Restoration and Repair

Start with a shop-out, not a repair

Before diagnosing anything, give the machine the service it has probably not had in years. Strip the rubbers and replace the set. Clean the playfield properly and wax it. Replace the bulbs. Rebuild the flippers. A surprising share of "faults" are just twenty years of dirt, hardened rubber and worn flipper components, and they disappear during a shop-out without ever being diagnosed.

The faults you will meet first

• Weak flippers. Almost always worn bushings, a tired coil sleeve, or a flipper linkage that has slopped out. A rebuild kit is inexpensive and this is the single most satisfying repair in the hobby.
• A whole row or column of switches dead. On matrixed machines this points at the matrix itself rather than the switches — usually one failed diode or a broken connection, not twenty simultaneous failures.
• Intermittent everything. Connectors. Pinball machines vibrate for a living and header pins corrode. Reseating and, where needed, replacing connectors fixes an enormous amount of apparently random behaviour.
• Battery corrosion. On early solid state machines this is the one that kills machines outright. If a machine has an alkaline battery holder soldered to the board, dealing with it is not optional.
• Stuck or slow mechanisms. Old grease turns to varnish. Clean and re-lubricate before assuming a part has failed.

Know where your line is

Rubbers, bulbs, cleaning, waxing, flipper rebuilds, switch adjustment and connector work are all reasonable first projects. Board-level component repair, playfield clearcoating and cabinet repainting are not — they are learnable, but they are the point where a mistake costs more than the job. There is no shame in shopping a machine out yourself and sending the board to somebody who does nothing else.

Never start with abrasives

The most common permanent damage on a project machine is self-inflicted, done in the first hour of enthusiasm. Anything abrasive on a playfield removes clearcoat and takes artwork with it. Start with the gentlest option that could possibly work and escalate only if it does not.