1976 Gottlieb Pioneer (Repair)

This is a Gottlieb Pioneer that came in for repair. The machine was a mess. Wires were cut, nothing worked, the transformer was disconnected and sitting in a shopping bag inside the cabinet. There was a doorbell attached to the front that someone had tried to wire as a credit switch. Almost every single post on the machine was broken. The center plastic was missing. A pop bumper cap was broken. The tent lane guides were broken. All of the bulbs needed to be replaced. The rubber was replaced. The playfield was completely stripped, cleaned, and polished. The machine has now been brought back to life. I plays fast and shoots accurately. The game objectives are pretty simple, but well designed. See the pictures to see the transformation.

Gotta love the doorbell on the front of the machine. I assume it was intended as a freeplay switch.

When I opened the machine I found the transformer in a grocery bag in the back of the machine. I had no idea why it was disconnected of if it would work or not.

There was some sort of issue with the chimes in the past. They were partially disassembled and disconnected. I love that you can see a beaded necklace in this picture that was inside the machine. I find those little things interesting. How do all of these weird things find their way into old pinball machines?

The door wiring was cut and twisted together. I assume it had something to do with wiring the freeplay switch at some point. Pretty frustrating when you are trying to fix a machine that someone else has messed up so badly.

Here is the transformer wired up again. All of the voltages tested okay, so luckily the customer wouldn't need a new one.

The playfield was in pretty rough shape. It was dirty and had wear spots.

The center plastic was missing. The top left pop cap was broken.

There is a wear spot on the field above the double bonus insert.

With these closeups, you can see how dirty the playfield was. The rubber is very old, dirty and cracking. Almost all of the playfield posts were broken or cracked.

The inserts were taped down with scotch tape. They were loose and moving, so someone thought tape would do the trick.

Broken tent guide.

Gotta love this "center post" bolt that was inserted in the playfield.

Disassembly pictures and cleaning.

Yuck.

A little elbow grease and polish go a long way.

Here is the machine reassembled. The inserts were glued back down. It is hard to take pictures of all of the switch adjustment and cleaning. I had to clean and adjust almost every switch in the machine. I added a new set of rubber, a new ball, some new parts like tent guides and posts, and caps. I fabricated a new center plastic. It doesn't look great, but it is much better than nothing.

The score reels were adjusted and cleaned. Lightbulbs were replaced with #47s to reduce future damage to the backglass paint.