EM Pinball--basic question

[fcjim]

I recently acquired a 1950 Chicago Coin Fighting Irish pin. My great-grandfather played on the 1904 Notre Dame football team so even though I'm not a huge ND fan, it was a very cool pin to pick up. It appears to be in pretty good condition for its age. It is missing some playfield parts which are probably going to be impossible to find, and one relay (or something) seems to get stuck every once in a while, but it does work. Looking forward to fixing it up and learning a bit about EM pinball games.

It's my first EM pin and since a manual/schematics seem impossible to find online, I can't find an answer to a very basic question: How many pinballs does the game use, and what size pinballs are used in this game? When I got it, it had four pinballs inside, two of them were the "regular" pinball size and two are slightly smaller.

I read someplace that said the 1-1/16 size was the standard after 1950, but since this was made in 1950, that doesn't help me a lot. Anybody have an idea what size, and how many, this or a similar Chicago Coin game would have used? And if anybody can point me to somewhere I can download a manual/schematic for this game, I sure would appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[asteroidsNut]

You will not find a downloadable schematic for a EM game that I know of. But if anybody has one to purchase and a good place to start, is with Jeff Wager (978) 475-0144.

 

[KenLayton]

General information about the machine:

https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=843

For all electromechanical pinball machine parts/info you want to go to Steve Young's Pinball Resource in New York:

http://www.pbresource.com/

No downloadable schematics available. To purchase a full sized hard copy, go here:

http://www.pbresource.com/mansch.html

Back in those days the only paper included in the machine when new was just a schematic and some score/instruction cards. If you needed to buy parts, you had to purchase a Chicago Coin Parts Catalog of that year (a June 1952 catalog would probably be close enough). Steve Young has some catalogs available to purchase. The parts catalogs all have exploded views so you can see how everything goes together.

Even in 1950, it probably used 1-1/16" diameter pinballs. Steve Young would know for sure.

If you want to learn about repairing electromechanical pinball/arcade machines, visit these two sites:

http://www.pinrepair.com/em/index.htm

http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=EM_Repair

You'll want to print out all the information there so have plenty of paper and ink in your printer.

 

[fcjim]

Great info, thank you! I will definitely reach out to Pinball Resource and see what they can tell me.

 

[calvin12]

1-1/16 is likely right, its probably 5 balls, but maybe not. The smaller balls might fit in a roll tilt in the cabinet, if it has one. But it would only use one of those balls. Most likely it can play fine with either size and they just put in what was available. Steve Young, as has been mentioned, is a great EM parts resource.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

Get new pinballs. I could see the pits in those from the picture. They will eventually mess up / tear up your playfield.

 

[calvin12]

Get new pinballs. I could see the pits in those from the picture. They will eventually mess up / tear up your playfield.

will they beat up the field, yes eventually. On a game like this, it will happen in approximately the year 59037 give or take a week. But new balls will look nicer.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

By the way, by CC SuperScore (mid-restore, behind a few other projects) had 5 1 1/16" pinballs in it. I found the diagram for mine glued to the back door of the head. You might look there. I predict a lot of flex-filing in your future.

 

[fcjim]

By the way, by CC SuperScore (mid-restore, behind a few other projects) had 5 1 1/16" pinballs in it. I found the diagram for mine glued to the back door of the head. You might look there. I predict a lot of flex-filing in your future.

Unfortunately, the back door is missing, so any diagram that may have been glued to it is long gone. Somebody put in its place a piece of old interior wood paneling cut to roughly the same size as the missing door. Looks like that has worked for a number of years!

I have contacted pinballresource, thanks for the recommendations. Hopefully I can get some answers and some parts for this old thing.

I've plugged the game in and it seems to work, more or less. One of the pop bumpers sticks and buzzes, and I can't get it to reset the replays when the game is powered off (maybe it's not supposed to?), so once I push in the coin acceptor the first time, the game never ends. But other than that, everything seems to work as it's supposed to.

I have one more question I hope somebody can give me some feedback on: this game has two flippers, with two flipper buttons and two separate coil mechanisms, but both flippers activate together no matter which flipper button I press. Is this normal for a game from this era? Or is this a sign of a wiring problem of some sort? The two flippers do have different wires going to each, but I can't trace them back to where they start. The flipper buttons have the same colored wire going to each, which makes me think they are wired as one common button, but without a schematic I have no way of telling.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!

 

[calvin12]

You will not find a downloadable schematic for a EM game that I know of. But if anybody has one to purchase and a good place to start, is with Jeff Wager (978) 475-0144.

Lots of EM schematics on IPDB, not this one, no gottleibs, and more game with no schematics than with schematics, but there are many that do exist.