My family and friends now realize that I have a serious problem with coin op games and are on the look out for me. My brother called me a week or so ago and said he knew someone that had a pinball machine sitting in the garage that they wanted to get rid of. That’s this one here:

It’s a MIBS, made in 1969 by Gottlieb. Its an electro mechanical machine – no circuit boards. Lots of bells, gears, and other fun stuff. Someone painted it brown (at least I think its brown…I’m color blind). It should look more like this:

When I got it home, it was dead. Plugged it in and nothing happened. It had a blown fuse, and some other fuses that were not the correct values. I fixed them and it came on but wouldn’t start a game. After reading through the great info at pinrepair.com, it got me playing around with the credit score wheel in the back. You can see that in the pic on the backglass, towards the right. It is there to show you how many credits are in the machine. I turned that wheel, pushed the button on the front of the game and it started up. It has some issues but can actually play a bit and make a lot of noise.

My Dad had picked up a Pinball machine and gave it to my brother. It was sitting in his storage unit for a few months. My brother is leaving it with me until he has a place for it someday. That one is Solar Ride, circa 1979 also by Gottlieb.

This one was also (and still is) dead. Some mice decided to make a home on the playfield. Damn mice. They have no respect for toys. Anyways…this one had the same issues with the fuses as MIBS. I fixed them, turned it on, and the speaker was making a very loud humming sound. I turned it way down, and could hear a coil stuck on. The coil for the left ball trap was charged and stayed that way. I’m guessing this is what burned the fuse before. The game won’t start in the condition that it’s in. I’ve heard that this could be caused by a bad transistor on the solenoid driver board so I’m going to see if I can test them all and replace the bad one if there is one. I really am just guessing as I don’t know much about these puppies.

I bought some rubber kits for both and some wax from pbresource.com. I’ll keep you updated on the progress as I go…