How did you get them that shiny? I just polished up the very dull jeweled posts on a Bowling Queen with metal poiish and soft buffer and no way looks that good.

#sea-shore Trying to adjust two Gottlieb score control relays with a total of 11 switches, 6 of which are make/break switches will turn your gray hair to white. I think I finally fixed the scoring but those short switch blades jammed into a small switch stack have zero margin of gap error and are not fun to mess with.

Working on a 1964 Gottlieb Sea Shore restoration. Replaced broken switches, cleaned all the steppers and switches, rebuilt flippers and roto target and everything is working great and scoring accurately.

Cleaned nicotine stained cabinet with Mean Green.

Cleaned number score reels with soap and water.

Flattened the plastics in 190 deg oven and then cleaned with novus.

Replaced all the torn and yellowed relay labels and pasted with glue stik.

Yesterday I used Evapo-Rust for the first time and very happy with the resuts for the coin plate and coin door. Had to first strip off the gold paint, then soaked the parts in evaop-rust overnight and buffed with Mother's mag polish.

Still to go: PF is in pretty good shape but needs a good cleaning and waxing. Pop bumper caps all good. Replacing all rubbers.

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There was still blotches of rust after 17 hours but after 24 I was able to rinse and wipe it all clean. Definitely now an evapo-rust believer.

I already own a Sea Shore and love the theme and game play and picked up this project with the confidence that I could refer back to the one I have. Hoping to restore this one for a possible trade or sale.

The flippers were chewed up and I rebuilt with new parts from PBR and now the snappiest of all my games.

The roto target numbers are in decent shape but the mechanism was gummed up and had to be cleaned and polished to work right.

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Working on a Sea Shore Pin with very rusty legs. Soaked them overnight in vinegar and next day rinsed, wiped, and lightly buffed with Mother's mag and alum with a hand towel. I have used evaoporust in the past but the vinegar is a whole lot cheaper and thought the results were comparable. I bought the cleaning vinegar at Home Depot for $2 a half gallon but any white vinegar should work.

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Hope Depot says 6%. They also have 30% vinegar but I wanted to try the regular first and it worked great.

Been working on Flipper Cowboy on and off and today after doing a little extensive
work on the Roto Target, she's all gone through and playing fine.

Looks great. Numbers look good on the Roto Target too that often get marred.

The PBR decals look great. Debating whether to use them on a Sea Shore restoration. Most of the roto numbers look good but a few have some paint missing.

I'm going to get the white sharpie. Do you think I need to cover with clear film or krylon spray after I use sharpie? Will the ball hitting the numbers chip off the sharpie ink? Thanks

My Bowling Queen one’s score reel started sticking and after pulling the reels in and out to rebuild them, the plastic channels that hold the score reels in place started cracking and breaking apart which is known to happen on these older Gottliebs. Often the top or bottom channel edge where the cotter pin holds the score reel will break and if you’re lucky only one of them will crack so you can have at least one pin holding the reel. But these were totally gone and had to be replaced.

Until recently these channels were impossible to find. Fortunately John at Space Coast Pinball has made very nice replicas of the plastic channels (I guess with 3D printing) and sells them on Pinside. I drilled out the old rivets and bought new 3/32” x 7/32” brass rivets from Pinball Resource. The base of the new channel is a little thicker than the original so you’ll need 7/32” rivet length rather than the original Gottlieb 5/32” length. Since the rivets are tiny and relatively soft they were easy to bang in place using a steel nail punch and hammer on top of a steel vise. (A number of threads on Pinside discuss various methods for riveting.) You can also use #2 screws and nuts to secure the channels but the rivets are easy to install and I like to restore to the original.

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Working my way through a 1955 Williams Three Deuces - cleaning all the relay contacts and very rusty wire forms for the rollovers. Just cleaned and polished a very dirty score motor. Used dawn soap and water and then cleaned with wire wheel on the bench buffer. I found this early Williams score motor a lot easier to disassemble and clean than the later Gottlieb wedgeheads score motors.

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Spent the last couple of months restoring this 1955 Wiliams Three Deuces. Used polyurethane dropper method to level badly cupped inserts. They were too brittle to remove. Rebuilt score motor and all steppers. Removed rust from all rollover wire forms. Restored painted over coin door to original design, and did some pf paint touchup

Some before and after pics.

Looking forward to playing but working out a tech issue just posted in EM tech.

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Thanks Mark. Mean Green works great as a degreaser on mechanics and steppers. Bench buffer for polishing. There are some good YouTube’s for rebuilding pop bumpers, stepper units and flippers. After sanding woodrails I used rub on poly - much cleaner and no odor that you get with rattle can.

Restoring Williams Rocket. Cleaned very dirty PF with Novus 2 and then 99.9% alcohol and magic eraser and repeated both. Touched up a lot of missing paint. Next will level inserts with polyurethane drip method. Then more cleaning and clear. Before and After pics.

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Thanks JR. I'm gonna be at this Rocket for awhile. All steppers, pop bumpers, flippers have to be cleaned, polished and rebuilt. Looking forward to the day when I'm finally playing these games.

Agreed - definitely don't clean with any chemicals after paint but I like to wipe off with microfiber cloth to remove any dust before clear. My last restore had a dozen rusty rollover wires that had to come off and clean so I got a little lazy here. Again you're right about nails - they also badly poke your hands badly no matter how much you try to work around them.

Had a lot of help with the paint touch up from an artist friend. She's amazing with color match.

After rebuilding the slingshot kickers on a 1959 Williams Rocket restore, I noticed the old high current switches for the slings were mangled and damaged from years of play. Pinball Resource to the rescue with shiny new high current switches that includes the brackets. Easy to install and now they just need to be wired up.

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Before and after restoration photos of 1959 Williams Rocket. In the lineup and playing great.

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Wow - nice work.

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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I've rebuilt several of the Gottlieb roto targets and have found these videos very helpful. There are several in parts from complete disassembly to assembly.

I like that brass bell. The replacement bells have less tone.

Just finished restoring a1949 Gottlieb Sharpshooter with the old style nickel coin slide that when you push it in, an attached bar pushes the playfield trap ball door open dropping the balls into the trough and the bar also pushes against a bunch of switches that starts the reset. Very cool.

This is also the year when Gottlieb introduced the pop bumper for the first time and there are two on his game with plenty of pop after cleaning up the mechs and polishing the metal rods and rings. The pf and cabinet were in good shape and cleaned up nicely. The coin door was missing most of the paint and needed to be restored.

A lot of the work was inside the game - cleaning up the dirt with grease and sand clogging up the score motor and steppers. Also soldered broken wires and missing contacts on relay switches. Replaced the missing bell on 10K stepper.

For a simpler game it’s a lot of fun to play with strong pop bumpers and flippers. The strategy is to Hit all 9 bumpers and then it resets for another go at hitting and resetting them. Replays are awarded for points and also advancing "Rounds" by nudging the ball over right and left rollovers. At game start the advance unit pop pop pops several times mimicking the sounds of a shooting gallery.

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C new bell installed (resized).jpg

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Leroy Lettering days

Wow beautiful work.

Started restoring a very nice 1958 Williams Satellite that was a lucky local find. It will join my Williams Rocket I recently restored and was in far worse shape. Cleaned and shined up all the steppers so they advance smoothly. Took apart the score motor and cleaned it up. Any mech that has a plunger and coil stop I take apart and clean especially the big coil on the Control bank that has to move the big reset arm. Coil stops clean up nicely on the buffer. If the brass coil sleeve is stuck inside a coil I don’t fight it and just clean it up with q-tip and alcohol.

The flipper plunger links were worn with lots of slop so I ordered and installed new plungers and links from Pinball Resource that are the closest to my size so hope they work. The cabinet is in very nice shape and found Pink Stuff product removes the nicotine and brown film without harming paint. Playfield also cleaned up nicely and then waxed. Used evaporust for the cigarette holders and the flipper button metal protection plates. I spray painted coin door with Rustoleum hammered paint an easy fix to restoring the metal doors on Williams games.

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Have not played it yet but other owners tell me it's a great game. I have the Williams Rocket that came out a year later and is super fast and lots of fun.

After the Sputnik satellite launch and the beginning of the space race, Williams was quick to capitalize on all the space news with Satellite in 1958 and then Rocket in 1959 and I agree the art on both is very cool.

Beautiful! Nice work.