It’s a pretty gloomy day here on the east coast. I also have the rare opportunity to have zero plans, and everyone’s out of the house.

Even though I’m really thorough with my games and keep up on them, inevitably little things break here and there. I stick all these little odds and ends in a “Pinball Punch List” notebook. Anyone can write in it—though 99% of the time it’s just me because no one else really notices when little things break. I keep it out during parties or other get togethers.

Anyhow, for no particular reason, I thought I’d share todays little repairs.

First up: White Water. A broken river target and some burnt out bulbs. Gave everything a little wipe down, and it’s good to go!

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Next was Robo-War. Funny story about this game. It was a lucky Craigslist find 3 years ago. It’s been the most popular game in my game room since then. It’s so popular, I genuinely cannot keep up with maintenance on it sometimes. So, today, it just got a quick cleaning and re-waxing.

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Lastly was Twilight Zone. This was one of those punch list items that literally no one noticed but me. The ball eject was jamming and sticking. It was really only an issue during multiball restarts and during LITZ. It would jam up and wouldn’t serve balls fast enough. A tiny dab of Teflon lube in the pivot (you know, where the manual always says needs occasional lubrication), and it’s been a smooth operator since.

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Our family recently lost our elderly cat. It’s fine, he lived a long, pampered, luxurious life (he was 22 years old and got all the treats he wanted!). His name was Peewee (because of his grey tuxedo and big white paws!). In his final days, he wasn’t really using the litter box all that much, so a deep carpet cleaning in the basement finished off todays punch list.

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Currently sitting on the basement steps just watching all the attract modes do their thing. Sometimes I just like to sit back and look at the collection.

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Anyway. Thanks for reading! Hope everyone is able to get to their own little pinball projects this weekend.

Thanks for the kind words, folks!

More bad weather here. So bad, they closed my office early and made us all go home. Ever since that tornado ripped through a town nearby me last summer, everyone has been high alert.

Anyway, I was able to squeeze out a little more of my punch list items:

When I rebuilt the flippers on BSD last, I did a pretty half assed job. I admit… I was rushing, but I was really anxious to play! In doing so, I created 2 issues.

Issue 1 was that I broke a bolt on the coil stop. I didn’t realize this until a couple hundred games later, and by that time the plunger and coil stop had worn very unevenly, causing the flipper to stick upwards occasionally. It doesn’t look like much, but trust me, it was wreaking havoc:

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Issue 2 was me just failing to align the flippers properly. The left side always had a longer stroke than the right, so alley passes and post transfers were nearly impossible. Two skills absolutely CRITICAL in the success of stacking multiballs. After a replacing the coil stop and flipper link, everything is perfectly balanced, as it should be:

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Lastly, the green mist multiball light wasn’t working. This is my only game that has an LED conversion, so my first thought was a bad socket. Nope. Bad LED. Stuck a new one in, and the eerie mist glow is back in action:

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Of all the games in my collection, I think BSD and Robo-War get the most play (from me, anyway). These days, I just don’t have time to slog away at a super long and deep game of LotR or even AFM. I definitely prefer fast, brutal, and quick games. Ones where I don’t have to clear my schedule if I want to get a good high score. I think that’s why my collection leans towards System 11 and early WPC titles the most. It’s the perfect sweet spot of games that have good strategy, but also don’t get boring too quickly.

I work in civil engineering, and a "punch list" is a document we write up near the end of a construction project listing work that does not conform to contract specifications that the general contractor must complete prior to final payment.

Basically, if they break something they're not supposed to, it goes on the punch list. If they forget to do something, it goes on the punch list. It's just a document with all the "loose ends" that need to be tied before we can remit final payment to them.

I like the way "Pinball Punch List" sounds, and it's basically the same thing: All the little loose ends that I need to do on a game before I stick a fork in it and call it done.