Gottlieb Flipper Rebuild

[Colywobbles]

Ok here’s one for all the Gottlieb techies out there. Inc @MajesticPinball
This is regarding my Sys 3 Mario Bros

My flippers albeit quite strong and make all the shots/ramps they are quite sloppy and don’t have that nice tight feeling.
Now @Pick Holder mentioned he had replaced a few in the past with Ball / Will ones.

So shall I?
fully rebuild with genuine Gottlieb parts.
Just replace bushes / linkages and whatever needed.
Or
Go full Ball / Will or is this sacrilege?

Also to me the flippers look mis-aligned?



in advance Coly

 

[David_Vi]

Gottlieb flipper mechs are the best, at least the earlier ones like on sys80/b

Not A clue about these but I know @OTRawrior has a star gate and I believe did a flipper rebuild with a few tweaks

 

[OTRawrior]

System 3 mechs are dog ****
They wear quickly, on Stargate bad enough that it can quickly be impossible to make ramps.
They also point near straight up, making trapping up stupid easy.

So when I got Stargate, I did a flipper rebuild, and also swapped out the coil stops for the ones from a System 1.

These stops are a little longer, so they stop the flippers at a shallower angle more reminiscent of Williams/Sterns, and stop you being able to trap any ball that comes close to the flippers.

I think the shorter travel also ends up helping the 'effective' power a little, making the ramp shots more resilient to a little flipper wear. I might be making that up...

I really recommend the swap, it makes the game much more fun to play. Part number is A-17908G.

I've got no experience with Sys3s with Williams flippers though, so who knows, maybe that's even better.

 

[Moonraker]

I rebuilt Stargate flippers with genuine Gottlieb parts, no complaints. They didn't wear out quickly. SMB didn't need a flipper rebuild.

Yes, the flippers are set too low.

 

[Pick Holder]

Throw it in the skip and get a proper machine in its place my friend

 

[MajesticPinball]

Keep it original, Gottlieb machines with Williams flipper mechs always feel so gross to me. Part of the system 3 charm is those weird flippers. Generally the grub screws really chew up the flipper shaft so when you try and adjust the flipper angle as soon as your start to tighten the grub screws it just reverts back to how it was. If you're lazy swap the flippers round and you'll have a fresh shaft for the grub screws to adjust into, or remove the flipper/shaft and file down the chewed up area then you'll be all good - the left one is definitely too low currently

Generally I think the later design of flippers (Bone busters and onwards into system 3) are kinda nasty, system 1, 80 and 80b flippers are beautifully engineered mechs and are generally incredibly resilient to wear, its a shame they changed the design

 

[OTRawrior]

Generally the grub screws really chew up the flipper shaft so when you try and adjust the flipper angle as soon as your start to tighten the grub screws it just reverts back to how it was. If you're lazy swap the flippers round and you'll have a fresh shaft for the grub screws to adjust into, or remove the flipper/shaft and file down the chewed up area then you'll be all good

Damn I wished I'd known this before doing Stargate I just thought I was being incompetent.

 

[Jay Walker]

Re. the flipper alignment; I'd reckon they're too low, and my preference seems to be for a lower setting than many. I'd see a choice here, between having the rubber bands in line with the wire rails (as I used to do with Taxi), or projecting an imaginary line through the fixings for the plastics, and aligning the centre line of the flipper with this. These may even be similar in this case.

 

[David_Vi]

or projecting an imaginary line through the fixings for the plastics, and aligning the centre line of the flipper with this. These may even be similar in this case.

In my opinion that's how most games should be. When you align to the alignment holes (if the game has them) with the rubber off that's how most sit.
It varies between games but I've found all of my games played dramatically better by not aligning with the top of the ball guides. It might make it harder to trap the ball at times (no issue with those Gottlieb flippers), but the shots feel so much more natural plus more ski passing from flipper to flipper

 

[Jay Walker]

Thank you, I used this method unless there weren't 'flipper frame' (as Williams called them) ball guides, e.g. Taxi as mentioned above, and Judge Dredd.