Playfield Protector Installation

[DRD]

Thanks to @Spadge for posting his installation recently, it spurred me on to do mine.

My paragon has a really good playfield but it visibly wears after a league meeting or show. Also, it has a number of dished inserts. I know that Playfield Protectors are not a panacea, they have their weaknesses - but it was a cost effective way of killing two birds with one stone.

I bought this a year ago but could not face putting it on as I loathe setting up flippers on Bally SS games.

Anyway, it went on this morning. All very smooth.



I had to remove three of the four flippers, pop bumper caps, the wire lane guides and all of the one way wire gates.

I had to adjust the protector in three places, only by a couple of mm, and I used a leather hole punch to do this.

I adjusted two of the rollovers as the protector desensitised them a little bit. I also raised the inline drop targets a little so they were flush with the raised surface.

It works beautifully. Luckily there was no need to adjust the flipper bats, as the gap between the bearing and the bat was unaffected by the protector. The issue with Bally SS games is that the flipper shafts develop two gouges where the grub screws bite into them. This makes it very hard to reuse or adjust flipper bats after you have tightened them properly.

A worthwhile purchase if you have an old game with dishing and / or you want to be nice to your playfield

 

[carl lawrence]

You got there David what is a "leather hole punch " ?
Pic please to put me out of my misery or not

 

[DRD]

Here you go baby .....

 

[carl lawrence]

Of course it is
Innovative Idea in using that to do the job

 

[DRD]

In a collection, Paragon is an awesome game. It also has some of the finest art to ever grace a Pinball machine. 1970s blonde with Farah Fawcett hairstyle, blue bikini and matching eye shadow, that just blends so naturally with Ancient Greek type stuff....




These wide body Ballys are huge, a real handful. The late 70s Bally pre-linear flippers are the best in the history of pinball imho - no transistors involved, just manual high voltage switches so they offer incredible control, power and immediacy.

 

[Spadge]

I was so pleased with it, i bought more.

 

[CliveP]

I havent done my paragon yet. Which holes did you need the hole punch for?
How did you get the wire forms out?
Is the raising of the inline drops easy enough?
Regards
Clive

 

[DRD]

The playfield protector was a little tight on the lower right wire form lane guides. So these were the holes I enlarged. You could just file the holes a bit, but that would have created dust.

The wire forms just pull out. No tools are needed, though I only just managed to get them out with my bare hands.

Raising the drop targets by about 1mm is a piece of cake. The mech is designed to be adjustable. You just need to undo two screws, these establish the height of the metal floor that the targets rest on. It is one of those rare 5 minute jobs that actually takes 5 minutes