Day Three

Started out the third day of our restoration on the underside of the playfield. There will be several areas I will concentrate on. For starters, numerous features are run on relays. There won't be as many as in the guts but there will be several banks. Pop Bumpers, sequencing and spinner lights are all run off of relays and wiper relays. The bonus is run off of a stepper similar to the ball count and player up unit. Flippers will be addressed and finally, light bulbs and sockets.  As was stated in the first day, dust can do wonders for the protection of cosmetics but it can also add a lot of work to the mechanical restoration. This was the case as I entered the final third of the restoration process. King Kool's under playfield is typical of any electro-mechanical Gottlieb.

 As with the rest of the game, I started with the relay banks first. As you can see from the photo above, this game has one bank on the right and a control unit on the left. The bank contains pop bumper relays, etc and the control unit contains all of the sequencing relays. On King Kool, the sequencing involves the K-I-N-G lights and relays. All contacts were burnished and adjusted. This game used a spinner advance wiper. When the spinner or any other ten point contact is made, a sequence of ten lights is advanced. On the tenth advance, the bonus unit is advanced by one. This set up is very similar to the match unit we did in the head. Once done with the relays, I moved to the bonus unit. On any Gottlieb game with the bonus feature, this unit controls the scoring of each bonus and its associated lamp on the playfield.  Proper Functioning of this unit is imperative to game play. When the bonus unit has counted down to its zero position, a switch closes causing the outhole kicker relay to engage thus, putting the ball in play.

The reconditioning of this unit was done in the same manner as the ball count unit in the head. Pay careful attention to the contact nipples on the board. In many instances the wiper pins have worn a groove in these nipples. If so, you will need to replace them for proper operation. Although I have heard of many who have done it successfully, I have never been able to build them with solder. I might try gold solder in the future. In any event, this one was fine. With the bonus unit done, it's time to move on to the flippers. King Kool uses four flippers. A set of two in the standard position. On newer games, flipper rebuilding is a major portion of any proper restoration or recondition. They use 50 volt coils and take a ton of abuse. On the older EM's though, the flipper process is not near as intensive. For starters, these games use far less voltage and the parts do not suffer nearly as bad. 

The Flipper Assemblies use much the same components as newer games. As you can see from the picture above, you have a coil, a coil stop, coil bracket, plunger and link assembly and the flipper end of stroke switch. The most important component of these older games is the end of stroke switches. Burnish and adjust the way you would on any contact. However, check these for wear spots. Occasionally,  They will wear sharp points or other imperfections. If this is the case, replace them. If you do not, they can melt together causing the end of stroke to stay stuck and burn the flipper coil out. These are dual winding coils. When the switch is closed, the coil gets holding and pulse voltages. When the switch opens, only the holding voltage is present. This allows the player to trap the ball in the flipper without burning the coil up. Dirty, bad or improperly adjusted end of stroke switches will cause weak flippers. I adjust the EOS to begin opening after about 80% of the flipper throw has occurred. You also want to check the flipper coil stop and bracket. The coil stop is on the opposite side of the plunger. Finally, check  to make sure that the coil is firmly in place. Improper coil alignment will cause the flipper to bind resulting in a weak flip and improper flipper return. The flippers on this game were in great shape!

With the underside done, I attacked the cabinet cosmetics. This game was pretty clean and the artwork overall was in good shape. As with the metalwork on the coin door, this is another grey area in the restoration process. Many clients want the game to look brand new. I do more cabinet repaints than I care to in any given year. As with the coin door, I prefer to leave the game original. Obvious exceptions are the lovely green paint applied with a brush by the previous owner that wanted the game to match their wall paper. Or, the game that has so little paint left that the original pattern can hardly be discerned. This game fell in the average category. The paint was still in good shape but it had begun to crack lightly.  The paint was not flaking but the top coat was beginning to crack just a bit. Here is where you must make up your mind. Heavy cleaning will result in paint coming off. Light cleaning will leave the paint intact but the game will not be as bright as fresh paint. Since I rated this cabinet an 8 1/2 to 9 out of 10, I chose the light cleaning route. It is tough to see in the photo below. However, if you look closely, you will see the light cracking in the flash.

 As you can see from this next photo of the head cabinet, it really is very nice overall for a 27 year old pinball.

I chose to clean the cabinet lightly. I was able to get most of the blemishes and scuffing out with a fine bristle pad. Be careful when cleaning though. Too much pressure and the paint fades or flakes. Overall it came out very nice. There are some surface scratches and areas of paint gone but this game isn't brand new any more. Once again, a work about painting. There is no right or wrong way. It is the personal preference of the client or restorer. 

Let's reap the fruits of three days worth of work. I installed the playfield and connected the wiring harness. It's time to see if our fruit is not a lemon! Before we go any further, don't think you have failed if your game does not play right or at all. It is very common to spend much time tweaking the game. Remember, eventhough we have done all of this work, it still has not been played in a long time. I powered up the game and started a game. Guess what, the score reels would not reset! It did kick ball one out though. We are on the playfield so I decided to shelve the reset issue. I shot ball one onto the playfield. The ball passed through the top arch and rolled through the "I" rollover. The game scored fine until the center pop bumper was hit. It engaged and stayed that way. A word of warning. There are no solenoids on an older game of this vintage that are continuously on. Turn the machine off immediately or suffer the consequences of a burned coil. They will fry in 15 seconds or so. I raised the playfield and checked the pop bumper switch. It looked good. I turned the game on an started a fresh game. Still no score reel reset. I manually engaged the pop bumper relay and it stuck again. I turned the game off and reburnished and adjusted the switch. I had a switch that was not making completely. Problem solved. I checked the other pop bumper relay and it did the same thing. I did the same thing as before and the problem was again solved. At this point, you might be wondering if it is even worth going through all of the relays since we are having to do so much tweaking. Trust me. It is. Had we not done it, all of the switches would work inconsistently.  Tweaking contacts is the final stage of any restoration! With the pop bumpers working, I checked the flippers and they felt great. Nice and tight like any Gottlieb game. The bonus unit and sequencing relays worked just fine. However, half of the light bulbs were  DOA. When doing a restoration, I always try replacing the lamp first. When I did this, all but three of the lamps were repaired. I had three on the bonus that were not working still. A light fails for one of three reasons. Either the lamp is bad, the socket is bad or it is not getting power. Since the bonus lights work off of a stepper and are feature lamps, I went to the bonus unit. Since the rest of the bulbs were working, I properly assumed that the wiper assembly was as it needed to be. I isolated the wiper board nipples that worked each of the lights and determined that they were okay. It must be the socket. Bad or weak sockets are a part of life with an older game. When I was a hobbyist,  there was plenty of time to replace sockets. As a dealer though, it gets pretty outrageous. Even when sockets are replaced, others get weak. In other words, deal with it or add several hundred plus dollars to the restoration cost. We were lucky on this game. A socket has a base and a power contact. There is an insulator at the base to keep the two from shorting out. If the base and socket are good, then you can jumper with great results. If it is bad, you must replace the socket. I was able to use solder jumpers on this one.

You can see the solder jumpers in the photo above. With these done, everything on the playfield was in order. Let's go see why the score reels are not resetting. First stop was the reset relay. I removed the playfield once again to give easier access to the guts. I checked all switches on the reset relay and all looked fine. I put a meter on the reset switch and saw a voltage pulse. That means that the motor is doing its job. I put a meter on the other side of the switch and saw the same pulse. That rules out the switch. Multiple player Gottliebs use the ball count/player up stepper to reset the score reels for all players. I shorted out the stepper shut off switch with a pair of alligator clips so that the stepper would continuously run. Don't do this for more than a minute or so. You don't want to fry any coils. I saw proper voltage throughout the stepper. Player one reels reset first. I removed my jumper and desoldered the hot wire to the ball count stepper coil. I advanced the unit to the player one reset step so that I could have some time to see where the problem was. I found it. When I went through the score reels, I had not cleaned the wiper blades well enough. The breakdown was there. It happened in all 8 reels. An hour and eight reels later, the problem was solved.  We now have a Gottlieb King Kool that has been totally restored. I like to keep these games in the store for several days after restoration. They get played 15 to 20 times a day. Most needed tweaking will develop in the first 50 games or so. The good news is that any tweaking will be very quick and simple because of all of the previous hard work that has been done.

I hope you are as pleased with the results as I am. I think that is one of the most satisfying aspects of what I do for a living. Taking something that is broken and dirty and bringing it back to life. Now if we only got paid what Doctor's do life would indeed be perfect!!

Please bear in mind that the above article serves more as a description of what we do to each game. It is not intended to be a "how to" article on restoration. Many smaller points of what was done to the above game were left out. Never work on a machine until the game is turned off and unplugged from the wall outlet. Pinballs contain high voltage and you can get hurt if you do not know what you are doing. Unless you do know, please refer to your local dealer and have them properly restore your game!