Kid Fran's Pinball Hacks 

As a pinball collector in a home environment, even an early 80s pinball (so long as flippers have been rebuilt) you would be surprised how many plays it takes for something to fail. Machines on location in a popular arcade could rack up 10k plays in about a year. That's why techs are always working on them.

I miss pinball machines and nowadays the ones I find are multilevel multi ball whiz bang monstrosities that are designed to try to distract from video games. Phooey. My first job in '76 was delivering pizzas at a place that had three tables out front and a pinball machine. Almost all of our business was delivery or take-out so there was rarely anyone in the dining room. The pinball machine was a Bally "Satin Doll," that was a pretty basic table, but it quickly became my favorite. I never saw anyone service it except to collect the quarters. It only got played maybe three or four times a week. My favorite feature was a long curve along the left side lined with maybe two dozen buttons, which, if they were lit, you could rack up a good score IF you could get the ball to shoot up along that curve. I never bothered with tilts or "hacks." It was always all about deft timing on the flippers.

1970's Pinball repair guy here! Yes so true. they have two solenoids because if you used the primary (fast) solenoid to "hold it", it would over heat. You are of course right, for reasons I know you understand, the primary dose feel a little different after it gets hot from use, just a little less punch.

"Gor-GAR ... beat me!!" With some nice satanic imagery on the back glass. I kicked ass at that in 1979.

"bed" = playfield. "hit coil" = power coil. "keep on coil" = hold coil.

To be fair they don't always need much maintenance. I bought a pinball machine in 2008 after I came into some money - Bugs Bunny's Birthday Bash. As it was built in about 1991, it has a decent amount of self testing in it (which was a deliberate choice). As I powered it up, one flipper didn't work correctly and a pop bumper was stuck on. I fixed them and since then I've had to do precisely ZERO repairs. The only maintenance I've needed to do is an occasional clean and rubber replacement.

You know you have the 'feel' for a 'certain' pinball machine when you hold the top ten scores and it's always racked up to 15 - 20 free games. The proprietors hate it! Your buddies love it!

I had a $25/day pinball problem around 30 years ago. It was bad, but I became good enough where I could look at an unfamiliar machine, analyze the playfield, and typically start getting replays within 2 or 3 games. Xenon is still in Asbury Park. It's also historically significant as one of the first arcade games to use samples, and the voices are Suzanne Ciani.

Not a pinball machine but there was a "Tank" video game in the local Sheets store in the 80's when I was a kid. I found the joy stick panel had become unmounted from the video game body and you could lift it up. You could gain access to the back of the coin box mechanism. It took 15 seconds or so to figure out which wire to unhook and short to ground to get credit. I quickly mastered that game playing it for free. 🙂 When my friends and I were done playing I would sell the remaining credits to some other kid for half what was showing on the machine. The joy stick panel was like that for close to 8 months before they realized it and fastened it back down.

There's a few pinball machines where you must nudge the machine to get the ball in certain places. Like Bally Vector. There's saucers under both the outlanes (now you could argue that you want to play in a way where you keep the ball away from the outlanes) and if you just let the ball run down there, it will always miss them, but if you nudge at the right time, the ball will get in the saucers which give you points and kick the ball back onto the playfield. If you set the feet up so the game goes slower, it's often much less fun, often enough you can't even make certain spots. My favorite pinball machine might be Harlem Globe Trotters. That or Monster Bash. Also on pinball machines, the electronics rarely break down. Once you've got that MPU board fixed, it's just electromechanical repairs all the way down.

Lethal weapon is a different generation of flipper coil. These has only one winding. The double winding power + hold function is an older design. Pinball is a very addictive hobby but very rewarding when you dig into the technology and repair them/ bring them back to life.

In laws collected machines. Didn't own any myself but helped them, I owned a truck with a lift gate. Also worked on the boards for the early electronic machines, copying EPROMS and jumpering them to work on different machines. The electromechanicals are complex mazes of steppers and relays but easier to fix than electronic sometimes. With a big collection like they had they were ALWAYS working on one machine or another to keep them going. If ever in Vegas check out Tim Arnold's Pinball Hall of Fame.

Brings back memories of playing Black Knight at the base dry mess (no alcohol, just chips, pop, burgers & fries); my two Newfoundland buddies could play all night on one quarter with no shenanigans, nothing more than know every rule, every combo, every target to hit, everything for max points. And they were smooth with the English, rarely tilting. Me not so much. Cheers!

Back in the early 70s, the era of 'EM' machines, we used to pick up the front and drop it and get 3 free games!

I love Silver Ball! My favorite games are Scared Stiff and Fire Ball.

Oooh, I was in a Young Scientist club, and we owned a Star Trek - game just like that for a while. Plenty of fun to play and also to maintain. Great memories. :)

PinBot and White Water are my favourite pins!

The 1977 Bally Evel Knievel is the greatest Pinball machine ever. Anyone who tells you different is wrong. Renting is always cheaper. Look at how many single people out there.

Nice. Great to meet her!

The only places I remember having pinball games were theater lobbies and laundromats .. arcades were strictly video games..this was back in the '70s and '80s...

When I was a kid and had to go to school I had sleepless nights because my parents owned pinball machines, four of them, 3 Williams's and a Bally. And that sound...of these mechanics and the voice of the Gorgar machine they had, was ... at the first time fun. But I listened to it three nights in a row and stamp foot angry at my parents and made them stop. And ever since I never touched a pinball machine again lol. I actually like them, but the sounds make me go nuts and get headaches. 🤣

I love my Virtual Pinball machine. Hundreds of classic and modern pinball games.

How could I not stop and watch after seeing the Bally "Star Trek" table.....

Let’s all love Fran!

I used to have a sebaceous cyst on my right wrist. I tried everything to get rid of it and nothing worked. Until I was out playing pinball one night and I smashed my wrist against the side of the machine. Smashed the cyst, it went away and never came back.

There is a channel of a guy that owns an arcade repair shop in either NC or SC I can't remember the name of it. Joe's arcade I think is the name He is awesome I watched a few videos and he works through the problems and rebuilds the parts and makes them work The old reel pinball machines From the 50s, 60s are so much engineering and they have no electronics. Just mechanically keeps track of everything

I owned Junkyard some years back - really fun and long game to complete everything. I still have a very old machine - Runway. Tough to keep them in repair (that's why it isn't really playable at this point). I think my favorites were Embryon and Alien Poker.

My favorite was the Williams Bicentennial machine. I won on that so many times. I'd to to my neighborhood 7-11 and be there for HOURS.

I'm originally from the Philly area and my uncle operated a route with pinball machines and jukeboxes in the 60s and 70s. When I grew up I bought a Back to The Future and an Addams Family pin. Added a Star Trek and a couple others and a small juke. I kept only the BTTF, my first, and the Addams as well as my Rock-Ola jukebox. They are great fun if you can maintain them yourself except for major electronics repairs. Thanks for this video, Fran!😊

If there was only one big coil in the flipper solenoid, holding the button would draw too much current and cause it to overheat.

20 years of my life....an entire career fixing pinballs. They break far less in your home. Much less. As long as it's done right. I hate the game. I don't play. I was just good at fixing them. Electronics, electro mechanics, basic carpentry.

Bansai Electronic pinball machines of May 1988 (??) we're bomb..

FRAN, Can you explain what you mean by the High Charge Coil, The Keep On Coil and the Hit Coil? I never heard these terms before and what do you mean for each coil type. I'm not sure what is the "Sync Zone" on the playfield or what you mean by the sync zone?

back in the 80s, 2 brothers were destroying every machine in the arcade, one after the next. after about a dozen people defeated the pinball machine, my friend and i did too. so strange how the mentality works. just saying.

Fran reminds me of the Teck's, scientists at Fermilab where I worked for 34 years.🤩

Hey Fran! I currently own 4 machines, down from 10, all of which were from the 1972-1982 period. EMs and SSs. The two types have their benefits and shortcomings. I've never had to buy a part (other than maybe a replacement coil or a flipper bushing) for an EM machine. All their failure modes are a matter of cleaning and adjusting switches. If they're played regularly, they stay clean and work. Don't play them, and then they need some TLC to get running correctly. The SS machines can sit for years and still work perfectly the next time you switch them on... until the batteries leak and eat the CPU if they haven't been moved off-board. Learned *that* one - several times. Also, a problem with the early SS machines is that certain parts are hard or impossible to find. People have made replacement CPUs for first-gen Bally/Stern, System 1 Gottliebs, and possibly others. The driver boards use transistors & SCRs that still exist. But the displays... those are a problem. My Williams Firepower (1980) only has 2.5 out of 5 displays still working, and there's no cost-effective way (on my budget) to change that. I'd imagine parts availability on post-crash machines is even more of a problem, as production runs were much smaller, so fewer parts machines to cannibalize.

Woohoo, a Fran pinball video! So cool and unexpected. I have a home collection of 30 pinball machines if anyone has any questions.

Hey Fran thanks for doing this. It was streamed on my birthday and pinball is still one of my favorite games. I'm damn near forty but I see a cabinet and I can't help myself.

Damn, girl, you play guitar and pinball too! Cool!

i love playing pinball wizard by the who! AWESOME VERSION BY ELTON JOHN for the movie!!! O M G As a programmer, I'd love to build virtual pinball machines... are there some packages of software components?

Wow you have no clue the very first thing an astronaut puts on is a WATER COOLED skin tight system. The suit temp was fine because the suit can not instantly the temp will read high at single points. This was a real spacewalk and all 4 revive credit. The suits HAVE THR MOST ADVANCED MICRO METEOR protection. You truly know nothing about this specific product. The view from inside the helmet is by far better range of view then every other helmet. No joke here -> I bet spaces would be glad to have visit and show you around the suit.

Gorgar

You won't have that much down time with your own machine at home. My little cousins used to burn out my flipper coils by constantly pressing them. Pinball machines seem to get moody.

Slippery Flippery Frippery! (Canada)

I do have a pinball machine (Black Knight, Williams, 1980), and I didn't know about the paper under the feet trick. I'll try it!

I was hoping to fix mine however the corporation that claimed to fix the issue didnt exist, now we will have to try on our own, it should be a disaster especially with broken flippers.

Pinball yes I enjoy pinball