More Fire Queen, and getting ready to host a tournament!

Fire Queen has progressed to clearcoating the playfield.  So far, it has two coats of clearcoat on it, and it’s waiting to be sanded and cleaned.  After that step takes place, I’ll work on filling in the cupped playfield inserts.  It’s a time consuming process, but the end result will look amazing!

The other day, my son and I spent a Sunday working on two previously dead pinball machines – a Gottlieb Jungle King, and a Bally Zip-A-Doo. 

Jungle King is an Add-A-Ball game.  Unlike the Card Whiz I worked on earlier in the year, this game was built for the Wisconsin and New York State areas which allowed pinball machines, but mandated that the games did not give out free games.  The result is the ability to add more “balls to play” to your current game instead of winning “credits”.

It didn’t take too much to get Jungle King mostly operational.  Its biggest problem was dirty contacts.  The playfield was filthy, but cleaned up really nicely!  Some of the playfield plastics are cracked, so they’ll need to be glued or replaced.  When we stopped working on the game, we were having difficulty with the 10s reel sticking periodically (the score reel needs to be serviced), and the game does not “play” the last ball – even though it serves the ball to the shooting lane.

Mechanically, the game is similar to a replay game, except the ball counter unit has two coils on it: one to count the balls down, and another to add balls.  Replay games only have one coil on the ball counter which only counts down (during the reset cycle, the coil fires multiple times, turning the counter mechanism almost 360° until it gets to the first ball contact).  The relays are similar, but some of their names and functions seem slightly different.

After my son got bored of working on Jungle King, we tore into Zip-A-Doo.  Its difficulties were similar to Jungle King – years of sitting lead to dirty contacts.  The playfield paint on Zip-A-Doo is pretty bad, but I have another playfield which isn’t as bad, and can be restored.  We cleaned and waxed the bad playfield and tested the game.  The backbox lights weren’t working, and the game periodically doesn’t start up.  The rest of the game played remarkably well – all things considered.

As of right now, I’m trying to get enough working games together to hold a “classic pinball” tournament.  Most of the games will be EMs, and the Solid State games in the tournament will be made before 1980.

So far, I have a group of games which should be ready in the near future for the tournament (SS = Solid State):

1977 Bally Eight Ball SS
1978 Bally Mata Hari SS
1970 Bally Zip-A-Doo
1969 Gottlieb Target Pool
1973 Gottlieb Jungle King
1978 Gottlieb Sinbad EM
1975 Gottlieb Soccer
1975 Gottlieb Top Score
1973 Williams Darling
1975 Williams Pat Hand
1976 Williams Space Mission

 

Big Hit’s head nears completion, and more new additions!

Big Hit is still progressing forward, and looking back on it, it’s been a ton of fun! After testing the playfield, I removed the head of the machine and put it on the bench. I carefully removed the backglass and the guts and now the head is sitting empty, waiting for some touch-up work. Meanwhile, I have stripped out all of the old light bulbs and tested all of the coils – so far so good! I’ve been cleaning up the Decagon scoring units, making sure that they all work like they’re supposed to. I have two more to go before that is finished. I will also be installing a micro-switch in the head to switch the game between free play, and needing coins to operate it. Since I plan on selling Big Hit, I don’t know if the buyer of the game will want it to accept coins. I purchased and installed the new coin mechanisms in the game when I did the work on the coin door.

The body of the machine is in the shop awaiting final cleaning and polishing of the metal. The metal-work on the game looks really nice, so I’m not going to play with it. I have new legs, feet, and bolts in stock to apply to the game as soon as the other stuff is complete. To do the final cleaning, I plan on removing the old legs and putting the game on saw horses, so I can clean the areas around the legs and do any touch-up on the body that might be needed.

When everything is all done with the head, I’m going to reinstall it on the machine, reconnect everything, and give Big Hit a final test. After that, she’ll get a brand-new playfield glass, and after taking some photos of her, I’ll put her in my game room for more “testing” and to await her sale.

I also added some new games to the collection, many of them with the intention of rebuilding and reselling. In the group were two pre-flipper games, a Chicago Coin Home Run 1940, and a Williams’ Cyclone (1947). I find these games fascinating, because even though they don’t sound like a lot of fun to play, I’m really curious to try them. Flippers were introduced in pinball around 1947, and after that, flippers became standard. Many of the pre-flipper games were converted to have flippers, but the two games I have now were not converted. When I get to those games, I’ll talk more about them.

Other games I got in the group were Gottlieb’s Jungle King, Jungle Queen, Fire Queen, and Super Soccer (which is the four-player version of Soccer – another game we got last week from another person), Williams Granada, and another Bally Eight Ball. I now have two Bally Eight Ball’s to be reconditioned, along with the one in my personal collection. My own game will be very helpful in testing out the boards and the other electronic equipment on the games for sale…

We also picked up a Bally Freedom from another person in Massachusetts. This is the standard EM version of Freedom. It’s in great condition, and it will be coming down the line soon!

Enough typing, now back to work!