http://www.pinrestore.com/Hardware.html
http://therealbobroberts.net/parts.html#hardware

viperrwk

Chris,
I'm pretty sure PBR has these as well. BTW, check your Pinside mailbox.

You won't find them. Been there.

So I decided to have them custom-made for coin doors and side rails with smooth heads in pre-polished stainless steel.

Here's my parts flyer:

March 2014 Pinball Parts Pricing.jpg

Are they metric?

No. Mine are 8-32 (same as the originals) except instead of being cheap zinc-plated they are 18-8 stainless steel.

McMaster-Carr. Get them in bulk much cheaper.

McMaster-Carr doesn't have them.

Half_Life doesn't know what he's talking about.

I had to get them custom-made with smooth heads and 1.125" long.

I've been selling them for 10 years now.

Get them from mr gatecrasher... support the companies who make repro makes to support us.

Not the first time I've heard that and probably won't be the last. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Have to give him points for being a good sport about it though.

most likely ordered them 10's of thousands at a time from the manufacturer so they would have been made to order for sure.

I've been down this same road only to reach a dead end. I'd love to find some of these.

That I will give him even though he was sort of insinuating that I was kind of a rip-off and you could just go to McMaster-Carr and get them a lot cheaper. He should have checked before assuming it was that easy. But that's OK. I bust on enough people on here myself too.

lol

I only manufacture parts that no one else does. This niche' pinball industry is too small to rip people off or try to compete on nickel and dime items like these and believe me, I ain't getting rich off any of it.

One other thing of interest is that I use all of my parts myself too or I wouldn't bother with them. The backglass lift channels were the first things I started making. I needed some and there weren't any to be had.

My first batch of these parts were all cheap cold-rolled steel nickel-plated (just like the factory) but I used to lose too many to plating flaws so I started making everything out of polished stainless. They are beautiful and you'll never need another one because of rust.

No big deal, normally Mcmaster has everything (although you pay a lot more than other places for the depth of their inventory).

Believe me, I looked long and hard for these before deciding to take the plunge and have them custom-made.

And selling them to people wasn't my motivating factor. It was an afterthought. I really just wanted them for myself but you have to buy like 20,000 at a time to get anyone to make them.

Another thing you'll notice if you were to find them at McMaster-Carr or at Home Depot is that almost all bolts nowadays have ASTM markings on the heads. They don't make them with smooth heads like this anymore unless you buy custom chromed ones or have them made like I did. There are a few yet but not many.

I ran into this restoring old motorcycles too. The original bolts on motorcycles from the 1960s and early 70s all had smooth heads. Then sometime in the 1970s all the manufacturers started marking them and now it's hard to find regular zinc-plated bolts without markings. So if you have like a 1970 Kawasaki or Honda and replace some bolts, they look different so your only option is to find some NOS ones (if you can) or have the originals re-plated (can be very expensive).

That is the one thing I hate most about the written word on the Interwebs; a poorly written statement on my part is not interpreted they way I intended it to be. I truly meant no offense and was definitely not insinuating you were a ripoff. If you took it that way, I apologize. As I said, it was poorly written.

I only mentioned McMaster Carr as I buy almost all my hardware there. Except for the carriage bolts for the door assembly, apparently. It has been a while since I placed an order with them so I thought that was where I got the bolts. You're right, should have checked first before typing it.

Very civil on both of your parts. This is why Pinside is where to be when talking pinball!

so how much are they gate crasher? I could use a few dozen. I am always collecting more pinball hardware to have on hand.

GC is correct, this is a custom size carriage bolt made for Bally/Williams which was basically unobtainable - although I *did manage to source a few hundred of them from a surplus fastener dealer (Manufacturer's Fastener World, which has since gone under) several years back. I'd still prefer GC's stainless variety over the OEM variety for the side rails. Hat's off to GC for making these available (now I have to order some for my in-progress IJ restoration.)

The prices and shipping costs are all listed on the flyer above although if you purchase them with some other stuff or buy more than one you can save on shipping.

They are definitely better on the side rails because they don't rust or corrode from being touched all the time. I like them better on the doors too. They are already pre-polished but if you want a mirror shine all it takes is a slight buff. You can even do it with a towel and some metal polish.