The backglasses on pinball machines are often found in bad shape -- peeling, faded, cracked, etc. For the most part, these things can be avoided by doing one very simple thing - store your pinball backglasses inside.

Pinball Machines are often relegated to being stored in outside locations that are not climate controlled in any way. Garages, Storage Units, and Sheds are just some of the places that pinballs often get put when they are in storage. While this is not good for the pinball machine itself, it is even worse for the backglass.

The enemy of all Pinball Machine Backglasses is moisture and temperature change. Anytime there is moisture and a temperature change where a backglass is stored, moisture gets under the paint on the backglass and it starts to peel and flake the paint right off the backglass. Most outdoor locations where Pinball Machines get stored provide both the moisture and the temperature changes to ruin a backglass in no time.

Even if you're going to store a Pinball Machine in your garage or shed, don't store the backglass with it. Save your backglass by removing the head from the Pinball Machine and storing it in your house -- it'll save you from trying to find an expensive and often rare replacement backglass.

Technorati Tags: Pinball, Backglass

On most Pinball Machines, the glass covering the playfield is plate glass. This isn't the best choice of glass when there is a metal ball flying around at high speeds! Plate glass, when it breaks, usually shatters into many pieces and will fly everywhere.

Tempered Glass, on the other hand, is much safer. It is less likely to break than plate glass and if it does break, it won't shatter into a million pieces. Plus, when moving a machine, should the glass break, there won't be little sharp pieces of glass everywhere.

While you're replacing the glass, you should also protect your pinball machine from spills. Inevitably, someone will rest a drink on the pinball machine while playing and this drink will spill and seep into the machine and cause all kinds of damage. By installing a strip of foam weatherstrip around the edge of the glass and the front bumper of the pinball machine, the spilled liquid will not go into the inside of the pinball machine and you can just wipe up the spill and keep playing!

All Pinball Machines have feet or leg levelers on the bottom of their legs. They are usually round metal discs and they can be adjusted up and down to help to level your pinball machine on the floor.

Unfortunately, the leg levelers (feet) on most older pinball machines (even newer ones alot of times) are dirty, rusted, and just in really bad shape. When put on any hard type of floor, they scratch, gouge, and discolor the floor and in general tend to ruin your floor. Even on carpeting they start to tear up the carpeting and start to discolor it.

The good news is there is a very easy and inexpensive solution: Replace The Leg Levelers! I've seen so many pinball machines with leg levelers that are so damaged and disgusting and they could be replaced with brand new ones for usually about $1.00 each.

This is also probably one of the easiest maintenance you will ever perform on your pinball machine -- just unscrew the old leg levelers and screw in the new ones!

And if you really want to do the job right, you can also get Rubber Casters for your leg levelers. These are basically just small rubber covers or feet for your leg levelers. Even when your leg levelers are new, they are still metal and can scratch your floors -- the rubber casters prevent this from happening and they are also cheap -- only a little more than $1.00 each.

One of the hardest learned lessons when dealing with Pinball Machines is to always, always, always (did I say always?) remove any and all pinballs from a Pinball Machine before you move, transport, ship, etc. the machine in any way.

Inevitably, when buying their first pinball machine, most people will pick up the machine and have no idea what they should do to prepare the machine to be moved. They will do all kinds of things to make sure that the pinball machine is secure and the backglass is protected, but they never seem to think about the floating projectiles inside the machine we call pinballs.

Even people who have moved pinball machines before and should (and usually do) know better still leave the balls in the machine, thinking that nothing will happen. Believe me, something will happen. Whether it's a bulb that gets broken, or an impossible to replace plastic, something will most likely get damaged.

I'll repeat it again -- always, always, always remove your balls. The one time you don't is the time you'll regret.

When working on your pinball machine (cleaning, fixing, restoring, etc.) you will almost always have to disassemble the playfield and all the parts around it. Without some record of where the parts go, you will be hopelessly lost.

There are many things that can be done to stop this from happening. Having documentation for your pinball machine will definitely help -- usually this includes schematics which may help to reassemble your playfield.

Another option is to store the parts as they are removed from the machine attached to a piece of cardboard in the same location that they came from on the pinball machine. This makes it easy to put those parts back in the machine based on where they are on the cardboard.

But probably the best solution is to have two pictures of the fully assembled machine and playfield. One picture can be used for reference when reassembling the machine. The other picture can be mounted on cardboard and the parts can be attached to the picture. This gives an exact reference for reassembling the pinball machine.

No matter what you do, don't disassemble a pinball machine and not somehow document where the parts go for reassembly -- even though it seems simple at the time, a few weeks later (or longer) you will have no idea how to reassemble the machine.

Technorati Tags: Pinball, Gaming

When troubleshooting power delivery and continuity problems in any pinball machine, the first thing you should check are your fuses. Even though they may be relatively new or look like they are not blown (no scorch marks, element wire not broken, etc.) they still may be open somehow internally.

Just eyeballing a fuse and thinking it is ok is a good way to end up wasting alot of time and driving yourself crazy looking for the problem, especially when you think you've already eliminated the fuse!

Technorati Tags: Pinball, Electronics, Repair.

One of the most valuable tools available when working on a pinball machine are the original manuals and schematics that came with the machine. Yet when we buy a new pinball machine, where is the original paperwork? If the seller has this paperwork at all, it's usually not in very good condition and it's just tossed inside the machine somewhere, where it will inevitably get damaged.

While it is possible to search the Internet and very often find scanned in copies of the manuals and schematics for your machine, this can also be a hit or miss proposition. I have a GamePlan Pinball Machine that I didn't get any paperwork with and I have had a hard time finding good copies that I can work with when fixing the machine.

The best defense is a good offense -- always try to get the original paperwork when buying a new pinball machine and never work with the originals. Make copies of the original manuals and schematics and store them in a safe place. You never know when you'll need them!

The worst thing you can do to an older Solid State Pinball Machine (or even a newer one for that matter) is leave old batteries installed.

Batteries in pinball machines and videogames are, unfortunately, usually installed on the circuit boards. The problem is that eventually, batteries left installed will "give up the ghost" and start leaking battery acid all over your precious circuit boards. The worst part is you never know when it will happen!

The best thing to do is remove the battery holders from the circuit boards and put the batteries somewhere in the pinball machine where it won't matter when they leak. And the batteries will leak.

Of course, not everyone is going to take the time to move the batteries. So, at the very least, change your batteries regularly! It seems stupid to ruin your perfectly restored pinball machine because you didn't bother to change the batteries!

If you have a Bally ElectroMechanical Pinball Machine and you are having problems powering up the machine, replace the fuse holders.

Even if the fuses and fuse holders look ok, replace them anyways. The older Bally EM fuse holders were so cheap, rarely do they last very long.

Speaking from personal experience, you'll go nuts if you don't try this first when trying to fix a Bally EM Pinball. I have a Bally Flicker EM and when I first brought it home, it wouldn't power up. I looked at the fuses and fuse holders and they all looked ok. I heeded the advice of others and immediately replaced the fuses but not the fuse holders. When that didn't work, I spent a week troubleshooting everything power related in the machine until finally I replaced the fuse holders and the machine powered up and started a game.