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

 

Pat Hand 2 home safe and sound!

My son and I went out to central Massachusetts on Friday evening to pick up our second Pat Hand game.  The first game we got was from my father-in-law, and it needs a lot of work both mechanically and cosmetically.  My wife loves Pat Hand as a game, so it is not a game we are looking to sell.  Now we have two, and one may ultimately be for sale.  We’ll have to see how that plays out.

We got the “new” Pat Hand from my wife’s cousins, who got their game from my father-in-law several years ago.  They told me it worked, and so I could surprise my wife when she got home from work, my son and I raced home and put the came in the game room.  In order to make room for it, I put Target Pool in the shop.

Pat Hand works, but not perfectly.  It seems as though several relays are sticking, the flippers are sloppy,  and one of the two pop bumpers needs to be adjusted.  The machine could use a full rebuilding job, but instead, I’ll do the work it needs in the near term just to get it up and running properly.

The shop is coming along too.  It’s been tough in the cold, but I got a small heating unit in there.  At least all of the drafts have been eliminated, and I now feel more comfortable having real baseboard heat installed in the shop.  There are six games in the shop right now…Pat Hand 1, Target Pool, Mata Hari, Ding Dong, Top Score and Eight Ball.  The last two are set up, the others are standing up on end with their heads on a shelf.

With the Christmas holiday approaching quickly, I don’t see any pinball machine work taking place.  I still have Christmas shopping to do…