1978 Gottlieb Gemini

Replay unit would decrement ALL credits on the credit wheel instead of just 1 credit on game start. I purchased this game out of Florida and it must have been operated by the beach based on the amount of rust on the mechanisms, with the credit unit no exception. While the unit’s themselves all look okay, the springs are all rusty and one broke on the credit unit. Quick check in the 1978 Gottlieb Parts Catalog revealed where the broken spring attached. Fortunately I had one in stock to replace the broken spring. Now credit unit only decrements 1 credit at a time as designed.

1972 Bally Fireball

Zipper Flippers not opening via mushroom bumpers or end of ball in play. Armature that allows flippers to open badly tweaked to compensate for an incorrect, underpowered, presumably in-the-field replacement coil. I did not have a correct coil so I decided to make this one work by tightening up the gap on the mb’s switches and associated relays. Now the flippers open as designed but would not stay closed. Uff Da.
I had to move the underpowered coil within the armature housing back to its previous position which allowed the flippers to stay in the closed position until mb’s or end of ball in play opened them. Now works as designed.

Here's the finished head-

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Ski Club, Wms AAB from 1965

Wow - nice work.

Just brought home a project Triple Strike for $100 and 5 hours of driving, It is in decent shape for the price

Ill be getting a lot of mileage out of Vid's guide on playfields. I want this guy clean and fast!

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I saw that ad as well, had texted her that the price may be a bit too low. But glad you got it exactly what it was posted for. Killer deal!

Other than the flipper drag that playfield looks to be in very, very good shape. The good news is the flipper drag is pretty much in the yellow and not in the bare wood area. Fill it, sand it and some paint and it'll look great once again.

Congratz!

Wow (when lit). That looks great!
Crazy that the cabinet was originally painted for "King Pin".
And you're right; it can't be "Pin-Up", because "Pro Pool" was produced between "King Pin" and "Pin-Up".

I remember that game brand-new in the local arcade. It plays very fast, probably due to the fact that most of the scoring is 10, 100, or 1000 points. This allowed faster play since the score motor wasn't needed to tally most of the points scored.

She heard that from more than one person, she still felt like it was a fair price for its condition. As suspected the tens reel was sticky and not resetting 100%.

The good news is I am not a typical flipper. The bonus countdown and chimes will keep it in my collection for a while. I'll be sending them photos and a thank-you note once it is looking nice! (maybe a gift card too)

Lots of cleaning and undoing some of the hackey repairs ahead, otherwise it is 100% playable right now.

Will be working on this 1949 Gottlieb Sharpshooter. I expect a lot of the work will be cleaning and rebuilding the mechanics. Playfield is in good shape and should clean up nicely. Came with a BGresto BG. This will be my oldest machine but hear it's a fun player.

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Leroy Parker art! Man, that's a pretty game.

The work on a GTB Globe Trotter woodrail continues - butchered, hacked and weird circuit issue oddities, never experienced a game refurb quite as rough as this one, especially for a very clean game. From failed plating on tons of switch tabs resulting in over two dozen re-soldered wires to the replacement of an old-style 10K relay to AG type, this game has been through the repair ringer. Replaced flipper axles with new style, replaced pop coils due to ALL copper sleeves being mangled. With the game on the rotisserie, 4 or 5 times back and forth to fix and test issues with the bank. Weird incorrect springs replaced on kickout and hole tray mechs. Despite the roadblocks, its been a lot of fun seeing this game close to its game play potential.

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Well, I had my Loop the Loop working perfectly except a few playfield lights. Somehow I managed to mess it up again while either fishing out a bulb I dropped or adjusting a wiper on the bonus unit. Great way to kill an hour or two. Ahhhh, the highs and lows of pinball repair.

Triple Strike is a fun pin. Congrats on the find!

Finished Ice Revue. On to High Hand. Also getting ready to do a KISS cab repaint.

Just finished repairs on the High Hand cab and head and getting started in primer

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Working on some minor cabinet repairs IMG_4519 (resized).jpeg

Couple of questions:

1) To high tap or not to high tap? I was actually thinking about wiring in a double pole switch to be able to toggle between the two. If I rebuilt all the mechs, am I just asking for broken plastics?

2) The sheet metal protector on the bottom of the cab. I’m replacing the bottom. Is there any point in put it back on since it’s location days are over? Or should I sand it down to clean it up and slap it back on?

Why high tap... that game properly shopped does NOT need it.

I didn't put mine back on when I did my EM Night Rider cabinet. It weighs a ton, required bolts that go thru the cabinet (which I filled in), and obscured the artwork at the bottom.
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Mathazar I think he means this metal protector under the coin box area.

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Ah! You're probably right. If it cleans up nicely, I'd might actually put that one back on. That monstrosity on my EM NR had to go, tho.

Yeah, I have one of those full bottom skins on my Air Aces. Someone kicked in the wood under the coin door at some point and that ugly thing was installed.

I guess it is that as time has gone on, we expect games to play faster. That is why I was thinking toggle switch. Make it easy to go back and forth.

Exactly. Mine is somewhat corroded from the years it spent in a damp barn. The bottom ply was blown out and needed replacing, and the particleboard back is beyond salvage and needs replacement as well.

That said, it’s just a basic sheet with a round hole. I might be able to get a metal shop to make that for pretty cheep.

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Just picked up these two.

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Sand it, paint it and move on. Don't waste effort on a new one because 1) no one sees it 2) no one cares 3) did I mention it is on the bottom.

Solid plan. This resto was a rusty neglected beast. It’ll be nice when I’m done, but she’ll never be the prom queen.

Adding all the text back after a complete repaint of the yellow on a trainwreck Surf Champ. Manually vectored all characters for a perfect match.

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Finishing up on 2 Add-A-Ball machines. Bank Shot and Pin-Up. Both will be listed soon.

A_Bord that is cool about the text. Is there a tutorial somewhere how to do that?

I’m anxiously awaiting my Wade Krause repro surf champ playfield and I don’t even own the game. Great work!

@danmarino, not completely. It's a combo of Vid's guide, the Silhouette Cameo thread, advice from sethbenjamin and @scottacus, and a lot of hard knocks. When I get closer to the finish line I'll do a restore thread and try to fill in some details. The more I do this the more I believe trying to recreate the screen printing process with stencils and airbrush is the best approach.

Loop the Loop in the lineup with everything working 100%. Good timing, new backglass arrived today.

Next task is to combine the 2 Screamos.

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Well it's some nice work however you're doing it.

Wow, a pair of highly sought after rarities ! I know someone who has had this game on his want list for a long time.

Related question: I gather there is no existing replacement for that thermometer ribbon reel ? If that part ever failed and could not be repaired, you'd have to go looking for a situation where one of these got parted out, which is unlikely.

Years back, a ribbon like such was broken on one of
my 1967 Williams Kick Off. I showed it to a Friend that
worked at a machine shop, and he was able to get that
matarial (or material just like it), and attached the football
in the proper position on the strap, and it worked fine.
The only thing, I never painted it green. When I get them
both out again for shopping, I'll paint the silver one green..

Thinking these are the pair that were on eBay? Was seriously gonna pull the trigger on those just didn't care to have shipping from the West Coast. They didn't look to be in bad shape from the eBay pictures. Congratulations.

there's one member on here that makes replacement ribbons but he's out of stock at the moment. the red part of the ribbon on the one machine i'm working on is in good shape but the white part is dirty which is probably the issue with most of these. going to get everything cleaned and working and then revisit this issue.

yep, these are the ones. i'd say they're both in fair shape and there weren't many pics provided but i took the risk because i'd been looking for one for years and i figured they were gonna go pretty quickly. both playfields are in really nice shape from a wear point of view but unfortunately one has mouse urine stains on the playfield so it's on the backburner for now till i get the other one cleaned up, cab repaint, etc. i expected to see a huge mess of chewed wires and corrosion everywhere when first looking in the cab but evidently the mice didn't get into there and chew everything up, it's actually surprisingly clean. ideally i'd put one of wade's repro playfields in one and replace the stained playfield with the good one for the other machine. last pic is of the other playfield.
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done so far on C-37:
-waited till i had the pins before ordering Pinball Pimp stencils since they're almost 200 bones per set w/ shipping.
-ordered Montana paints for the cab graphics, not sure what white i'll use.
-completed disassembly and cleaning of 2 of the stepper units in the head minus the credit unit. first time i've seen a completely immobile stepper (ball count unit) with globs of solidified grease. cleaned all the score reel units and saw that the 10k unit had all but the top switch in the stack bent down and forced into the lowest slot of the plastic armature. that was intentionally done for some reason but i'm pretty much done with the head.
started on the playfield underside and installed flipper rebuild kits, soldered all the lamp sockets for better connectivity, put in non ghosting color correct LED's and warm white ones for the white inserts. the main issue is going to be the drop target bank-it's a little sluggish and looks like a pain to get to all the internals.

Rustoleum Heirloom White is my go to for a Gottlieb em repaint if you are using rattle cans.

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after doing some reading on here it looks like there's a few white colors that people prefer but i think i'm going to go with your recommendation. my Dimension cab was redone before i bought it and they did an outstanding job but the white is too bright.

It's dark in the room in this picture, but you can see how it compares to the white topper color on my Dimension repaint from a few years ago.

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That isn't the "Pro Pool" from this past Pinfest's flea market, is it?

here's my Dimension with the bright white cab paint which also demonstrates the results of a trigger happy webbing application, a can of montana pink panther and tiny can of kicking yellow.
this link shows a great drop target bank how-to of disassembly and reassembly:

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Nope, came from Midwest.

High Hand cab repaint

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hi guys. I need a Gottlieb A-4893 coil. it is the shooter coil on pro football. anyone have a spare? or know where I'd get one besides marco?

Order from Pinball Resource (845) 473-7114

The slog continues. I replaced the back and bottom of the lower cabinet and made new trim around the head on my Space Mission. Unfortunately I’m going to have to chemically strip the paint off the cabinet because someone attempted a repaint with latex over the original paint, and sanding it just gums up the sanding pad. The good news was that the kick plate on the bottom of the cabinet cleaned up nicely and looks good.

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Coming into the home stretch on my 1976 EM Night Rider restoration. Still lots of work to do on the head unit, but started reassembly of the finished cabinet. I stuck the empty head on for the pictures to get a full sense of the repaint. Working on cleaning the filthy score reels (all 16) and debating on if I want to strip and repaint the light board. Still have the coin door to tear apart and restore.

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Just finished my latest project game. Does anyone by chance have a doodle bug they'd be willing to part with ? I'd like to do a full restore on one