Pinball

1970 electro-mechanical pinball machine restoration

The machine I have been working on off and on over the years is my Dads 1970 Gottlieb & Co. Scuba pinball machine. I do not have many photos or documentation from the original work I did on the machine years ago to get it mostly working but will document what I recall, along with future work that I do on the machine.

Cleaning old contacts

Programing 1970's style

Mechanical logic circuits

Anti-cheating devices

mechanical score card

lots of lightbulbs

luckily the lightbulbs used on this machine are still in production as they are automotive lights. however with the automotive industry moving towards soldered in led lights this may not be the case for the next 50 years of the machines existence so the lighting may need to be upgraded to a warm led in the future with all new wiring installed.

the game deck

This section of the machine is a very heavy subsection of brass, steel, wires and contacts which mechanically stores the game level for each player and loads up the level when the player shifts from one to another. Its a bit difficult to work on as its on the underside of the board with no real way of removing it from the board to clean all the contacts as it has a great deal of old wires connected to it. So one must be a contortionist to get in and clean contacts while holding the game deck up to get to the underside. Currently I have the player two section of it working but have not had the chance to track down the issues with player one so the game works but the level lights do not light up or allow for higher points .

Coin slots

Solenoid refurbishment and upgrade

Back Glass

When my dad got the machine the original back glass (the glass with artwork on the upright section of the machine with scorecard) was long gone and someone put a large orange slice of acrylic in its place with off-center cutouts for the score cards to be seen. Tracking down the original artwork has been difficult as from what I can find only 1400 of the machines had been produced starting in September 1970 and I do not think many of those are still around and even fewer have the glass artwork.

Recently I have found a website with the original artwork and will look into getting the artwork printed on a sheet of PMMA or PC to restore the original look of the backglass and be able to see what all the indicator lights signify vs the orange blobs they are currently.