Buying my first real machine

[shoemakesmusic]

I loved pinball as a kid and recently got back into it mostly due to the amazing job of Far Sight and finding local pins near me. I'm looking to buy my first machine, probably used. I don't want to walk away with a hunk of junk thinking I'm getting a good deal. And I don't have any experience in repairs to machines. I was hoping maybe you guys could tell me obvious things to look for, how to transport it, etc.,. If there is a similar thread you can always point me to that. I couldn't quite find what I was looking for.

 

[stevevt]

Welcome to the forum. Are you planning on going to the TPF in a couple weeks?
http://www.texaspinball.com/

Looks like it's an hour from you, and there should be a bunch of games for sale there.

I'm sure others can pitch in with some advice on general things to look for. Apologies, but I'm fighting an illness and have pretty much maxed out my ability to type for right now.

Last thing: What's your budget?

 

[thejake01]

Hey I see you're on the hunt!

I got a couple machines over the last few years now and was definitely very green with this too so know where you're coming from a bit.

To transport you're going to want to remove the legs, take out the backglass/translite and fold the head down (two bolts inside the head at the bottom), put it on something like a blanket or tarp and slide it in to the vehicle. When you remove the legs if you have a door that goes down you can take two legs off, slide part of it in, then take the other two off...this also goes vice versa for taking it out.

I work in IT so have a bit of background with troubleshooting issues. Most of the mechanical stuff is obvious once you take a good look at it. Shoot for the obvious! my uncle always says. The boards and wiring is a bit trickier because though I can troubleshoot, I can't read the diagrams in the manual. Had a couple different people come out at different points for the boards and they can trace it no problem and end up replacing some .05 cent part and charge you $100-130 to fix, so be prepared to learn it or pay for it. Even if you buy a great machine it might not work great forever...but since the initial work was done and we've gotten everything working, been running like a dream for over a year and through a move.

Alot of the things that didn't work were dirty contacts (contact file just a bit), dirty optos (clean the dirt off and work just fine), and not alot had to do with the boards so I got lucky there. We then had to clean a layer of dirt off everywhere which took about 40 man hours.

Coils may need to be replaced every once in a while. Its soldering two wires, disconnect one at a time and its no problem.

That was Street Fighter II, and the getting working and cleaning, took about 3-6 months. Now though, it looks great, plays great, and I even put in some LEDs to brighten it up a bit. Was very cheap, but in the end it all worked out.

Recently got a Taxi and paid quite a bit more but so far its gone a little more like this: get home, works, three little things wrong with it. Next night, fix all three things with only one in a workaround (drop target bank needs cleaning). So after one day I'm already on to what do I need to buy to clean it, what do I want to replace instead of the 3-4 months that it took before. Board set looks amazingly clean so I don't think I'll have any problems with it (I hope anyway). SFII was good to get dirty and a bit comfortable with it all, learn some lessons, clean some things, and Taxi has been a lot more play and a lot less focus on fix which is nice.

If you don't already have these things get some: nut driver set (way easier than a screwdriver when applicable), cleaning stuff (novus 1,2,3 set), wax (carnuba wax or johnson's paste wax), windex for the glass, a soldering iron and some solder.

Theres a cool book I got about pinball care and maintenance that fills in alot of blanks: http://www.amazon.com/Pinball-Machine-Maintenance-Bernard-Kamoroff/dp/0917510135

Get a manual for your machine if it doesn't come with one. Some of them you can get online for free and just print it out too: ipdb.org Some can't be posted online or something though due to rights is my understanding.

Good repair resource with articles and such: http://pinrepair.com/ , he's also got a big Beginner Pinball Repair article here: http://www.pinrepair.com/begin/index.htm

They just put up a great vendor listing at pinballnews.com that's worth checking out: http://www.pinballnews.com/directory/index.html#usa

This is a great place to search along with pinside.com for help and questions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.games.pinball

Go to the show if you can! stevevt was right about games for sale, there will probably be more than a few. When I was at the chicago show they seemed somewhat reasonable too. Chicago show has a spreadsheet online where people put wanted ads or games for sale in a spreadsheet online, maybe see if you can find something like that for the texas show if you can go?

Craiglist, eBay (advanced search with mile radius), SearchTempest.com (search craigslist within a however many mile radius), mrpinball.com , pinside.com are the places I look.


Hope this helps! I know it would've helped me!

-Jake

 

[shoemakesmusic]

Wow, thanks so much for the awesome information. I am definitely planning on going to the TPF probably only on Saturday as I just had kid number 2 last week. So the wife may not be too happy about me being gone for the whole weekend! I honestly think the hardest part right now is deciding which pin I want to be my first. I'm all over the map. Whirlwind was one that I used to play back in the day and I know its a great table and Pat Lawlor design. It's fairly cheap compared to some of the other more sophisticated pins out there. There's just so many to choose from. Really appreciate all the advice. I'm pretty nervous about buying one and then transporting it, but maybe this will all point me in the right direction.

 

[skywalker]

see some close to your location
http://mansfield-tx.claz.org/classifieds?q=pinball

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

As far as a knowledge base goes, go check out Pinside. They can be a bit unforgiving if you say something stupid, but as long as you've done a bit of research beforehand, they're probably the best group out there for answering repair-related questions. They've saved me a ton of aggravation and money on my Twilight Zone.