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Knockout Restoration

Restoration of a 1950 Gottlieb Knockout.

This pin came to me in an unusual way. I was heading to a remote part of our village to take some wildlife photos. I came across this house with this old pin setting out front with a sign nailed to it that said FREE. The playfield glass had been broken and the head was off of it but lying preciously next to it. The playfield was very grimy and worn down to the wood in many places. Several inserts had fallen out and pieces, parts were lying the bottom of the cabinet along with a host of walnut shells and other organic debris(i will not go into detail).

I loaded the pin up, and once I got it home and got a really good look at it I thought it was hopeless mess. After performing an internet search on this pin, I changed my mind and decided that I had nothing to lose. Because I started this project casually with no great expectations, the before pictures are few and not very close up. I now regret this and wish I had taken better pictures.

My first challenge was just to get it cleaned up. I stripped the playfield and started with Mean Green and got most of the surface grime off. Next I used Mr. clean magic eraser with alcohol to perform a detail cleaning. There was still allot of issues after the cleaning but the center of the playfield looked fairly good. Allot of missing graphics, but I was pretty handy with Corel Draw which is a computer program that allows you to draw some pretty amazing graphics. I created stencils to replace the missing sections. I found the best pictures I could find of the playfield on the internet and used them to fill in some missing artwork like the legs on the referee at the bottom of the playfield. After penciling in the missing parts my daughter who is an art student tediously repainted the bad sections and did a wonderful job.

The internet was not exactly filled with information regarding this pin, a few pictures and brief descriptions were all I had to go on. The internal repair of the switching was another huge challenge all of the leaf switches were in bad shape, they were coated with debris and organic material. Normally I would use a burnishing tool to clean the switches, but in this case the switches were so bad that I had to get creative in cleaning them. The standard method of cleaning contacts with alcohol or other types of contact cleaner did little or nothing because none of the products could cut through the organic contamination. The burnishing tool would get clogged frequently and although was effective it was a tedious task. I was also worried about over burnishing the switches and causing flat spots on the contacts. This can lead to bad connections because less of the switch surface will make contact and in high current situations will make the switch heat and arc more than it should causing the leaf to warp due to heat. But for this case (and I don’t recommend this for normal repair at all) I used a little mean green on a cotton swap. This did the trick and it took off the organics very easily. Next I went over it with a swab of wd-40 to perform a final cleaning making sure to wipe the contact dry afterwards. Then with a little burnishing and tightening of the screws, the switches came back to life.

I spent about 300.00 in total for parts and clear coating.

A note on the clear coat; I had never done this before so I enlisted a local body shop to clear coat the playfield.

Below are the pictures that were taken of the project and a couple of videos.