those two wingnuts- but they are not installed yet. As for the glove it does have two claws missing- one is in the bottom of the cabinet, I haven't decided if i'm going to try and do a re-build on it or order a new one. As for the playfield there is one spot where there is a cut in the mylar and dirt has gotten in, not sure if it will come out with a good cleaning. Right above the left flipper there is a small (1/4") spot of wear through the purple paint down to white. Wondering if this should be mylar'd?

Thanks for this tip it may come in handy if I can't find a replacement!

Was going to be putting in a call to PR for some of this stuff, lets see what else I can add to the list tonight, I know I for sure need leg levelers, caps, leg protectors of some sort (the legs were gouging the cab pretty badly), a new sleeve for the kick-back coil, two of the larger plastic pieces had been repaired for cracks at some point i'm not sure those will be easy to find. Also may need to get parts for the glove flipper coil since I don't think it was working last night and is on the test agenda for tonight. Remarkably the other coil assemblies were in really good shape and I don't think this will require any re-builds- the flippers are plenty strong and make all the shots even when the game is not even close to level or at the desired angle (it's more severe now than it will be properly set up). Also was with the old rubbers!

So no luck on finding that replacement ball guide without a part #. He said he didn't have a lot of the flat metals. So i'll have to rebuild it. Shouldn't be too hard. Did order a replacement lamp cover, a new coil for the glove flipper, a new sleeve for the kick-save coil, shooter rod parts, and the leg levelers.

Well I was able to get two of the rivets off of the broken ball guide tonight, and now need to go about getting some replacement 1/8" rivets. I know that pin repair rivet site has some but I may try looking locally first. Also began the teardown of the playfield. Man that glove flipper's set screws were not easy to access but it finally came out.

Ok so I finished the major parts of the playfield teardown, everything that is left is easily worked around or under.
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I completely documented the teardown order on three legal pad sheets. I will find the best way to upload them (weather it be scanning or just taking a picture of them) so that if anyone needs it as a reference in the future it may come in handy. I ordered rivets, and am now waiting on the PR parts order to assemble the legs (only two legs left to clean after tonight's work).

Now a big question is weather or not to LED this thing. It's certainly a no-brainer for some of this stuff (the lights in freddy's head for example I don't need a melted freddy) but do I really want to go all-out on the controlled lighting since this is all bayonet socket stuff which runs more expensive (for example cointaker kit for this game is around $240). The GI was mostly blown (either that or there is a GI issue) so that would be another place to go with LED's. Any suggestions?

I will have to give a nod to this tool I used to teardown the top side- it just came in so handy!
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I know most of you will probably have several of these but maybe someone stumbles upon this in a few years or something and maybe this will help them out. This one I have is a snake driver but i'm sure there are other brands that will get the job done. It has a magnet attachment for going after a pesky loose screw or one that is just hard to reach. Even for screws that were not especially hard to reach this just ended up making things much easier- since the tool will do the straining for you. It also helped me skip one step- since I was able to get the habitrail off without dissasembling the left rear plastic assembly first. I had always wanted one of these and found this one at an estate sale last year for $2. Certainly paid for itself in one day!

Well the PBR parts order came the other day and I've got two clean legs with new leg levelers on them! Just waiting to be able to do my grinding on the last two legs. Dis-assembled the shooter rod and the new sleeve I ordered was maybe 1/8" too long to fit snugly. I'm going to have to take care of that before the shooter rod is re-assembled. Is it normal for the new sleeves for shooter rods to be a little long? Or maybe they are built that way on purpose? Seems like the collar would break off if it was not against the housing snugly.

Ok so I've finally complete the legs, was maybe a few more hours than I had anticipated but I'm glad they were able to be saved.

not unhappy with the result but I can certainly see why people would have just tossed these and bought new ones.

Made some custom dual-layered felt cabinet protectors for the legs.

I'm not a big nudger, but if anyone who plays this is, we should be covered

Replaced all of the switched bulbs that were blown in the playfield.

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I also ordered all new GI/flasher led's from coin taker, will be exciting to see how they look installed. All but one of the 89's were blown on this machine.

Also I did finish the modification to the shooter rod sleeve to get it to fit and is now installed- fresh springs+rubber and cleaned the few existing parts that were kept.

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Now the next big thing is the backbox lighting. Only one 555 was blown, but all of the 906's were dead. They did not look to be blown by inspection maybe someone can tell me if that is normal or not or there is another problem perhaps? The fuses under the playfield don't indicate that one is dedicated to the backbox flashers, maybe I will just have to order some 906's to see if they really were just bad bulbs.

Well after not being able to do much over the past week on the machine I got some stuff accomplished today finally. Did a cleaning of the PF, novus 1 then 2. When I was looking at the bottles I noticed that the company that makes novus is like a few miles from where I live . There is one spot on the PF that the mylar has been cut (as if with a razor blade?) maybe less than a half an inch but there is some rubber dust that has found it's way underneath and will take some doing to remove. It's not like it is causing a bump or anything so I could just leave it and it would not effect play, but if anyone has any suggestions on that it'd be cool. So then was the wax, I did the maguiars mirror glaze and it looks nice now.

Then it was on to the flipper bats, I realize I could have just replaced these, they were more black than white with rubber residue/dust everywhere. They were in good physical condition however and the gottlieb raised writing and paint were in such good shape I decided to try and save them at least. They turned out nice actually-
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It was then on to the pesky shooter lane/rod issue where the rubber tip was coming into contact with the auto-shooter assembly. Took several different tact's to try and remedy this and finally settled on just trying to move it over and tighten it up, and it has solved that issue.

The next issue was the slight mis-alignment of the left flipper. It took some doing to dislodge the set screws holding this in place (guessing that they had been on there since this thing left the factory) but I finally got them loose. Tried to re-align this but it kept going back to the mis-aligned position. So it was removed and I'm going to have to grind/file the shaft down to make that part of the rod smooth again so it can be secured in the proper position.
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Then it was on to rubbers. Not super easy to get the flipper rubbers back on those gottlieb bats with the strange lip they have in the middle but it was finally done (not without some sore hands afterwards and I will admit to hurling a flipper bat in frustration at one point ). Was placing the rubbers on when I took note that one post was not listed on the sheet that marco provided with the kit. Its near the shooter lane diverter-
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I checked out some images on ipdb and saw one photo that did have this post but the rest from 2-3 different machines did not have it. Unsure if this was just a change at some point that the factory made, or if its another indicator that this may be a sample game. 2Kaulitz does your game have that post there?

So I was lucky and all of the drop-target decals were present with this machine (none attached anymore and all quite dirty). One was in the bottom of the cab and another yet was in a tricky spot in the boiler room. Retrieved and cleaned them with a little novus 1. Then applied some scotch two-sided scrappbooking tape to the backsides (a lot of cutting to size was involved). But I think the result came out quite nicely:
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I finally got the shaft of the left flipper sanded back to somewhat of a cylindrical shape so that the set screws would be able to grab it in the proper spot. Very pleased with how these flippers turned out!

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Also I went to cleaning the two spots that had cuts in the mylar today, will post the final results from that adventure tomorrow.

So the end result of the mylar surgery was the removal of the dirt from underneath at this spot:

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There was already a very fine cut in the mylar which I was able to use to get the dirt out. Took a dental pick and exacto knife and some very small slices of paper towel with novus applied and was able to work them under with the pick while I held the mylar up ever so slightly with the knife. Then I resealed the area once cleaned and after a days worth of curing it doesn't look nearly as bad- before it was noticeable but now all that remains is a very slight clouding area of the mylar near where the surgery was done.

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I also cleaned and did the same process to the mylar that was peeling up a slight amount near the drop target assembly. Then it was on to finish the cleaning of the pop bumpers and stand-up targets:

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Ok so earlier this week there was a flurry of activity to get the machine into a play-test state:

The claw flipper soleniod was repaired!
The switch contacts were cleaned.
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2nd coat of wax applied.
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The plastics were glued where they were broken in two spots- (the op clearly tried to make them whole with a glue gun and there was glue gun goop everywhere! That was all removed and glued properly! very pleased with those results)
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All the plastics/metals were cleaned.
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The subway was dis-assembled and cleaned.
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The claw was repaired. (two blades were broken on the claw- one was glued back on since it was present, the other was not so a new claw was fabricated out of lexan {suposedly unbreakable we shall see!}). Then the claws were all re-painted- the results were astounding maybe one of the best looking freddy claws around .

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The metal ball-guide that had to be re-fabricated was placed in the game. This was one of the most time-consuming tasks involved in the resurrection of this freddy and it wouldn't have been possible without the help from http://www.pinrestore.com ! The rivets I was able to order made it possible for me to not only repair the drem-warriors guide but make it future proof with stronger metal. Big thanks to pinrestore.com!

I'm certain there are some things I've forgotten in this post but the end result of the flurry of activity is that freddy has been in play-testing mode for the last few days!

I did adjust the rubber on the right sling to be more forgiving since it was quite tight initially. Also adjusted the habit-rail to not interfere with the right sling plastic. Other than that freddy has been performing awesomely!!!

Super pleased with the results and as of a few days in I can see why this is somewhat of an underrated gem- one or two of the features not operating properly or the machine not being level could cause a completely different play experience.