My restoration of a "Ball Walk" (1960s) game (Cointroinics)

her sister...

see picture.
 

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I see this is now added to VAPS.

I had put in a request a long time ago, not sure if it was due to that or not, but I'm happy to see it there.

I don't see any pics up, although I do see there are several pending images from me. Hopefully they'll get posted.
 
Thanks to tstone and this thread, I picked up a Ball Walk four years later. I thought I would share some info & pics.

Mine is the earlier, non-electrified version. According to the May 24, 1969 issue of Billboard (Coin Machine News section), "COINTRONICS, Mountain View, Calif., is introducing an updated version of its electric Ball/Walk unit, featuring buzzers, chimes and lights. A secondary feature is a light which flashed when the player touches the machine -- before the coin is inserted. Gross receipts, according to G. Ransom White, Cointronics president, are up 30-50 per cent over the original mechanical unit."

So I am assuming mine is from 1968 and tstone's version is 1969. Groovy, man. You can easily spot the difference because the electric one has the extra "Ring My Chimes" artwork at the front of the glass.

Mine was DIRTY but cleaned up easily. Diluted Simple Green cleaned up the cabinet without any damage to original surface paints. The white plastic tray/playfield insides cleaned up VERY well with Simple Green and the ever-popular Magic Eraser (melamine sponge). Same for the aluminum trim. I chucked the rods into my drill and cleaned with different sandpapers (80 grit up to 600 grit), then Mother's mag polish. The few exposed hardware screws spent a day in the parts tumbler as did my collection (ok my kids' collection, lol) of dimes.

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Mine did not work because the balls were the wrong size & rusty, and the plastic rod-mounting area was blown out. I got new balls (1.25") from 'bctrade' on Ebay. $16.50 shipped for 5 balls. Cheaper than pinballresource. With the proper sized and new, clean balls, the wire loading mechanism pretty much worked again.

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I repaired the plastic rod-mount area. The rods are mounted to very thin plastic and I'm surprised any of these survive without damage from rough use on location. My solution was to form a block of contoured wood to fit up inside the hollow mounting area. Then, because this white plastic tray is elevated inside the cabinet, I created another wood block as a spacer to fill the gap between the contoured block and the bottom of the cabinet. The rods can then be screwed down into the contoured block. I created some rails around the spacer block to hold it in place. Works well and can be un-done if service is needed. I used #6 (I think) wood screws (instead of the machine bolts) and simply screwed the rod screws into the wood stack from above. I decided to drill out the rivet for the "Roll Ball Uphill" sign so I could take things apart. I secured this sign with a wood screw into the wood stack when I was done.

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My rod closure spring was not very effective, so I added some black spacers at the rod mounting end. This moved the spring forward, to a wider rod width and resulted in more spring-biased, closing action.

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I don't have much counter space, so I built a stand. I have a fair amount of spare pinball parts so I built the stand designed like a pinball cabinet. I made a frame from 1x3 pine and fastened it using a Kreg pocket hole jig. Then I cut, mitered and glued/screwed 4 pieces of 1x8 primed trim boards to the inner frame. The outer cabinet is about 1/4" higher than the inner frame so that the machine sits down a bit, but not too much so as to leave clearance for removing the coin tray at the rear of the machine. I added 2 cross braces, dadoed to remove some material to receive the bottom of the game cabinet's feet/rails.

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I had some spare corner blocks from other pinball projects that I cut to fit into the corner spaces. I built a corner-drilling jig to assist with accurately drilling the holes for the leg bolts through the outside corners of the cabinet and through the corner blocking. The holes inside must be accurately spaced enough to match the threaded leg plates I had on hand ("Leg-Tee", $1.29 ea. at pinballresource.com) and the leg's bolt hole spacing on the outside. You can widen poorly drilled/aligned holes, but the jig helps a lot to eliminate problems.

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I found a great color match to the orange at home depot (Rustoleum 214084 Orange, gloss spray paint). The 3/4" aluminum angle trim from home depot was also a nice match to the existing trim. I secured the trim with twist nails (Siderail Nails from pinballresource, GTB-FA-701, $0.18 each). I had some very thin-walled pinball legs (28.5") in my stash which worked well here as the game is not very heavy. The old legs spent 24 hours in my Evaporust bath PVC tube to remove rust and then got a few coats of silver hammertone spray paint. New legs can be bought at PBR ($13.40 each). Leg bolts too (3/8 X 16 X 2 1/2, $0.58 each). Leg levelers can also be used to tweak game angle and therefore difficulty, although I've noticed that perfectly horizontal is a pretty good setup. The height of the game is quite comfortable to play with the 28.5" legs. To secure the cabinet to my stand I drilled a hole through each cross brace and through the game's 1/4" cabinet bottom (*gasp*). Be sure to locate holes to avoid any game guts. I installed a T-nut into each hole and then secured with a washer and a removable thumbscrew (1/4 in.-20 x 1-1/2 in. Coarse Zinc-Plated Steel Thumb Screw - Home Depot SKU #194109).

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My game was missing 2 of the 3 knobs for the player controls. I believe that the ball load knob was originally a 5/8" white plastic ball while the rod caps were black rubber caps. I went with white for all three. For the rod caps I stole 2 protective "end caps" (Rubbermaid #3D60, but also available at home depot) from a rubbermaid closet wire shelving unit of mine and they fit great. For the larger white ball, I got five 5/8" Inch Delrin Plastic Ball Bearings G1-5 Bearings from Amazon for $5.95 shipped. Easy enough to put in a vice and drill hole to press fit onto rod.

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The final touch was a spare "HOLD CHUTE IN" repro sticker that tstone gave me (thanks!) which were made by KLOVer etienneodk I think (thanks!).

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I noticed some different artwork, even among the electrified versions. Compare this pic (not mine) to tstone's above. There is some extra text in the orange bubbles.

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Big thanks to tstone and mcdefjef for putting info about this game out there. I just picked one up, and am pretty excited about it. It appears to be complete, and is in reasonably good shape. Did not come with balls, or a key, so I haven't been able to test it yet. Hopefully I'll have time to drill the lock this weekend and see what's what. I have some standard pinballs I can at least use for testing.

I see there are electrified and non-electrified versions of this game. Mine is electrified, by the way. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the electric versions are later, however mine is a $.05 machine, whereas all of the (admittedly very few) pictures I can find online are of $.10 machines. You would think a $.05 machine would be an earlier example, but it's electric. Very odd. Anyway, looking forward to tearing into it and getting it cleaned up and working.

Oh, general question for the group. Two of my score stickers are missing. Is there a go-to company or person for having such things reproduced? I'd love to replace them.

Thanks!

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Congrats on the new game.

There are definitely some inconsistencies with different versions of the game. I agree that it is odd to see a 5c electric version, but I assume currency pricing was an operator option.

You can tell yours spent a lot of time getting moved around a warehouse. Note the ball tracks of dirt on the back wall indicating time spent flat, on its side and upside down!

I've not seen anyone documenting new score labels. They are just basic paper labels - from what I recall. I'd try to see if any of these are a close match.
 
Big thanks to tstone and mcdefjef for putting info about this game out there. I just picked one up, and am pretty excited about it. It appears to be complete, and is in reasonably good shape. Did not come with balls, or a key, so I haven't been able to test it yet. Hopefully I'll have time to drill the lock this weekend and see what's what. I have some standard pinballs I can at least use for testing.

I see there are electrified and non-electrified versions of this game. Mine is electrified, by the way. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the electric versions are later, however mine is a $.05 machine, whereas all of the (admittedly very few) pictures I can find online

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Yet another version of the screened art...

Mine us electrified with chimes, but mine does not say "defies gravity".

Cool stuff.

I can take a couple pictures of the security Cause when I get back home and you can just put them on regular orange/red sticker paper if you want
 
Big thanks to tstone and mcdefjef for putting info about this game out there. I just picked one up, and am pretty excited about it. It appears to be complete, and is in reasonably good shape. Did not come with balls, or a key, so I haven't been able to test it yet. Hopefully I'll have time to drill the lock this weekend and see what's what. I have some standard pinballs I can at least use for testing.

I see there are electrified and non-electrified versions of this game. Mine is electrified, by the way. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the electric versions are later,

View attachment 733557
It looks from your pictures that yours actually has less scoring rows than mine does!!

Do you have a 500 row?
 
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Yeah, I'm hoping all those ball tracks clean up, or at least improve significantly. The outside is cleaning up nicely so fingers crossed.

I found the two missing stickers inside the game, in reasonably good shape. Nice enough to use for sure.

Yes, it has a 500 row, it's just the angle.
 
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