I love the Bakelite plastic parts and the artwork... but those metal Williams flipper bats are my favorite. They just feel so great when they flip.

They are almost indestructable as well.

A Magic Circle.

Was going to alert him on the special price Ron has on the backglass. He's had this offer for a while, but jump on it now. Great playing Williams game for sure.

Yes please do, your backglass is starting to scare me....................
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I like how you can win an AddedBall right off the bat
on your first shot from the plunger (skill shot) on the 1st ball.

I just popped all the inserts out of Beat The Clock.

What I like about the ones Williams used is they may have sunk a bit or come unglued, but they are usually flat and rarely if ever are they cupped.

I'd like to see some pictures of that rare and uncommon game.

OK that's it.
I am committing to getting a game out of storage and setting it up
and I will work on it to get it running.
I got plenty of games already set up in the house and basement that need work,
but i think if it is a "new" game, I will be more motivated to actually work on it.
Wife is out of town visiting her sister this week, so I should be unencumbered
about moving it into the house and not be troubled by interruptions with "honey dos"
What game may depend on what is easier to get out of storage,
but probably be Team One or Dimension, maybe SkyRocket.
Or maybe even my Bally Wild Wheels, but i know that game is buried way in the back of the storage locker.

Bally please

haha, we all just want to see you sweat and dig that Bally out of your storage locker

I vote Dimension. Although I have never played that Bally and it looks like a lot of fun.

Still working on my Jacks Open project. I was hoping to be done by Christmas but.....

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There's the Wild Wheels in the corner
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Though Team One looks to be the easiest to reach and get out.
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I did move a bunch of toolboxes and other boxes of misc pinball parts out of storage and into
the basement of our new house we bought last AUG;
which is where I will likely bring the "new" game out of hibernation.
The move to the new house (our downsize house) will be a long drawn out process.

I contributed a couple of games to a big tournament a few weeks ago here in KC. When I mentioned I had a Team One handy in the garage the tournament director jumped at the opportunity to have it in the tournament lineup set on novelty mode. I always thought the novelty mode was lame,.....until the concept of tournament play came into the picture. All of a sudden it made total sense. When I was going through it before sending to the tournament I was practicing to see how high a score I could get. It was a lot harder to put up a big score than you might think.

Is that a VCR on top of Team One? (Below the DVD player)

So which one are you going to set up?

This is one of my favorite pins. Fast play and roto target. Excellent choice

4 at the moment, Williams 21, and a Tom Tom, Bally Surfers, and a Gottlieb Sunset. Have a Challenger and Daisy May sort of waiting in the wings.

Believe it or not,
it is actually a Betamax.
The other thing is a phonograph.

I almost lost it today. I recently acquired a Gottlieb Drop-a-Card that’s in pretty nice shape. I went to shop it out today and upon quick visual inspection it looked pretty clean on the inside. It didn’t have the expected dirt and it appeared like someone had taken some care with it. Upon further closer examination I found that the previous owner had oiled almost every single switch and every other moving mechanism for that matter quite methodically. The oil wasn’t noticeable for the most part unless you widened the switches manually or found the occasional drip. I just took lots of deep breaths and spent forever removing oil. It’s shocking that thing worked 95% when I got it.

I appreciate that most games I encounter are unmolested from an internal workings standpoint. The workings were mysterious enough that people left them alone for the most part.

Sadly that oil will probably be intermittently leaching out from the fiberboard spacers on the affected switches...for years to come....I had a game like that once, I had to sell it, because the oil would cause intermittent issues constantly.....

I hope not. Whoever did it was meticulous enough to put it just on the contact points of the switches. The stacks seem nice and clean and dry. They also oiled some of the coils and other mechs throughout so I had a great time.

Been there, done that, I feel your pain. Our mata hari is the same way except they sprayed oil everywhere and on everything. Works well though, no issues from oil. Cleaned it up as much as I could but it is one of those things that everytime I work on it, I'm cleaning more.

I like this game a LOT more than Bucaroo... with those 3 inch flips you can create so many more opportunities to make sequence shots... just can’t do that with 2 inch flips!

Pretty much finished up my Jet Pilot project. Will be starting All-American Quarterback by Williams soon. On the outside chance someone might have a schematic for that game, please contact me. Steve at PBR does not. Have not found any other sources. Here are a few final pictures from Jet Pilot.

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Always like seeing the cigarette holders. I'm a sucker for those. Looks great

Warning, long post, but I’m so happy, I want to share this in detail:

I’ve been working intermittently on a Gottlieb Snow Derby that was in pretty bad shape when I got it. Up until several months ago I had braced the falling-apart head, made stencils and repainted the cab and head, made the ink-peeled backglass presentable (including doing my first airbrushing), and removed and metculously gone through everything in the cab and head board (including disassembly and cleaning of the score motor and player unit). At that point, I put everything together except the playfield to try the startup sequence. The score reels didn’t reset correctly, and manually pulling in the 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 point relays would sometimes make the player unit advance.

After MONTHS of looking everywhere I could think of for a potential short circuit, nearly pulling my hair out, and thinking about selling this machine after putting so many hours into it, tonight I finally found the culprit, which was simple, as I figured it would be: While reassembling the decagon score reels, I had improperly positioned the insulated wire arms that move the switches at the zero and 9 positions. The switches were opening and closing properly, but some blades from different switches were connecting back-to-back, causing multiple short-circuits. And now, tonight, the pin starts up properly! The feeling of accomplishment at finally figuring this out is one of my favorite parts of this hobby. Now I can FINALLY move on to the playfield!

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There were already holes drilled on that top wood rail so I knew they should be there also, I think they show in the original manufacturer brochure. Plus an added bonus was the cigarette burns on the wood-rail! LOL. Steve at PBR is the man. He has both flat, and curved rail Styles available.

Who doesn't? Though I usually use a towel so I can see the little parts. Everything gets used as a table sooner or later.

I have a question about my 1963 (add-a-ball) Williams Swing Time machine and this is the only thread I think someone will know the answer...

When manually serving up balls to the shooter lane, you can obviously serve more than one. As you play the game, each time a ball is drained, one ball is subtracted from the backglass lights (1-10). But, the mechanical arm that releases the balls does not fall until the last ball is drained.

So, WITH ONE BALL REMAINING, there is nothing stopping the player from serving all 5 balls into the shooter lane and launching all 5, because the gate has not yet dropped to hold the balls. Is this by design? Should there only be one ball in this game? I thought it took 5 balls. Reason I ask is because the playfield cutout is there to see 5 balls visually, but there is no slot cut in the apron to view that "ball status".

One ball in add-a-ball games. 5 ball push-up games have a trough window to see balls played. AAB doesn't.

That makes a lot more sense now. Thanks!

This has happened to me on SS machines as well. Most often with someone improperly adjusting the game's "outhole" switch, causing random trough coil kicks during the game.

Will do. Almost back together.

Making progress. I got the light orange a little too pinkish I think and the green maybe a bit too dark. I'll sand it in about a week and see if it blends in. If not I'll redo it. Then I'll finish the other minor details.

Lot less work than that Arrow Head for sure. It's like a walk in the park, relatively speaking.
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It'll never be perfect and I don't expect it to be. Once it's populated and the glass is on it should look a lot better than what I started with and the repairs hardly noticeable and that is what I'm shooting for. I do it as best I can within my abilities and try not to rush.

Interesting thread - here's my submission. 1962 United Embassy shuffle alley. I have made 16 videos posted to YouTube. It's been an enjoyable process to take my time and clean everything with the ultimate goal of long term reliability. The first video shown below is the playlist for the series. Still more videos to make on it. (It's up and running as of December 1st). This is the second shuffle I have worked on since getting into the pinball hobby 16+ years ago.

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Not done yet.

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Been working on my Argosy with the help of a buddy. He's more versed in EM games. Took it from constant reset to playing almost 100%. Now the remaining issue is the bonus doesn't seem to be counting correctly. I'm getting better at reading schematics.

No photos handy at the moment, but so far on Space Mission I've done the following ..
- Disassemble and clean playfield parts (which required building a rotisserie)
- Flipper rebuild kits
- Vaccum playfield, scrub with naphtha
- Polish up metal playfield parts
- Replace all bulbs with fresh #47
- Disassemble and clean all stepper units, lightly lube PCB contact points
- Blow out / vacuum metal dust from bottom board
- Clean score reels, credit reel
- Soak legs in evaporust (using PVC tube with caps - this worked really well, but I eventually bought new legs / bolts / levelers so they look even nicer)
- Vaccum / clean cabinet interior
- Clean cabinet exterior (mostly Simple Green)
- New shooter spring/tip
- New coin door QUARTERS inserts

I'm almost to the point of reassembly finally. I just have the big player unit to clean/lube, a few more metal parts to polish, and wiping down the playfield again before installing a protector. Can't wait to get it back together to start testing actual gameplay!

Whoa. Just saw this. Glad you finally found what was causing that. Very strange behavior, for sure.

Ahoy maties!

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Getting closer to finishing our Grand Prix.

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-Paul