What happened to the Whoopee since the vitrification of the playfield? Quite a few things, since the game is now (almost) playable! ;-)

The quite standard procedure (and as usual very well documented on Pinrepair), has been adapted to the particular case of this machine:

Finally, the playfield of the Whoopee has been completely restored. Pictures of the complete process can be found here:

I've conducted two operations on the Whoopee lately:

First, I've replaced the broken backbox female connector for which I received replacement thanks to a very nice eBay seller (7059didier). It went relatively smoothly; old solder melts nicely at a relatively low temperature, so despite the fact there there was a lot of solder on each wire, removing them was easy:

I'm waiting to get some rosin flux before soldering back the wires to the new connector, which, as a used part, already has some solder on it.

I've done a few things with the Whoopee now:

More purchases
First, after transporting it from the warehouse to my home a couple weeks after the purchase, I bought the machine's flyer on eBay, as well as complete sets of rubbers, light bulbs (#47, I don't want the plastics to suffer anymore), a used shooter rod, 5 bumper scoring NC switches (many thanks to the guys at PinballHQ for helping me identifying them; they were all broken, and I wanted to have spare), standard 1 1/16" balls, and backglass connectors (which were broken too, as you can see on the pictures).

Today I got my very first pinball machine: a 1964 Williams Electro-Mechanical (EM) Whoopee!

I found it thanks to the help of a friend in a consignment shop in Paris, it was covered in dust, hidden under a staircase. Despite the dust, the machine looked promising; it obviously suffered from excessive humidity, but the playfield was in really good condition, and the backglass was as good as it could be.

For the records, it apparently came from a decedent's estate and was found in a barn...

This gets me started!