My 18 year old son came home with a United Mfg shuffle bowling alley. We have in narrowed down to 1952-53. The only ID is the name "Rainbow" at the top of the back glass. I haven't been able to find anything about it on the web. I found mention of one from same mfg with the same name, but it's a different machine (different back glass, cabinet graphics and scoring - regulation vs 20-30) and from 1954 apparently.

That's just some background, should anyone have any info on our machine.

My question is about the score reels. Each one is held to the back box with two screws, one at the top and one at the bottom of the score reel bracket. Between the metal bracket and the wood of the back box is what looks like a black foam washer. They are hard and fall apart when removed (they tend to be stuck to the wood). I have two guesses as to their purpose. The first would be to cut down on vibration transferring from the reel to the box. I don't see the point in that. My second guess is that they (when new) allow you to adjust the score reel to the clear window in the back glass. By tightening either the top or to bottom more that the other, you would angle the whole score reel mechanism and change where the number sits relative to the window in the back glass.

My guess is that EM pinballs from the same era used these washers, but my experience is with EM pins from 1965+ so I can't be sure of that.

Can anyone explain what they are for? More importantly, what can we use to replace the washers? And where would we get the replacements?

If this isn't the place where I should be posting this, please tell me where I should post. I haven't been able to find a forum for shuffle puck bowlers, but they really aren't that different from pins when you look at the mechanisms.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the info everyone. Very helpful. And thanks for the parts catalog, jeffc. We hadn't even tried to find a manual for it yet and I never thought of looking for a general parts catalog. This also made me think of looking for manuals for other models from United around the same time period if I can't find anything for ours. We noticed this morning that at some point someone stapled the schematics to the bottom of the alley surface (inside the box). We didn't notice it the other time we had the alley lifted. We really haven't spent much time looking at it yet. The fun starts, hopefully, this Sunday.