My best advice is make your first pin a Williams or Bally System 11 game.

They have the best 'bang for the buck', parts are usually plentiful for them, they're easy to work on should something go wrong.

I'd highly recommend F-14 Tomcat, Fire, Taxi, Jokerz, Rollergames, Space Station, or Pinbot. They're the cheapest titles out there with the best gameplay.

Bugs looks fun but a bit out of budget. I may investigate the rocky and bullwinkle a bit more.

Thanks for the breakdown. Many of the pins you named I definitely like. Just have to keep my eyes open.

Every comment has been really helpful. Hopefully I will be able to post some pics soon of my first pin. Thanks again.

I'll be picking up Rocky and Bullwinkle Thursday, already have a deal with the guy. I am sure I can muster up $1000 by then but it is going to need some work I am sure.

CMorgan: I don't recommend buying a pin if you don't have someone to work on them or you know how to do them yourself, it's a money pit.

Also, the only reason I said $1400 is because you were talking about buying Pinbot for $1395. I can go lower on Bugs (even though I have heard it is terrible I have yet to play it even though I own it, lol), but not too much lower; the fact of the matter is you will have a hard time finding a good pinball System 11 or above for under $1000; especially all ready to go.

Jon's Space Shuttle for $795 is actually pretty decent but it's older than System 11.

Good seeing you guys again. Looked like a lot of folks there for the fighting tournament. I like the pin lineup a lot. I played a few times on x-men and I was pretty awful but it's a fun game. I think I'm becoming a Stern guy GC on Monster Bash. Diner is a lot of fun. Great additions all around. Hope White Water gets running again soon. I hadn't seen the T2 since it was shopped and it looks great.

Glad to see all the people there at GG today. There were quite a few there for the fighting game tournament but there seemed to a good number of people there just for pinball. Several more guys showed up after Erik left that were obviously there for pins.

Somebody really needs to buy that Bugs Bunny off of Jason so he doesn't have to keep asking everybody. I did play one game on it (that never seemed to want to end) and while I certainly don't think it's as bad as some might think it's not going to win any pinball machine awards either. I do like the theme and the art and sound package is good but it would have to be pretty cheap for me to pick one up.

HEHE! I still love me some Twilight Zone! It was like seeing an old friend I hadn't seen in 20 years.

I had 2 games over a billion. 1.7 billion on one game, lost in the zone twice (on two different games. The second LITZ was on the first ball!)

God, I missed that machine!

Well after working out a deal with Rocky and Bullwinkle for Thursday the guy sold it today all of a sudden....guess that's that...

Thanks guys for coming in today!

So here is what we have left to be fixed:

Dr. Who (right flipper rebuild)
White Water (ball eject coil)
Tron (Q10 transistor + coil burned out, tested for Ohms and it is dead)

Oh yes and someone please buy Bugs and Guns = ) and Slugfest. LOL

Oh Jason, I'll bring my toolbox tuesday and do a full repair on the shooter on TZ since I have a bunch of springs and sleeves. And hopefully, we can get the fault working on Earthshaker again.

And if it hasn't sold by then, we can figure out what to do on that Cyclone.

But what type spring does the TZ use? I think all I have is red, and that'll probably be too much tension.

Diskoboy: No idea on type of spring at all, I have some springs myself as well if you wanted to check

I think it's the brown, lowest tension springs.

That is correct.

If q10 and the coil is all that's wrong you could replace q10, desolder a lug of the coil and get it going without that lower pop.

We're going to need more people to keep playing pinball at this rate with all of these parts, lol....

This week we did better than last week only because of that tournament yesterday.....without that I fear we will be closing 3 days a week for certain; I'm giving it one more week as it seems like the only days people are there are Fri/Sat/Sun and Tues...

Go to 4 day. Nobody ever goes on those other days. I don't think anyone will complain.

Not sure, we haven't gotten our first bill yet but being closed 12 days out of the month will definitely help. One more week of this me thinks We'll see.

I'd rather go Thursday through Sunday.

Tuesday just seems like a weird night for an arcade to be open.

I have a few flipper rebuild parts, but I know that WPC flipper assemblies are different than System 11. The only parts I don't have are the springs. The pawls and cranks can always be cleaned and re-used unless the flipper links have worn down. I also believe the coil stops are slightly different. But I have several A-12111 stops.

However I do not have coils. I used my last one rebuilding my upper flipper on my Rollergames.

Didn't the coil burn up, or am I thinking of the Tron?

LOL! The coil was too strong it was an 11629, when it should've been a 11630. It would send the ball airbourne 99% of the time as it went up the ramp. Plus it was beginning to crack the entrance of the ramp, and I don't have the cliffy protector for it yet.

The Earthshaker was working when I left last night. The F4 fuse blew, and Jason replaced it. The only thing on it that's not working is the fault. It won't open and close properly. We found a loose screw connecting the habitrail to the gear, and we think that may be the culprit. But you can't really get to it without an angled screwdriver.

Earthshaker also has an annoying ball hop off the left lane guide to the flipper (easily fixed), the "10' insert light is out (it's that connector to the light board or the light board itself, it's finicky), the socket to the one of the green arrows near the upper left flipper needs to be adjusted so it shines on the insert, and of course the fault.

The fault opens and closes but doesn't stay open. Thinking we should also look at that fault open switch (#43) to make sure it's closing when the coil fires.

There's our earthshaker punch list for Tuesday diskoboy! I'll bring a sack of tools. I have an angled screwdriver.

I'm going to have to hold onto Elvira and whirlwind for a month to "play test" so this doesn't happen again. Hey, T2 works great!

diskoboy: The reason we open Tuesday is for our fight nights...that has been going on for a year where everyone comes in and plays games from 7-11pm. It just made sense to have a pinball night that night as well since we will have business that day regardless.

Thursday is a VERY dead day for us for some reason....both days we've pulled in less than $30 for the day....

Nope, that actually works fine. The coil that is bad is the pop bumper bottom one that blew Q10....I actually tested that coil myself but it was pretty obvious seeing how it looks smoked, lol..but Tron is still down until that stuff is replaced.

Erik: Chris sold your old Revenge from Mars for $2800 on eBay, ugh. I don't understand him and his pricing sometimes, he wants $4200 then sells for $2800 which is what he probably should have asked for in the first place, all from a trade for Addams Family?

One of these days I will start selling more stuff...ONE OF THESE DAYS

Everyone's favorite part of a shop job.. the part nobody will ever see..

EATPM_-_Connectors_005.jpg EATPM_-_Connectors_006.jpg EATPM_-_Connectors_009.jpg EATPM_-_Connectors_017.jpg

Matt just likes fixing connectors =P

Wow I think I would have just bought it back for 2800. Not sure why he didn't just offer it up to the locals.

Let me know when you're ready to sell more stuff

But of course.

Erik: He doesn't really do that, lol...

I mean like I said, I like Chris, I think he's a great guy but he's out to make a profit which is fine, but yes, I would have bought it for $2800 too, lol...I just know he's not real big about that type of stuff (reselling locally for lower prices)

I'd like to one day own my own pinball machine and I'd like to have some idea of what I'm doing to maintain the machine myself without having someone else come in and fix it. You guys ever thought about having some sort of pinball machine weekly or maintainance workshop/talk at game galaxy perhaps during league night where you discuss basic maintainance of a pin or show this is how you do x or currently we have a broke coil on Whitewater this is how you handle that etc. Sounds like 4 or 5 of you have quite a bit of knowledge in this area. Just throwing it out as an idea.

Sounds like you would really enjoy www.pinballninja.com. A $20 donation gets you access to about 600+ articles on pinball repair. The most recent 100 or so have video as well. He usually adds about 3 or 4 new repairs a week.

Also, reading through www.pinwiki.com and finding the 'Clay' repair guides will help you out greatly. We've all been there, and have the burned up coils to prove it!

crash: can you send some to me as well? [email protected]

I'm pretty sure I have all of them. I'll try to bring a CD or two up to league night this week.

I'm kinda "meh" about pinwiki. It doesn't seem as organized as Clay's site was.

There are still a lot of holes (generally the exact picture or section I'm looking for), but it's getting better and has some good info.

THIS. I would love to learn how to repair my Black Hole. Right now it has a couple of slingshot kickers that need tweaking. Soldering 101 is probably really where I need to start.