First flipper EM - 1962 Gottlieb Flipper Clown notes

I have a 1947 United Mexico flipperless pin. It's wonderfully simple, no flippers or pops to rebuild, tiny and easy to transport, I can practically hold the playfield with one hand. It's mostly a reset bank and some dead bumpers. It didn't really need any work to get going though. Flipper Clown is my first foray into the world of restoring a more complex EM game with bells, whistles, and flippers. Well, no whistles.

Buying it

I didn't set out to buy Flipper Clown, it was one of those "on the way" type purchases. I was driving 10 hours up to PA to pick up my Twilight Zone and needed something along the way to make me feel like my cargo van rental was worth the $150 plus gas it was going to cost me. The solution is naturally buying a $900 pinball machine. I was looking for a cheap game to pick up with my TZ, I wasn't looking to spend $10k on pinball that weekend. The first thing that I found was a Flipper Clown... and the seller never got back to me. The second thing I found was... a Flipper Clown for $900 in VA. Neat coincidence for a relatively low production wedgehead to pop up twice on my path. I wanted a game with 2" flippers and an unboring playfield so Flipper Clown fit that pretty well. Ideally I'd want an asymmetrical playfield, but you can't have everything, and hey it has a backbox animation so that makes up for it.

The seller was reluctant to part with the game, his only EM. It didn't reset when started and he apologized for wasting my time. After a couple minutes (and pressing him to troubleshooting since I really wanted it) we figured out the jones plugs in the head were unplugged. It fired right up. I'm actually unsure if he intentionally sabotaged the game because he regretted selling it, but I won't accuse him of anything because he was a nice guy! For the record, it was fully working minor a couple small things like misaligned flippers, flickery bulb sockets, and a broken pop cap.

Rules

The main goal in Flipper Clown is to "select" a purple and white number on the roto-target. If the white number is bigger than the purple number after both are selected you get an add-a-ball. If a purple or white number has not yet been selected, the top lanes, drain lanes, and the roto-target itself will be lit to select the shown number when hit. The two rows of inserts in the middle of the playfield show which number has been selected for each color, if any.

Slingshots score 1 or 10 when lit by same relay as yellow pops.
Yellow pop bumpers score 1 or 10 when lit by the playfield rollovers.
The blue pop bumper and left and right lanes score 50 and spin the roto-target.

Any switch that selects a number scores 10x that number, otherwise those switches score 10.

If you score 2000 points you get an add-a-ball.

Getting back up to the top of the playfield is difficult. My main strategy is going for add-a-balls on the roto-target and hoping points just "happen" as I rack up more balls. The roto target is absolutely death, but it's the main shot in the game and it racks up balls. Talk about risk/reward. The rubber in between the two targets gets you nothing but a wild, fast ball. If you can get back up to the top, you can get decent pop action and hopefully select a number. I'm not sure if there is some strategy in skillfully draining to get a guaranteed add-a-ball then get back up to the top, I don't tend to do it.

First EM order from Pinball Resource

I consider myself fairly well stocked with solid state pin parts but I was unprepared for my new Gottlieb. Here's a list of parts I personally had to pick up. PinRepair has a comprehensive EM common parts list.

PBR Part Number	Description
GTB-A3562A GTB-A3811	Gottlieb red flipper buttons (x2) Flipper button retaining clips
GTB-A5141B	Orange dot flipper coils
Sleeve-GTB-Standard Sleeve-Short-BellSleeve-Long-Bell	Various coil sleeves. I probably already had these sizes, but you can never have too many coil sleeves.
FUS-15A FUS-10AFUS-7.5A	Fast blow fuses
LAM0047A LAM0051A	100x #47 bulbs 4x #51 bulbs
GTB-8997 #131 GTB-A2663 GTB-A12149 GTB-A2662+ GTB-21643	Pop bumper bodies, lamp socket, plunger, metal yoke, fiber yoke, and return spring.
GTB-A4862	Coil stops
GTB-B8704+ GTB-B8549+	Pop bumper switch assemblies. Not sure I'd buy these again, this was inexperience.
B-8559	Slingshot switches
Gottlieb 1966 Parts Catalog	Since PBR's website doesn't list everything, this is a pretty useful thing
A-1059	Spare Gottlieb shoulder bolt
FUS-HLDR	Fuse holder
GTB-A465 GTB-A463, GTB-A464 Blade-Light, Blade-Med, Blade-Hvy CU-Contact	Switch cover plate Switch seperators Switch blades Switch contacts
GTB-A5255, GTB-A5256, GTB-A5257, GTB-A5258, GTB-A5259, GTB-A5260, GTB-A5261, GTB-A5262, GTB-A5263	Assortment of nylon switch lifters
RIN-REB-W	Rebound rubber
Fishpaper	Fishpaper...
FLX	A bunch of flexstones
FILE	Contact file
Various lightbulbs sockets	Ordered as a precaution, but cleaning the sockets has worked well for me.

Some Problems and EM lessons learned

Pinball is a learning experience every day, we can't all be restoration wizards. Any time and money wasted along the way is just a lesson on how to not waste that time and money later on. I mostly used info from PinRepair and Clay's This Old Pinball DVDs to shop out the game. Here are a few things I've learned.

Switch adjustments

EM problems really aren't as exciting as SS problems. After taking it apart and cleaning everything, it seemed to only be things like poorly adjusted switches or broken solder mostly caused by me probably. Some ones I ran into:

1. Blue pop bumper was machine gunning. There was a poorly adjusted switch on the blue pop bumper relay that barely made contact
2. The yellow pop bumpers would light only when I held in the rollover switch, and would unlight as soon as I released it. This was due to broken solder on the relay that's activated by that rollover. The relay holds itself on, those switches that should hold it on had broken solder
3. Light yellow pop bumpers relay was turning off with pop bumper activity intermittently. This was either fixed by adjusting the yellow pop bumper off rollovers or doing a better solder job on the relay switch that I fixed above.
4. The thousands and ones score reels didn't reset. The thousands had a 0-switch that was stuck on something. The ones reel has a poorly adjusted 0-switch.

Roto-target wouldn't center correctly

After messing with the screws on the bakelite disc, I realized the centering is actually controlled by the set screw that holds the disc onto the metal shaft.

Additionally I had a second problem where I screwed the numbers disc on too lightly. The numbers were binding against the two metal bits behind the target, causing the target to not fall back fully to the rest position. I loosened up the set screw and pulled the disc a tiny bit further up the shaft to create some "breathing room" and it works great now. Originally it was cranked on as far down the shaft as I could push it. I couldn't find documentation if there was some measured way to do this. Just don't overtighten your roto targets I guess!

Rollovers stick out too high from the playfield after using PBR replacements

Couldn't figure out how to fix this one. If I adjusted the rollover switch downward it would cause the rollover to sit at an angle. I ended up putting washers under the switch stack. Hack-y but works fine.

Replacing the backbox toy ball with a ping pong ball

I'm fairly sure that Flipper Clown didn't ship with a ping pong ball, but I've seen a few out there that use them. Some are 36mm and just a little too small, some have obvious seams, most have logos or stamps on them. Sourcing an original ball is probably impossible, I couldn't even find a good picture, dimensions, or material information about them.

I bought a few cheap foosballs and ping pong balls off Ebay and these 40mm "Recreational Grade" ping pong balls worked and looked the best. They have no logo, bounce well, are a better fit than 36mm balls, and do not have obvious seams. The whole pack was $5 shipped.

Buy/build a rotisserie

This didn't take long to figure out. I've worked on all my other games by lifting the playfield. Since the Flipper Clown has no mechanism to hold it in place and it's generally annoying to deal with lifting and lowering the playfield, everything was much easier once I threw it onto a rotisserie. I got one of the commercial ones from Ebay.

I'm screwed on broken smooth posts

No one reproduces these posts. Thankfully I only had one cracked one and it wasn't broken. I'll be keeping an eye out for these and donor playfields/machines at shows now however.

Maybe don't replace switches with new ones

I love shiny new things, even when not strictly necessary. Replacing a pop bumper or slingshot switch is just part of shopping out games to me since I don't like cleaning and trying to bend beaten up switches back into perfect alignment. PBR ships gold-plated pop bumper switches however, so I have a machine with three different kinds of switches (silver, tungsten, gold) that I have to clean in three different ways. Probably not going to be a huge issue but I will clean and adjust my pop switches rather than just replacing them in the future.

I've read somewhere on RGP that gold contacts are not good for a high voltage EM machine. Someone on Pinside assured me it's fine. I'll live with it on this game. For the record the switch above is not the slingshot switch I replaced, it was intended to replace an oxidized scoring switch (which I decided to clean and adjust instead).

Clean/lube all the steppers even if working

This is a pretty obvious one for EMs I guess, but I was surprised how 70-year-old-greased up and gross my steppers were considering they worked. I really shouldn't have been considering the f'ed up shit I've seen in solid state games. Previous owners may have tried cleaning these without disassembling which looks like it does almost nothing. My pop bumper spoons also had grease to clean up (???). That seems silly if it was factory.


Take lots of detailed pictures of screws and what they go with

Jesus, did Gottlieb really need to use 4 different kinds of very similar looking screws around the playfield? Some with finishing washers, some without, some with flared out heads, some normal. All slightly different sizes. What a pain. This probably has something to do with the fact that we're using wood screws instead of T-nuts. I'll never complain about T-nuts again.

Pop bumper cap repair

I'm a huge fan of new parts, but at $12 a piece, I'm not going to spend $50 to replace my decent pop bumper caps. The blues required minor touchups, which I just did with a calligraphy marker as recommended on the This Old Pinball DVDs. I bought a few shades of blues to find a match. Zig "Blue Jay" is the best Zig color match, although you'll need to ink in the whole letter to look 100%. The image on the left shows the "P" filled in, the "S" was not filled in. The middle image shows the completed touched up cap.

Additionally I epoxied the backs of all of my pop bumper caps. One center had separated from the daisy, the others were clearly marginal so I epoxied them anyway as a precaution.