Scriptpirate.com

Welcome. I've recently begun a new hobby, Pinball.

I purchased my first game, a Junkyard, at the 2008 Pinball Expo in Illinois. I've probably put over 400 games on the Junkyard since then.

But having a game and knowing that maintenance is required is a scary thing when you're unsure of your skills.  So before the Junkyard, or any expensive machine, required maintenance beyond simple cleaning or battery replacement, I decided that I would test and acquire the skills needed.  The way I chose to do this was to by a project machine that, in the worse case, would be expendable.  The plan was to try almost everything that would be needed for general repair of Pinball machines.

In November 2008 I acquired a 1978 Gottlieb Sinbad.  This was my new "project" machine (thanks Skibum).

The Sinbad was not without problems.  It wouldn't boot up, had no displays or lights in the head, and suffered paint damage (not wear) on the playfield - Perfect!  In about a month I got the machine working and was able to play it, but that was just the first step. 

To get it working I:

• Replaced the Power board with one from GPE.  There were several shorts on the original board and it did not appear to be worth saving.

• Replaced the MPU board with a Ni-Wumph.  The original board had battery damage and I decided that I did not have sufficient skills (for now) to repair the board, if it could even be repaired.  I'll attempt that at a later date.

• Rebuilt the chimes.  All three bars were missing and one had coil shorted and completely fused to the sleeve.  I made new chime bars out of 1.5" x 1/8" steel flat stock.. I'll be redoing them in Aluminum later on to closer emulate the originals

• Removed the 3rd party sound card.

• Cleaned inside and out.

• Sealed the Backglass using TripleThick

Once it was working, it was time to turn my attention to the Playfield.  It had several issues, including

• Cupped inserts - I've never seen once cupped quite this badly - at least 1/8 center to surface. The ball would roll like a drunk and get stuck in the several inserts.

• Badly "checked" paint in the center of the playfield.  This looked like the grain of the wood had risen and worn through.  Much of the upper text on the sword and orange flame area was damaged.

• Many damaged lane guides and plastic parts.

• All but one of the Plastics was broken in multiple places.

• Usual old old rubbers and dull tarnished pieces.

I stripped the playfield and began the task of attempting to restore it to a playable condition.  Since the objective here is to learn how to do things, I decided to push the envelope and go beyond simple repair.  In the case of the inserts, rather than just fill them in, I decided to remove them, sand them flat and re-insert them into the playfield.  My first attempt to do so was less than successful.   The insert broke and shattered into several pieces. Analysis showed the problems to be that the plastic had become almost crystalline and the holes under the inserts were too small to allow enough hot air from the hair dryer to warm the outer edges (where the glue is) of the insert.  Gentle tapping only resulted in the insert fracturing into many pieces.  After research and thinking about my options, I decided to replace ALL the inserts (hey, in for a penny).  I was able to procure all the inserts using about 3 different sources.

The playfield paint repair was done using standard techniques of brush and airbrush and water based acrylic paints.  Except for the playfield and insert text.  Here I decided to try something that I've thought would be good, but have not seen exploited to it's full potential - Waterfloat Decals

Adding content - please be patient