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The Czarcade, Las Vegas, NV (2026)

05/15/2026

Did somebody say WOOD RAILS?? I've made substantial progress over the last couple of weeks, crushed it today, and outta nowhere... Tim has fixed the '59 Keeny Hi Straight, and now it's on Woodrail Row (which is what I'm calling it now).

So... I'm looking at the '53 Arabian Knights... everything works, except Tim doesn't have a working coin mech readily available, and then it hits me.. there's an (inoperable) '56 Toreador with a double mech of the same style down the row and I can swap one of them out, which I do. It's not an exact fit, but it's absolutely close enough to work, which it does. So now Football, Knights, Lazy-Q and Lady Robinhood are all back up and running pretty solid.

I cracked into the '51 Chicago Coin "Thing"... but that one is going to need a lot of work (it had diaper pins in place of cotter pins!), so I moved that down the row and opened up the '57 Bally Circus (not to be confused with the 2-of-a-kind Pinball Circus currently under a difficult repair on Tim's workbench). I had the '57 Circus working for a while a few months back, but these games are older and really need to be completely gone through, and even then, you fix one thing, stuff wears out, and new problems crop up.

One of the Circus pop bumpers had a broken EOS (end-of-stroke) switch, so I swapped in a new one, and cleaned and lubed the "spoons" that trigger the pop switches on that one, and on all the other pops too. And that did the trick. Circus was back up... almost. Tim shows up and I'm like "Hey! Play Circus!" and on his first ball it gets stuck in a sunken lens cup. Tim shows me how to pop the lenses out with a 3/8 nut driver, and I clean and reinstall the sunken ones using "Goop", a glue where the excess rolls right off the playfield after it dries, but holds the lens in. Tim also gave me a great lesson on coin-mech servicing too, which it also needed. Invaluable.

It pained me to have to leave Circus off for the glue to dry, but my time was up. But before I left, I moved the Hi-Straight over to Woodrail Row where it belongs. Gotta love the glow of an old woodrail, dontcha?

Have a great weekend. I'll catch you on the flipside.

05/13/2026

First off, a big WELCOME to all the new followers from the Hall of Fame page! I'm a retired business owner that grew up in the seaside arcades of the east coast playing games from the 40s into the 80s. I started collecting games and learning EM repair during Covid and found I had a passion for it. I moved to Las Vegas in the Summer of 2024 and started working at the Hall of Fame in March of 2025, the same week as my Solid-State cohort Noah. We've both been dedicated to seeing the Hall of Fame reach "a higher potential".

Twice a week, I post my experiences troubleshooting and fixing electro-mechanical games, mostly from the Hall of Fame, and occasionally from my own game room... "The Czarcade". So if you like looking at old pinball machines and learning how they work (and break!) you're following the right page!

And with that said, let's see what we fixed on Tuesday! I started off adding the next set of "Toppers" for the EM collection. I make these 7x5 placards at home using a color laser printer and paper cutter, and Tim is supplying the plastics I selected. Personally, I think it really adds to the experience when you know when the machine was made.

One of my favorite, and most frustrating games went down again, the '64 Midway Flying Turns. Sadly, it's a victim of its own success. When working, this game gets a TON of play. After repairing and tuning up this game almost weekly for a year... one of the motor gears for the Player One car has become stripped. :/ Honestly... a dead motor can be a game's death knell. Tim assures me we'll fix it in-house AND that he will take the time to do the repair with me, because if it's a game killer... then I want to learn how to fix motors!! And Steve at PBR won't be around forever!

Big Flipper and Flipper Clown will have to wait, as I wanted to try something new to fix the '61 Gottlieb Flipper Parade. These old Gottlieb games have ball steppers that get badly worn (after 50-60 years or so). I've tried Silver Solder, but that requires too much heat. This time I'm trying silver conductive paint, usually used for circuit board traces... but after applying the paint and curing it with a heat gun... I gave it a try. I probably didn't allow it to cure long enough... but it seems Flipper Parade appears to be working again! I'm guessing it'll need another treatment, but this is very encouraging for fixing other worn out game steppers!

I was on a roll so I opened up the '60 Gottlieb Flipper. Not only was this the first Gottlieb "Wedgehead" ever made... but it was the first in their "Flipper" series... At some point, I'd like to get them all together and in historical order... but I need em working first! This one has had a troublesome issue with the reels, particularly the 10s reel. I think I have it down to a an issue with the 10 point relay, but rebuilding didn't fix it... and time ran out. Maybe I'll take another swing at it... on Thursday.

See ya next time, and thanks for following!

05/07/2026

Not sure when I've seen so many working machines at one time at the HOF. It's good to see. Still... many more to go.

Thursday I headed right back to Jumping Jack to see if Kim (from The Goatshed!) was correct about the loose contact. Tim joined me, and in his usual fashion, he adjusted the switch, and then went right to the #4 stack on the score motor, and adjusted another switch. It's fooled us before... but I think he got it.

Flying Turns was down... again... This was a new one though. #2 Car motor was stuck. I freed it up, but I hope this isn't something that gets worse with time.

Tim and I both want to see the woodrails up and running, so we can expand the history exhibit along the south wall. We took a look at the '53 Arabian Knights. It's missing a cover on the coin mech, and for a while my hinky foam block and e-tape cover was working out, but it was not a long term fix. Tim says he's got a cover that will work, otherwise, it plays really well.

Next to that, the typically reliable '53 Williams Lazy-Q had been down. One of the score reels was sticky, so I cleaned that. I spent most of the day tracing the cause of a sticky bumper relay. I pulled the schematic ('53! handy!) and traced it to the flippers. An adjustment there and the stick, unstuck! I used the rest of my time to give it a deep clean and wax. Nice to have that one back up. Including the '48 Gottlieb Lady Robinhood (2nd game with flippers), that makes three woodrails lit up, and a fourth waiting on a coin door. It's going to get harder from here...

Catch you on the flipside.

05/06/2026

Another Tuesday and I'm pleased to see *almost* all of my work made it through a busy weekend, Jumping Jack being the only exception, which I was sure I had fixed, but I "fixed" it AND it broke again before I left today, BUT I think I know what's wrong with these kickers that keep quitting, and I'm putting money on a fried relay switch... we'll see on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the 68' Bally Rockmakers One point score reel came loose and was stuck, which was a fairly quick fix... thankfully, no burnt coils. And that was everything I could fix on the North side of the building, excluding major project machines... which I'd love to consolidate into one area, but that's outside of my purview at the moment.

I wandered over to the "Tommy" section... Hmmm, all working. I pressed on. The South row has a handful of EM's and the Williams '76 Space Mission (a fav of mine) was down with a dead Left Flipper. That turned out to be a quick fix as the bakelite hinge broke from the plunger... and we have many replacements for that. There are a couple of other Williams games next to it... a '74 Lucky Ace and a '71 Solids N Stripes, but both appear to have Score Motor issues... For now, that's outside the scope of my work...

I felt good enough to finally make my way back to the Woodrails of which only one (Lady Robinhood) was still operating. I started off with the '49 Chicago Coin Football, which I had running pretty well for quite a while. On this game, the head is plugged directly into a 110V service plug in the back of the body, and that old female plug was bent and the male plug had a bad connection. I took the service plug off, adjusted the receptors, and now the connection is solid again. All my prior fixes seem to have held up well, so it's back up and running again!

In the middle of fixing Football, a customer lost a coin in the '69 Bally King Tut, which had a significant coin jam requiring removal of the mech and the coin return slide to unjam it! I should have taken some pics of that... but I was in a rush to get back to Football.

Thursday... Jumping Jack relay... and more Woodrail work? We'll see!

05/01/2026

Thursday was a fun-filled-fixapalooza day at the HOF! Right out of the gate I had two Gottlieb games, a '71 4 Square and a '74 Sky Jump with balls sticking at the top gate, the result of a worn groove in the playfield from thousands of launches. Both were easily fixed with Mylar circles to cover the groove. Same circles I use to fix cupped lenses. Worked great!

The 69 Mini Pool was going haywire starting with 10 balls and not finishing games after the last ball. Tim popped by to see what was up and tore down the troublesome ball stepper, where we found the springed contact "fingers" were so worn that they were no longer able to make solid contact.. I got a lesson from Tim on how to remove and replace the wiper fingers using braid wire, low heat, and a low-flux solder. It was time consuming and not a ton of fun, but it occurs to me that there may be a handful of these old Gottliebs with the same issue that this could fix. After replacing the finger wipers... the game was instantly working as it should.

A quick coin jam fix on Palace guard, and I rounded the corner to Bally Ave... the '73 Gottlieb Jumping Jack was down with a stuck kicker switch. The plastic around the kickout hole only had one screw, had shifted, and was holding down the switch. Got a second screw, adjusted the plastic frame, and Jack was Jumping again! Down the row, the '69 Bally Op Pop Pop reel coil solder came loose. Easy fix. Less easy to stay fixed... I also corrected the kickout hole angle so it doesn't lose the ball every time you get it in the kick out. Much more fun now.

My usual rows were all up and running (except the machines that need parts) so I moved down to a row that was a weird mix of solid state and EM's. The '71 Gottlieb Drop a Card was working, but was unbalanced, so I balanced it and it seems to be fine now, but the '71 Williams Yukon next to it turned out to be my oddball project of the day.

What started with a stuck score reel, expanded to a ball stepper issue... I cleaned both, and I also repaired the odd chrome chime box in the head of the game. I had just enough time left to give this very dirty Yukon a deep clean and wax. It turned out looking great and it's a fun game to play!

That's a wrap on another week. We'll see what next week brings! Catch you on the flipside!

04/29/2026

After a busy weekend, I had a good amount of work to do on Tuesday as a handful of EM's were down again. Subway didn't make it... but it turned out to be a quick fix, though I have a feeling I'm not done with it yet. Big Casino was also a minor adjustment.

TKO had a stuck reel, due to a sheared off Coil stopper bolt/broken screw... that was a new one one me, and luckily a relatively quick fix as well.

On Bally Ave, I finally got to Bazar, which, as far as I could tell, got unplugged by accident. Works fine.

I moved over to Flipper Clown. After playing great for a few weeks, things started going haywire again with the steppers. This is going to be another Corral/Subway kind of project, and more work than I had time for.

I couldn't get to a couple others, so Thursday will be a revisit to Op-Pop-Pop and Royal Guard... and then we'll see what else.

See ya next time.

04/24/2026

Thursday was a maintenance day with lots of little fixes. I'm thrilled to see Corral and Subway still playing great, and almost everything over on Bally Ave was up. If things stay this way for a while, I can finally get back to the Woodrails, and some other old EM game projects that need some TLC.

But the day started with an odd power issue on a '77 Gottlieb Big Hit. I called Tim in for a look-see and he agreed... we're not sure what's going on with this one. The 5A Slo-Blo was blown at the transformer, we get 120V at the transformer and at the power switch, but nowhere else. I handed this off... Tim's gonna think on this one.

Bazar is still down, but I need some special key to get into it, so that'll be next time. Wild Wheels needed a quick adjustment on a stuck stepper, then I fixed Flying Turns (similar issue) and with not much else to work on for that row, I moved into a different section that's kind of a mix of new and old games. There were a couple of typically working games that were off, so I opened up a '70 Gottlieb Crescendo that was stuck cycling. Everything seemed fine with nothing stuck open, so I looked to the coin mech, which appeared to be stuffed with bent quarters and a handful of nickels. 🙄

After clearing the jam, the game next to it, a '65 Gottlieb Pleasure Isle was also off... for no apparent reason. I tested everything and could not find any faults, but the playfield was filthy and this was a really beautiful game with a great playfield and cool back glass animation. Time was running out, so I wrapped up the day by giving this game a deep cleaning and a shiny new coat of wax. Lookin sharp now!

Aloha! I'll catch you on the flipside!

04/23/2026

Back at the Czarcade... I've been meaning to cleanup my '72 Chicago Coin Rodeo... and today seemed like the day to do it.

I cleaned all my reels and steppers, checked all my switches... fixed a loose wire. Friday I'll pull the targets and hopefully add some LED blacklights to replace the buzzy fluorescents.

Might be time to get one of those fancy MP3 triggers too. 🤔

04/22/2026

So today I'm doing something a little different. Today's video is a longer format since I had a day long project ahead of me.

This is my 2nd full day working on the '66 Gottlieb Subway after FOUR of its coils burnt up. If you ever wanted to see how to repair a burnt reel (or three!) this one's for you.

04/17/2026

I was shocked to see that as of Thursday, ALL of my repairs have held up! Even Corral! Finally, an opportunity to work on something new!

I did grab Tim early to see if we could go over the '71 Williams Sniper coin mech note. Turns out the wire switches on that mech are hard to come by and he wanted to make sure it was handled correctly. So, I guess it works! We cleared the rest of the coin jams and the game was up again! Unfortunately, two of the three moving targets are not moving. The soldier runs, but the tank and rocket launcher do not. I removed the mechanicals to take a look-see. I was unfamiliar with the configuration but I could see the switches on the tank were broken off, and the rocket has the switches, but is not activating. It's still fun to shoot the guy, and the bottom targets, so I cleaned it up and put it back together. I'll study up on this one and see if I can hunt down a new switch for the tank.

I still had time for another project, and I'd been meaning to get back to the '66 Gottlieb Subway. I got this one up and working about a year ago, but a few weeks ago it went dark again. This one already had some prior burns, but this time it was much worse. The backbox had a very crispy bell bonger coil, a smoky M relay, and the bigger bell was also broken. I cleaned up the burn on the frame and found a replacement coil, and a new bonger plunger. I popped out the M relay and one of the switch blades had fused to the nylon frame, but was otherwise intact. I cleaned the charring, filed the pitted contacts, and reassembled the relay. At least the obvious stuff was done...

I found a new grommet for the broken bell and remounted it so it now rings again, instead of klanks. I started moving through the rest of the game... I cleaned and lubed the sticky pop bumper spoons, and I cleaned and aligned all the steppers to boot. I felt like this thing was going to start right up! As I hit the power and started a game... nothing happened. I hit my kill switch and went back to the only thing I hadn't checked yet, the score reels. The bell coil had clearly fried, and I assumed that was the only cause of the campfire smell, but that would have been too easy...

Not one, but TWO of the reels had badly burned coils, and the 10's reel had some heat damage too. Kinda ugly. I had already spent hours on the Subway, and I still had a couple of stops to go. But my time was up, so I closed it up. I'll get back on it next week and I feel pretty confident that after fixing those reels, the Subway will be running once again!

Catch you on the flipside.

04/14/2026

Happy Tuesday! It was a fun and productive day at the HOF today! The day started off right when Tim gave me a box of 30's pinball parts to help me replace the missing shooter on my Contact project, because the original shooter did not make the journey. Good to know people. There may be some helpful stuff in there to fix some of the woodrails too. But I digress...

The HOF is huge. Sometimes it feels like drinking from a firehose, but I've decided to concentrate on two specific sections of the HOF, the two rows left of center, and I call them Bally Ave, and Gottlieb St (neither being exclusive, but close enough for Tim's world). Additionally, there are a bunch of non-pin EM games that I've really been itching to tackle, so concentrating on one area keeps the majority of the games working, and I'm already familiar with them when they're not. Makes for quicker fixes. And that was how today rolled.

Over on Bally St, I finished my topper project, as I've been adding info-toppers to the (for now) pre-80's machines and certain other games of historic significance. As I started working on my first game of the day, a customer came up to me to say how cool the toppers were and that the game next to me was made the same month and year he was born. YES! That's exactly my intended effect. Time. History. And how it connects to each person differently. Anyway, check em out the next time you're at the HOF.

As for fixes, I flew through a bunch of minor fixes and adjustments... Flying turns had a stepper come loose, fixed it. Rockmakers Zipper flipper was oddly stuck but cycling the power fixed that. Bowling Queen needed switch adjustments. Corral needed another pop switch adjustment, but hey, it's not blowing fuses! Showboat has been a solid fix, but the manual ball lifter has always been problematic. This time I replaced both mounting screws and gave it a really solid connection this time. Lifter was lifting smooth as silk.

Now, as much as I love a good Pinball machine, I also love EM Shooter games (and driving, and flying... etc.). The first shooter I ever played was an old 40's Seeburg Shoot the Bear Game that I played at my local arcade when I was very very young, and for years afterwards I wasn't sure if that had been real, or just some arcade fever dream! Now that's an amazing game, doubly so for its time. Anyway, Tim has two EM shooters in the house and I decided things were in good enough shape to go poke around the shooters.

The first one was a '71 Williams Sniper. I cleaned out all the dust and I was able to start and play a game (to my surprise). I reattached the rifle chain and cleaned the target contacts. The coin mech was jammed full of coins, which I cleared, but was not able to get it to add credits once it was cleared. Normally I'd take the mech apart, but Tim had a note that only HE shall touch this mech. So be it. I let him know.

The 2nd shooter was a '74 Chicago Coin Funland. This one too appeared to be functioning just fine. Even has the original 8-Track, but sadly, not the tape. It did have a white light in it, which I replaced with a blacklight. There is a slot for a 2nd bulb, which it needs, but it's fluorescent and the fixture wasn't working. Likely needs a new ballast, though a new LED PnP may also do the trick if that's the case.

So yeah, a very productive Tuesday. If things stay in good shape, I may take a look at an EM driving and/or flying game I've been meaning to dig into. We'll see... on Thursday!

The Czarcade

05/15/2026

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