Pinball repair and restoration

Learn to clean and repair your pinball machine. Pinball machines need maintenance. If you have bought a dirty, used pinball machine, you can learn to clean it yourself.
Polish and clean parts, repaint worn areas, and you can make your pinball machine look and play (almost) as brand new again.

Pinball restoration techniques

Flame polishing
How to make ramps and plastics as new.. at your own risk !

Repair melted ramps
When flamepolishing goes wrong.. you fix it.

Clean metal parts with a tumbler
Polish and clean metals parts without doing everything by hand.

Clean parts with ultrasonic cleaner
Perfectly clean plastic and metal parts with an ultrasonic cleaner. You need to have this machine when you want to clean a pinball machine in detail.

Restore or 'shop' article
How to 'shop' a game: clean and restore a pinball machine - introduction.

Remove pop bumpers
How to remove pop bumpers from the playfield.

Flipper shaft end play spacing gauge
How to adjust flippers and maintain the correct 'Williams' feel.
With free download to 3D print the required tool.

Wax wars
Information about waxing your pinball playfield.

Reproduce your own 3D plastics
Make your own 3D pinball parts such as Cactus Canyon mountain and guns.

Apron repaint
Restore a worn apron like new

Fridge repaint
Give your old fridge or other kitchen appliance a new color.

Touchup playfield damage
How to touchup and clearcoat playfield damage with an airbrush.

Fix a playfield sag
How to build a brace to make a sagged playfield even again.

Make a playfield rotisserie
A playfield tipper or rotisserie is a good tool when you often work on pinball playfields.

Congo Volcano repair
How to repair a broken volcano on your Congo pinball machine.

Addams Family mansion decal
Mansion decal installation on an Addams Family playfield.

Pinball repair information

House fuse trips when switching on a pinball machine
Sometimes when you switch on your pinball machine, the main breaker of your house trips. How to solve this problem.

Ball trough problems
Detecting problems with optos in the ball trough, especially on WMS games that use 6 pinballs.

WPC Switch matrix tester tool
A smart way to find difficult switch matrix problems on WPC pinball machines.

Use the service plug
How to make an adaptor for the service plug on WPC games.

Stern TOPS installation
How to connect a Stern TOPS system in Europe.

TZ clock disassembly
How to disassemble the clock of your Bally Twilight Zone pinball machine.

What to do with the Factory Settings Restored warning message
Your game warns you about empty batteries. How to solve this warning message and make sure it doesn't become an expensive repair.

New WPC95 DMD plastic cover installation
Install a new DMD protective plastic on WPC-95.

Install a speech pcb on Orbitor One
Install the optional VSU-100 speech pcb in Stern Orbitor One pinball game.

Magic Tokens on Safe Cracker
How Magic Tokens are recognised on Ballys Safe Cracker.

Upgrade the speakers of your pinball machine
New speakers and a change of a resistor will give your WPC95 pinball machine a lot of bass and improve the sound quality.

Service plug switch on
Power modifications from the service switch and power them on/off together with your WPC machine.

DMD Extender
Replace a broken DMD with an LCD screen and convert from orange to color.

Raspberry Pi safe shutdown button
How to add a physical shutdown button so you can safely shutdown the Raspberry Pi you use for your P-Roc or RetroPi project.

Playmatic repair information
Repair information about these old Spanish solid state machines. Full manual scanned.

Recel information
Information and manuals for Recel solid state pinball and bingo machines.

Zaccaria Pinball
Repair information about Zaccaria solid state pinball machines.