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it is great that you can still get parts for pinball machines that are decades old
No comments · Posted by beerorkid in borkade
$20 worth of parts restore a machine to working status
Pinball machines are actually machines that wear over time and parts wear out. A big bummer on many machines are that very specific parts are hard to come by. Often you have to rely on message boards or ebay to get specific to a machine parts, but the normal wear parts are abundant and produced still. There are some small pinball machine manufacturer that use the tech and replacement parts from older manufactures to produce new pins.
It is darn meat that I can get brand new switches, coils, flipper parts, and bits today. My favorite source is Pinball Life out of Chicago. They always do me up right and I have never had a problem. They have tours of their place yearly during the biggest pinball expo. It is insane that I can buy 13 of one rubber ring and 11 switches of some sort and know that they roam their warehouse to make up my order and ship it out the same day. Over the years I have ordered enough parts to purchase a very decent pin, and yet I am not sad at all. they continue to keep my pins functioning as best as they can.
Terminator 2 had a strange issue crop up over two weekends of severely heavy use. The left flipper went weak. I tried a bunch of things… even took and emory board to the End Of Stroke switch, which turned out to be the problem. Unfortunately the emory board fix destroyed the tungsten coating on the switch. Picked up a few new EOS switches for $2.50 a piece along with some other bits. And that is what it is like to keep these very old and expensive machines running. Just a few dollars part can shut them down, but at least there is an industry that caters to keeping these amazing pieces of functional art alive. LOVE PINBALL
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