A few weeks ago I got a bout of pinball fever. I like to walk down to our local arcade and play some Asteroids, but lately I find myself playing pinball there instead. Then one night on eBay my curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it I was the owner of a Stern Quicksilver!

So I've got the pinball machine to my workshop, given the plafield a quick cleaning and replaced a couple of rubber rings that were broken. Here's before and after shots...

The playfield needs some work but the game itself plays nicely, so I won’t have to go into any electronic troubleshooting - more the cleaning, touching-up and general restoration of the playfield parts. Here’s a short video that shows some of the games problems…

So things could be a lot worse. For a pinball first-timer I think this machine should be a great introduction. I will need to do a little investigating to find out why half the light's in the backbox aren't getting power, but I'm hoping that should be simple enough. If I do decide to delve deaper into the sordid world of pinball repair, it does appear that the power supply's bridge-recifier board (that's the part than converts AC voltage to various DC voltages) is well toasted, so that could use a rebuild or replacement.

Things have gotten a little hectic since I first picked up the machine, but I've found some time here and there to play around with it. I started editing a video of my initial clean-up of the playfield and put together a 'playfield rotisserie' that should make working on the playfield a lot easier. If all goes according to plan I should get a good amount of work done over the holiday weekend and get more videos posted easrly next week!

Quick Update:
I emailed Joe Entropy (who I knew owns a Quicksilver) and he snapped a few photos of his playfield for me to help with the touch-up painting I'm going to have to do. Here's mine vs Joe's...

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