A new machine has joined the project: a very nice 1978 Solid State Gottlieb Sinbad.

It seems in fairly good shape, save for a little electronic problem somewhere which, according to its previous owner, permanently powers one of the reset coils. Stay tuned!

Today I've found another pinball machine for the project. It's a 1979 SS Bally Kiss pinball!

I took it "as is", untested, but the machine looked generally good. The playfield was reasonably used, so was the cabinet and backbox. The backglass (US version, not German, same for the playfield), though slightly "bubbled" has been properly covered with vinyl and looked really nice. No visible scratch or corrosion on the metal paint.

Let's see what we can do with this new machine!

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).

I had a better look at the CFTBL now, and here's the result:

There are a few missing items:

• The lockdown bar
• One ball has gone missing
• The left slingshot plastic is from another machine, a Doctor Who, see this picture:
  

Also, all the rubbers need to be replaced, the plunger knob is damaged, and the wiring needs a thorough check (there are obvious plugs mismatches, unsoldered elements, and weird shunts and other electric hacks that look really wrong)!

Here we go, second pinball collected!

I got my hands on a relatively damaged 1992 Solid-State (SS) Bally Creature From The Black Lagoon, a.k.a CFTBL. The previous owners made an (many?) attempt(s) at fixing things, but at first glance it looks like they didn't know what they were doing.

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!