This is a plea for help from some ops: A new manager has recently taken over the local arcade and discovered that their pins were in sorry shape. Unfortunately, they don't know what needs to be done to keep a pin on route in playing shape, but they're keen to do so.

So, as an operator, what do you do in terms of regular maintenance, checks and so on, and how often do you do those things? As an operator, what things are important for keeping the players happy, and how often do they need to get done? For instance, what do you use to clean playfields, how often do you do so? Do you lubricate spinners or the plunger on a regular basis, and with what?

Alternatively, do you know of anyplace on the web where such a maintenance roster exists?

Lloyd: what counts as important to an op? Flippers, slings, ? Diverters?

They got sick of players (me) bitching about flippers on a game and replaced every part except the bat rather than try and find the problem. Their techs aren't big fans of actually finding problems and would rather just replace stuff until it works. I flipped thru the switch tests to show them a fault and they were dismissive of the idea of diagnostics, and I know for a fact that no one working there knows how to check the Audits.

This is the level we're working at. Unfortunately, most things on the 'net assume a level of knowledge that just isn't there: these are arcade folks trying to get back into pinball operating, and they just don't know how. They can't send their tech to service school anymore....

That's where we're at now, in fact. This is a proper arcade we're talking about (driving games, gun games, VR games, rhythm games, an annoying hammer thing, and yes, some quarter pushers: the complete set), but the pins, or at least knowledge of what to do with them, have been neglected to the point of a loss of institutional knowledge.

Right now their maintenance plan is for me to complain about stuff and them to get their tech in to fix it, but that's not really the best long-term plan, especially when their techs aren't keen on diagnosis, and I don't really want to take a game apart to figure out what's wrong with it for them.

Unfortunately, the local manager's frustration with the techs is not something that can be fixed in the really short-term: they're centrally managed over eight arcades or so, giving each location about a man-day of tech time a week. Where do they send their tech to get educated about pinball maintenance?

Also, frankly, the manuals to pinball machines are really shit. They assume that you already know how to maintain a pinball machine: even the short guide to running a pinball machine included as looseleaf in the manual assume that you, say, know how to clean a game.

I don't know how coin-amusement operators get into running pinball nowadays without being pinheads...