Quoted from NicoVolta:Visit #40 -> San Diego Pinball Club in San Diego, CA
The subjects: Grand Prix, Skylab, Jackpot, Cross Town
Quick question: Spring, summer, fall, or winter… which city in the US has lows in the 60’s and highs in the 70’s year-round?
San Diego! A city where the weathermen have the laziest job in the business: “Yep… another nice day today. Looking ahead to the 10-day forecast reveals… uh… same thing all week.”
Jordan (Heretic_9) invited me to assist the San Diego Pinball Club during this visit. He’s a guy who prefers to remain out of the limelight, so we’ll keep this episode focused upon the group class and games in his collection.
Mark, a local operator, brought a Williams Grand Prix in exceptional condition. His goal was to get the game running well enough to operate on route.
The 100,000 score reels for players 2 and 3 would occasionally fire together. Typically, this would indicate an issue with a misaligned player-up stepper (which does the job of re-routing the score relays to the correct reels). However, in this case the intermittency was so infrequent it would require disassembly of the harness to check for frayed wires. Not something we could do in a class setting, unfortunately… but a troubleshooting path was established as a homework assignment.
We also covered a few basics under the hood.
Rob, who provided the classroom space, brought a Williams Skylab as class material. It was his first-ever pinball machine. My eyes widened during his introduction as he described its initial condition: No backglass, trashed playfield, badly scratched cabinet, unusable plastics, and broken wires.
Rob had already spent countless hours (possibly hundreds) working on Skylab. After mentioning he was also at least $1000 into its rehabilitation, I had to restrain the urge to *gasp*. This sounded like a parts machine which, under normal circumstances, would or should never have been brought back to life.
Inside, I found lamp cord attached to various parts of the machine. Rob had carefully traced out the circuit and replaced broken segments of wire with it.
The bonus stepper was misaligned. I re-centered the spider on the rivets and made a few tweaks to the spring tension. After which it was counting up and down normally.
The cabinet flipper switches were a bit dirty. It was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the “swab, polish, swab” mantra with the Magic Brush.
Switch cleanliness is critically important to EM pinball machines. The power for the entire circuit physically travels through every connection!
The left flipper end-of-stroke switch wasn’t closing. Flipper coils will be extremely weak if this switch isn’t clean and closed during the initial power stroke.
Rob made extensive work of repainting the playfield by hand. The wood areas were covered with a coppery metallic color. The rest was painstakingly brushed-in and hand-lettered.
Playfield plastics were manually reproduced, printed, and adhered to the top surface.
The backglass is actually a homemade scan/photograph printed on paper and sandwiched between sheets of glass.
Like the playfield, the cabinet was repainted by hand.
Color LED bars were added around the upper ball arch as a creative twist.
At this point I could almost hear the invisible peanut gallery whispering across the internet... "Whyyyy?!? It's not original! Boo! Hiss! Wrong technique!"
Ah, but they'd be dead wrong. This is a cool machine.
You see, this is Rob's first pinball project. A machine which you or I would have disemboweled for the parts bin. But Rob didn’t give up or obsess over perfection. He just charged ahead and brought the game back from the ashes… no matter how high the difficulty curve.
Did he spend too much time and money on this project? Use “non-approved” restoration techniques? Make personal customized changes? Of course he did. And you know what? It was a testament to sheer will and creativity. Rob used this machine to learn how these things work and made it happen, while also making it his own.
Pinball soul is made of pure determination. This stubborn individuality is exactly what makes our community so awesome. It is the one quality, more than any other, which unites us.
And that, folks, is why the world is now +1 on the total playing machine count. Rock on.
At Jordan’s storage unit, a Jackpot awaited closer inspection.
Jordan procured an amusing instruction sheet detailing how to change the angle of ejection from the center kickout hole. Bend the tip of the kickout arm with pliers? Simple enough.
This is what “high tapped” looks like. The power wire is soldered to the High Tap lug instead of the default 24 volt lug. I always move the wire back to normal voltage after rebuilding a machine. Otherwise the game is subjected to excess force which wears out the parts a bit faster.
How much faster? I don’t know. But I’d rather aim for longevity and cleanliness than the “git ‘er done” method of powering through gunked-up mechs.
'Tis better to tune up individual parts than overdrive the whole machine.
Williams EM’s of this age often use the “keyhole” style pop bumper parts. You can replace them with new Gottlieb/Bally bakelite and metal yokes… but…
…you’ll need to buy the KT-WPOP-01 kit from Pinball Resource to get the correct replacement plunger.
On the left is the default Gottlieb/Bally pop plunger. On the right, the later-model Williams plunger. In the middle is the original keyhole-style plunger which would be replaced with a new one from the kit.
The replay plugs in the back were not configured to match the award levels on the card… which I corrected. Does it bother you too when they don’t match?
Finally, a demonstration of the “stealth LED” (warm white conversion) technique on Cross Town. In this first photo we see a deployment of red LED’s in the pops and cool whites under plastics and elsewhere.
Afterward, we have installed bulbs under the plastics and lane guides, and warm white LED’s in the pops and under inserts. The look is much closer to the original appearance.
Also notice the cabaret lights (under the top arch) were reverted from cool white LED to bulbs. I always install filament bulbs anywhere naked filaments would be visible to the eye.
Before, the backbox was lit with cool white LED’s throughout, including the title marquee.
After the switch, a warm glow pervades the scene. Filament 455 blinker bulbs were added behind the title for a traditional touch.
Thanks to Jordan and the San Diego gang for a brief but enjoyable visit! I only wish I could have bottled up the fine weather and taken it with me across the desert to…
Next stop -> Stuart Wright in Phoenix, AZ
