Repairing a Customer's Gottlieb CUE BALL WIZARD Pinball Machine!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joe's Classic Video Games, back with another cool pinball repair video for you this evening. This time we have Gottlieb's Q-Ball Wizard. I dropped this off a couple nights ago, used to be in decent shape. He called me the other day and he said he had a Q-Ball Wizard, and he knew exactly what was wrong with it. The guy was a pretty smart guy, so he told me. It's broke. So, if you watch the channel, you probably know I'm more into the arcade games. My brother, Ronnie, usually does these pinball machines. They're pretty backed up, and this one may be an easy one. I don't know. I have not plugged it in. I didn't mess with it. I literally just tilted the head back up right before I started this video. And I thought when the guy called, he said a coil was bad. But now that I see it, he may have actually told me it needed a shooter rod. And it's inside the cabinet, but the handle's broke on it. So I may have to order one of these, or maybe I have a different style that I can make work. I'm not sure. So this was an older guy, real smart guy. He even taped the glass in case, that's for if it breaks, it don't get all over the place. We kind of felt bad for the guy though, because this is actually a really heavy machine. These Gottliebs of this era, some of the heaviest pinballs there are. So I wasn't here, I already left, and he dropped it off with Ronnie. And Ronnie was pushing it with the cart. Off the guy's trailer, Ronnie could have done it himself. But the guy was trying to help him. And this guy was, you know, he was a little older. And, yeah, he was worn slap out. And it kind of looked like Ronnie was pushing most of it anyway. The guy, anyway, it was a whole thing. So I'm kind of curious how he even loaded the thing. Did he have a friend help him? Or maybe he had a bobcat or a forklift or something he set it on the trailer with. but yeah i don't understand i don't see how the guy loaded it himself he must have paid somebody or had another way to do it anyway let's plug it in ain't got time for this stuff let's go why are we still talking here i guess we gotta shut the door all right we're gonna turn the machine on it does appear to be on take off the blue tape it looks like it's decent i'm sure it's probably got full mylar on it and i've said that in my other videos and i should probably tell you what Mylar is, it's like a plastic layer that goes over the paint and some machines came with that from the factory and some didn't. So most of these pinballs of this age have plastic protective layer all over the playfield called Mylar. So you don't really see any wear anywhere because it's got the plastic on top of it. But if you get a game like this, it did not have Mylar on it and you're And you're basically rolling the ball over the actual paint. So these get wear? Because you're literally wearing all the paint off of the playfield. It does not have Mylar. By the time they got up to this point, pretty much all the machines had Mylar. So that's why this one still looks very nice. It's dirty, but the paint's not off of it. Let's see if it'll start a game. It's got a ball over there. Probably trying to find the ball. Do this without breaking the glass. There we go. Chalking and start chalking. Quit talking and start chalking. It does look like it's actually working. We need a freaking shooter rod. So I got to see if I can find one of those. I know I'm not going to have this exact type, but maybe I have something that I can make work. So I typed in cue ball wizard shooter rod just to see what it even looked like. And it started pulling up all these ones where people were taking eight balls and stuff and putting them on there. So then it got me thinking, well, I've got this piece. Couldn't I just go to Walmart and buy an eight ball, drill it and glue it to this? So then I check Walmart and they've got them on there for $9. That wasn't the factory, that didn't come that way from the factory. You know, that's just a mod people are doing. And I was thinking, well, I might do that. So then I'm looking around and just to make sure I don't have a eight ball or a shooter tip rod. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll text Ronnie. So Ronnie, I text Ronnie, my brother. I said, hey, do we have any pinball shooter rods? Because again, I don't really do this type of stuff. I clean them and stuff like that. and he writes me back and he says look look behind the door on the bookshelf at the bottom in the box so sure enough i come back here and i didn't stage this this is exactly how it was sitting and this box is full of random stuff there's a red one there that would actually work but this black one was sitting right here and it's obviously a new one and it looks pretty dang similar to what would be on that cue ball wizard from the factory so I'm just going to put this one on there. I'm not going to fool with the eight ball from Walmart and all that. I don't even know if that guy would have liked that. You know, this is probably the exact one that would have been on there. So I didn't want to really go modifying it if I had just the original one, but whatever. So I'm going to put this on there and we'll see if everything else works on the machine. All right. I got the new shooter rod on there. New shooter tip. Same spring from the other one. Seems to be working just fine. Let's see. Quit talking and start talking. Yeah buddy, you know what that means. We're gonna make that money today. So it's always good to get the easy ones like this. I think that's gonna do just fine. I think that's probably exactly what was on there before. So the guy, that's all he really wanted done. But I'm gonna go ahead and try to clean it up a little bit before I call him. I'm gonna clean, see this cue ball looks, I think I can get that a lot cleaner. Look at this eight ball. See if I can get that cleaner, probably get that cleaner. Some of that wear over there has come off with the magic eraser. So I'm not gonna fully shop this thing or anything like that, but I am gonna, you know, clean it up the best I can within reason. And then I'm going to make sure all the lights are working. I may change a couple of these rubber rings and then we'll play a game and see if everything works. I'll be back with you when I get all that done. All right, I got the play field cleaned up a little bit. Like I say, I didn't go crazy with it. Two ball cleaned up a lot better. Eight ball didn't clean up as well. All that had a lot of dirt and grime on it up there. I was able to get off the Magic Eraser. There's actually two type of pinball people. You know, some pinball people want everything perfect. Oh, it's got a little scratch here. Nah, I wouldn't even play that one. Then other people, they just want to shoot the ball. They want to flip the flippers, hit the ball around. That's the type of people we sell to. We don't want to sell to people who want everything on it perfect and this isn't even our machine we're just working on this for a guy and this isn't we're not going to be charging this guy very much money because there wasn't really too much wrong with it. This is pretty much our base charge so we're not going to get rich on this repair but we love these type of repairs. Quick and easy ones keeps the bills paid that's what we like. So I did the shooter tip. I changed the flipper rubbers. They actually had Bally flipper rubbers on there. There we go. bulbs are thinner. They're supposed to be thin ones like this. So I swapped those out. This didn't clean up that great. But again, it's fine. This guy, he wasn't that concerned with the wear. I did get everything else a lot cleaner. So I think he'll be happy with all of that. But I noticed a minute ago that all of the general illumination bulbs are out. That one and that one. I'm sure there's more up there. So it's probably got a bad connection in the back box so we're going to take that glass out. We got to look all that over anyway even though it's running. We still got to look at it at least. Again it's going to be a base charge. I'm not getting rich off this repair. I don't want you thinking I'm charging this guy a fortune to change the shooter rod. We have a minimum charge and this is going to be that. But anyway I want to make sure that the bulbs just aren't all burned out. They could all be burned out, but not likely. It's probably a bad connection up at the top. So I'm going to have to figure that out, and then we'll play a game, check out all the other bulbs, we'll put it in test. I'll check them all, make sure they're all working. Looks like I got a couple up there out on the solids, but maybe I don't have those lit yet. I don't know. I'll figure it out and test. Don't you worry about it, okay? So I'm going to get the illumination working, change all the bulbs, we'll play a game, and we'll see how it goes. Well, I checked all the fuses, and the third one from the top was blown. I've dropped it. Let's see what the third one down from the top says. Playfield illumination, 10-amp slow blow. So I put another 10-amp slow blow in that baby. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. We're getting somewhere now. All right, so I'm going to put it back down, put it in test, check all the bulbs, and then we'll play a game. I should have had that playfield down already. Hold on. Is that gonna fall? I wanted to show you. Everything in the back box looks really clean. Really clean. Nobody's been in there messing around. Looks like all the original stuff, all the connectors look really good. So anyway, I'm gonna get the tape off the glass and all that, and we'll play a game. All right, I think I got all of the light bulbs working. There were quite a few burned out. I think I got them all working though, but I'm sure somebody will see one that I didn't get. So make sure you look close. I think that I got them all. You can rewind. They're all working. Took that one off and changed a couple of those too. Put it all back together and play a game finally. All right, we're gonna play it with the lights on just to switch everything up. I read the comments. I think Ronnie usually plays them in the dark and then people, half of them like that, the other half want it with the lights on. I go back and forth. We do a little bit of this, a little bit of that around here. Talking and start talking. Quit talking and start chalking. It's a pretty nice game. That's solid. Got solids and there I go hitting down the stripes and letting the ball drain. That's what happens when you start talking. He's got it on five ball. When I was messing around in the menu earlier, I saw that you could actually take that cue ball out and there's a different setting to play it without the cue ball. But that's no fun, I wouldn't think. Get back in there. Obviously, I'm not very good at pinball. I got the horseshoe. You've got to stay away from that ramp. Anytime you go up that ramp, right down the middle. Multiball. Yeah, buddy. Oh, come on. I got the ramp shot. Yeah, buddy. I got 10 million points, I think. You ain't thinking of leaving now, are you? I ain't leaving yet, partner. I'm going to play again. Talking and start talking. All right. I got 50 million that time, if anybody was wondering. What you call is a bank shot. You got solid. Take the bank shot. Flippers are nice. Four-sue extra ball round. Yee-haw! Let's go for the heart. I'm trying. You guys know. Thank you. Thank you. Extra ball. Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Oh, I'm supposed to... All right. All right. I'm trying. There you go. Told you I was going to do it. I got another 10 million. You know what I just noticed all the GE lights went back out. I'll have to mess with that some more. I don't know why it keeps blowing that fuse. I thought I was almost done here. No way around. Use the wipe target. I'm doing a lot better than I did the first game. I've already got 72 million. It's a quarter pocket. That's what you call the bank shot. Multi-ball! Time's up. This is what you call the bank cut. Yeah, buddy, did you see? Oh, oh, I almost did it again. I got too carried away with it. Look at it. I saved it there for a second. Well, it's all over partner. Well, I got to figure out what's going on with them GI lights. I thought I was going to be almost done with this thing. All right. I'll be back when I figure something out with that. All right. So one of these GI lights must be shorted together and I'm looking all over the place. And remember it, if you watch the video, I watched it back myself and it, whatever this kick out, whenever the ball went into the back, it kicked that ball out and it immediately blew the fuse. Well, it turned out all the GI lights and blew the fuse. So I'm looking around. So it's gotta be one of those sockets. And I found this one. Let's see, I'll focus in on it. Where am I here? That one's really close. See that dab of solder there? It's not touching, but I'm thinking maybe it vibrated it just enough, you know? I'm gonna bend that out, I think, and put another fuse in it, and then we'll try it again. I just found these two. These are supposed to be, that bulb is supposed to be up in that hole. Same with that one. So I'm gonna unscrew these, put it back up in there, and screw it back in. I don't know why they got them bent down that far. All right, so I got it all straight, I think. The two sockets over there, The ones that had the bulbs laying down, I think that could have possibly been it because whenever I'd laid the playfield down, they're really close to the metal bracket that holds the playfield. So the way they had them laying flat could have been shorting them together. Don't know. I went ahead and fixed them anyway. And then I found this one kind of more towards the middle of the playfield. And that was actually flux, the pinball guy Clay. You don't know who Clay is. He's like the master at pinball repair. pinrepair.com the man Clay himself he says they use flux on these and that flux will rust that way and cause these to short together this one wasn't shorted it just it looked bad so i went ahead and changed it and then uh we had that one where i showed you where the the ground wire looked like it was super close to touching so all that to say between the combination of all of that it seems to have fixed it i've played it quite a bit but we'll play it one more time It's still, you know, I could do a couple other things to it, but you know, a couple of the flashers have a little issue. I could clean it up. I could shop the whole thing, but remember the customer only really wanted me to change the shooter rod. He wasn't really concerned with anything else. I did clean it up a little bit like I showed you earlier. It's much cleaner than it was when he brought it in. All right, here we go. See how he does me. He tells me to mention all this stuff and he tells me to shut up and play the game. You can see how he does me. So this was a pretty easy repair. That's fair. You got solid. I like, I like this game. This is a good one. If I had a big house with a nice finished basement, I'd have something like this in there. I do not have a big house with a finished basement. I have just a regular size house, probably much smaller than yours. But to me, this is a good. era of pinball and it's got the cool pool ball theme. Anything with a pool theme or a car theme always does really well. I think the guy's gonna be real happy with it. But yeah like I was saying I like this one. This is my type of machine here. I'm not really big into the EMs. You know they're just too old for me. I'm not as old as I look. I know I'm bald and I look like I'm 60. but I'm actually only 39 if you can believe that. I've lived lived a hard life. Yeah I like this type and like the Williams like firepower those are pretty cool. This is probably what I would get if I were to get one from my house. Plays good. Flipper's nice and strong. That's where it blew the fuse earlier remember when it kicked out. I've tried it like 30 times so I'm pretty sure I've got that problem fixed. I think what happened is it vibrated slightly when it kicked it out earlier Made one of those sockets on the side over there touch the rail is what I think happened. It's an extra ball. There you go. Yeehaw! Yeah buddy, you know what that means. Got an extra game. What you call the bank shot. 21, 21, 21. Well, well I got you here. I want to thank you for using our Amazon links. Have I mentioned the Amazon links? If you want to buy anything on Amazon, if you click the link below this video, you got to hit the more button and then it'll take you to an Amazon link. And if you hit that button before you buy anything on Amazon, it gives me a tip for sending you to Amazon. So lots of people have been doing that and we appreciate it. Gives us a little extra money at the end of the month. It adds up. You like that, don't you? Didn't think I could do it again, did you? I like this one. I think I'd buy one of these if I had a spot for it. Time's up. I like to play three balls. I think five ball is a little too much. What do you guys think? Do you play five ball or do you play the three ball on the pinballs? Leave it down in the comments. I guess if you're paying to play it out at a bar or something you'd probably want the five ball but if you got it in your house you probably want the three ball. More bang for your buck. Yeah to me this is just enough. You know anything newer than this to me has too much going on but this this is just right for me. Got a nice little light show there. Got a good theme. It's got multi-ball on it too even though I didn't get it. I think I got it earlier It was earlier when I was playing it, didn't it? I don't remember. I thought about it too much. Let it go right past me. Yee-haw, multi ball, yep, buddy. Come on, it's called a bank shot. What you call is a bank shot. Get a lot of play for a quarter. Feel like I've been playing this a while. Doopty, doopty-loo. Well, that's that. Wasn't everything you expected it to be. I'm leaving, partner. All righty, well, I think it turned out pretty good. I think the guy's gonna be real happy with it. Didn't cost him a fortune to get repaired. Everything turned out pretty good. I like it. I left the tape on the back glass because he's probably going to want me to put tape back on this whenever he gets here. But anyway, thanks everybody for watching. We appreciate it. We'll see you on the next one.