Eye of the Tiger

This post features my first electromechanical (EM) machine! Wow. I never thought I'd ever own an EM game, let alone restore one, but here we are. I came across this game a couple of years ago when the old owner offered it to me for sale for a very good price. I couldn't resist, and drove out to Northbridge in Sydney to collect it. The owner lived in a beautiful harbourside mansion, and the Eye of the Tiger (Gottlieb, 1978) was mainly played by him and his son. The story is that this game was originally purchased at a Luna Park auction in 1980 and had sat in this owner's home since that time. 

So, I headed out to the seller's home with Fiona to check out the machine. This place was on the harbour, so the one concern I had was corrosion of the metal assemblies and nuts and bolts due to the house's proximity to the water. This was an issue with some of the metal parts in the backbox, but otherwise, the machine looked quite good. The cabinet artwork was very faded, but the cabinet was otherwise intact and the only word I could think of to describe the backglass was "stunning". I haven't come across many Gottlieb backglasses from the 70s that are intact, let alone this full of colour. The playfield had a bit of wear, especially around the inserts and pop bumpers. The rubbers were deteriorating. The yellow drop targets in the centre of the playfield were also broken so they couldn't actually be hit by a ball. In addition, the game didn't start. Turning it on lit up some playfield lights, but the start button didn't do anything at all.

Initial condition report (click on sections below to view details)

Cabinet

Good condition overall.

• Timber in good condition; nice and solid.
  
• Cabinet artwork heavily faded from original pink and yellow.
  
• Backglass in excellent condition.
  
• Legs in average condition; lightly rusted.
  

Above playfield

Poor condition overall.

• Playfield relatively clean.
• Consumables (rubbers and lamps) dirty and in poor condition.
• Playfield artwork in average condition. Some inserts sunken. Some wear to insert and pop bumper edges.
• Plastics in poor condition. Most broken.
• Playfield mechanisms in good condition.

Under playfield

Average condition overall.

• Most mechanisms and assemblies covered in light coating of oil/grease. Otherwise in good condition.
• Flippers and other coil assemblies quite clean.

Electrical

Average condition.

• Machine would not start a game.
• Backbox and cabinet wiring in good condition.

According to the play counter in the cabinet, the game had had over 43,000 plays. Not too many for a machine supposedly sited at Luna Park. Interestingly, there is no Eye of the Tiger listed on this list of games auctioned off in 1981. So whether it actually came from Luna Park is a mystery. Given its relatively clean look, I'd suspect that if it was ever at Luna Park, it probably wasn't there for long.

As this was my first EM, I had no idea what may have been wrong with it. I had a look at some of the simple stuff to see if I could get a game going— fuses, broken wires, missing parts—but nothing brought the game to life. The owner said that he had had issues with the game not working properly before, and his solution was to spray some of the relays with contact cleaner. Yuck! While I didn't know much about EMs, I did know that contact cleaner is a no-no. So, I already knew there was a lot of cleaning ahead.

Disassembly

A lot of people like EMs for the simple gameplay. While I prefer the more fast-paced gameplay of a more modern game, I definitely like the simpler playfield when it comes to stripping the machine for cleaning! Everything was off the topside of the playfield within 30 minutes.

After disassembly, the game went through my standard restoration process to get it playing and looking like new. During the restoration process, I dealt with a number of issues, described below.

Tips & Troubleshooting (click on sections below to view details)

Relay Coils Burned Out

This is a common issue on 1970s Gottlieb EMs. The game over, first ball, and tilt hold relays are constantly energised when the game is on. They are low resistance coils, so they heat up, burn, and get crispy. Eventually, they stop working altogether. As I was having issues with the score motor turning constantly and the game not resetting, it was potentially related to one of these coils not engaging the switch stack properly. So, I had a look at the relay banks and found a few coils looking very much worse for wear.
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Burned out coils from the game over and first ball relays.

What's left of the burned coil wrappers.

The tilt hold relay was not quite as bad as the two above, but was still badly discoloured. Clay refers to this issue in his repair guides and proposes using a coin door lockout coil (part no. A-16890) instead of the factory coils. These are available locally (PSPA, RTBB). To perform this mod you also need to install two diodes and, sometimes, a 47 uf capacitor (Jaycar). This mod was quite easy to do and the only fiddly part was attaching the second diode to the coil. Since reinstalling these modded coils, the relays work like a charm, and will never burn up again.
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Installation of the A-16890 coil in the hold relay. Capacitor not yet installed.

Relay Switch Stack Adjustments

While inspecting all of the relays in the game, I came across a couple that needed simple adjustment. These were switches that basically needed one of their blades bent to ensure good contact. However there were also a couple of more interesting switch adjustments that I had to do.

The first was on the AX relay, where a make/break switch blade had somehow moved itself into the wrong slot on the armature, meaning that the switch would never 'break'. I loosened the switch stack so I could reposition the blade into the correct slot. No idea how it ended up in the wrong slot!
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Misaligned switch blade (second switch from left).

The previous owner had also advised that he used to spray contact cleaner on the relays occasionally so they would work. Luckily, there wasn't much chemical residue on the relays, except for a couple on the rear of the playfield (extra ball and alternating relay). The switch blades on these relays were dripping with some kind of residue. When a make/break switch was 'broken', the residue would actually clump on the switch contacts and form a bridge! I have no idea if this goo was actually conductive or not, but either way, I cleaned it all off so the switches would disengage cleanly. Yet another reason never to use contact cleaner in an EM.
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Chemical residue forming a bridge between switch contacts.

New Plastic Set and Protective Washers

Eye of the Tiger always seems to have a couple of broken plastics. The plastics above the white, yellow and purple drop targets are the most commonly broken. Balls deflected from the targets go straight up and hit the plastics, and ball speeds are actually quite fast on Eye of the Tiger, too. Thankfully, new plastic sets are available (part no. C17512A, PB Resource) so I bought one to replace my broken and yellowed set.
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Plastics above the drop targets - all broken!

New plastics (and drop targets) installed.

Now, I didn't want to break any pieces of a brand new plastic set, so I was hesitant about installing them without some kind of protection. I installed some clear polycarbonate washers at the vulnerable corners of each of the new plastics (RTBB, PSPA). This will protect them into the future. However, the spinner was a problem. The round washers would not fit next to the spinner. So, I shaped them to the right size, using a bench grinder to grind corners into them. The cut-outs left space for the spinner wire to protrude on either side, and gave clearance for the spinner to spin.
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Polycarbonate washers installed to protect plastics.

Cut-outs in washer to make room for spinner.

I have also seen a couple of games where the plastic on the right edge of the playfield is cracked or chipped at the bottom edge. Again, balls can hit the post in this area and travel upwards to crack the plastic, so a washer in this spot is a good idea, too.

10-Point Switches Not Working

This issue was a relatively simple one, but it took me a while to realise that there was even a problem. Most of the rubber rings in the game have leaf switches behind them that, when hit, will score 10 points. I didn't realise that these weren't actually working until I was trying to solve another issue and I tried to hit some of these switches. None of them added any points to the score. Occasionally, one of them would add 10 points once or twice, but that would be it. After hitting these switches a weird sound in the backbox made me investigate further. The sound was from the 10 point relay, which was locking on and buzzing. 

I cleaned and adjusted the 10 point relay contacts but that didn't help. So I took a closer look at all of the 10 point switches on the playfield. These included six rubber switches - one underneath the left standup target, one underneath the red drop targets, one behind the yellow drop targets, one behind the purple drop targets, and two in the pop bumper area. All of these switches looked to be adjusted properly, with good gaps between contacts. However it was only when I took one of the leaf switches in the pop bumper area off from underneath the playfield that I saw the issue. The long switch blades (normally in contact with the rubber) were touching the damper blades in the middle of the switch assembly, which are connected to the other switch blade. So while there was no visible connection between the switch blades above the playfield, they were actually making contact below the playfield. Adjusting the damper blades in the centre of the switch assemblies so they were further away from the long blades fixed the issue. The 10 point scoring switches started working properly after that.
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Misadjusted leaf switch damper blade which was closing the switch

Broken Drop Targets

Like the playfield plastics on Eye of the Tiger, the drop targets also get a hammering. Both yellow drop targets were broken when I bought the game, and needed to be replaced. These two targets are a part of the same assembly which houses the white and purple drop targets. To get one drop target out means taking the whole assembly apart. So, I decided to replace all of the drop targets in that assembly while I was at it. New drop targets are available (PB Resource), which is fortunate as they break quite easily.

Taking apart the drop target assembly was a task in and of itself. There are a lot of parts to it and initially I approached it the wrong way - I tried to take as little of it apart as possible. This just made things harder as I was constantly trying to maneuver around parts that would have been easier to remove. Pinwiki has a great write-up on Gottlieb drop target bank refurbishment including detailed disassembly steps. This is definitely an easier way to do it than I did! To make things more difficult, my assembly was covered in old grease that someone had used to try and lubricate the targets. The grease had migrated all over the assembly, covering the whole thing in a film. So as I took each part off, into the detergent it went for a clean. The extra cleaning made the process take a lot longer than normal. In the end, I got the new drop targets in and everything back together. Worth it!
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Original yellow drop targets, snapped in half, and worn purple targets

Brand new white, yellow and purple drop targets

Reset Issues

When I first got the game, and intermittently thereafter, I encountered reset issues where, upon trying to start a game, the score motor would keep turning and the game would never reset fully. Reset issues are common with this era of machine so I guess it was only fitting that I had to solve one on my first EM game.

A lot of the time, even though the score motor is continuously turning, the problem is often not with the score motor itself. Just in case, I checked the switches on the score motor, particularly the home switch. The home switch was very dirty and a little pitted, as is common with these high-current switches, so I sanded it with a Flexstone file to clean it up. The rest of the switches got a light sanding as well. Clay's guide is a great resource when doing work on the score motor—I thoroughly recommend reading the score motor section before fixing any score motor-related issues! I also noticed that the motor brake switch was broken on my game. This switch is a failsafe which stops the motor turning further than necessary, but isn't necessary for the game to function. I'll replace it when I get a chance.

Score motor switch stack containing the home switch (bottom).

Score motor brake switch.

Next, I checked the relays on the bottom panel in the cabinet. Multiplayer games with Ax/Bx relays often suffer from reset issues due to poor adjustments of these switches. Clay's guide goes into great detail about how to properly adjust these types of relays. Earlier I had fixed an issue with the Ax relay. This time, I came across an issue with the Bx relay. One of the switches was badly adjusted and was never actually making contact. Adjusting the switch fixed the problem.

Bx relay switch (far right) which would never 'make'.

After fixing the Bx relay, I occasionally ran into additional reset issues where the player unit in the backbox would keep advancing and the game would never complete the reset cycle. The player unit hadn't been serviced in a long time and the rivet contacts were quite dull. So I gave them a good sanding with 800 grit sandpaper followed by a clean with alcohol. For good measure, I also cleaned all of the switch contacts. This did the trick, and I never had issues with the player unit again. One of the rivets or switch contacts must have been dirty, meaning the player unit wasn't able to figure out where it was.

Backbox player unit.

Player unit contacts before cleaning.

Contacts after sanding and cleaning.

Coin Unit Removed All Credits at Once

Note: also see the section on bonus not being awarded for troubleshooting of a similar issue.

It took me a little while to discover this issue because the credit unit was never working properly and I had mostly ignored it while I got the rest of the game running. The coin unit would do one of two things whenever a game was started and a credit was decremented. It would occasionally get stuck in between credit values when decrementing and would not move in either direction unless the credit wheel was physically moved or one of the plungers was manually activated. The rest of the time, the coin unit would actually decrement straight to 0 (regardless of how many credits were on the credit unit).

Taking a look at the coin unit, it appeared to advance credits without issue when manually moving the coin unit step up plunger. When activating the step down coil manually, sometimes it would decrement properly, but often it would either jam straight away or the entire unit would reset to 0. This was the same behaviour I was seeing when the game attempted to decrement the coin unit itself.

The coin unit is a single step reset stepper. That means it is supposed to advance and decrement one unit at a time. It was not supposed to reset all credits to 0 with one pull of the step down plunger. This is the behaviour you'd expect of a total reset stepper rather than a single step stepper. Therefore there had to be something mechanically wrong with the unit. As is usual, Clay's guide has some great stepper cleaning suggestions which guided me to the source of the problem. Gottlieb steppers have a very problematic part: the shoulder bolt. This bolt is lubed at the factory with grease that hardens and gums the mechanism up. The bolt is important because the arms that control stepping down the unit pivot on it. So, if it gums up and doesn't move, the arms don't quite 'catch' the stepper cog when it is trying to decrement, resulting in the unit resetting completely. I took my coin unit shoulder bolt apart and found that it was indeed gummed up.

Shoulder bolt on the coin unit before disassembly.

Disassembled coin unit shoulder bolt showing solidified grease.

No wonder this thing wasn't decrementing properly - the grease had turned to glue. It is simple enough to clean the bolt and associated parts with alcohol and wipe them dry before simply reinstalling. After doing this, the coin unit decremented by one credit only when stepping down. Perfect!

Shoulder bolt and associated parts after cleaning.

Bonus Not Being Awarded

Note: also see the section on the coin unit removing all credits for troubleshooting of a similar issue.

When playing a game and racking up a good bonus count, I would always be disappointed when the ball ended as the bonus was never actually added to the score. Often I would get 1000 or 2000 points, but never more, even if I had tens of thousands of bonus accrued. Eye of the Tiger is a game with good bonus rewards, and a double bonus feature, so having the bonus inoperable makes it a low scoring game. Boring!

I had a look at the bonus unit under the playfield. This was incrementing nicely whenever a bonus target was hit on the playfield. I cleaned the switches as well as the rivet contacts for good measure. This didn't help. I noticed that the bonus unit would actually fire the reset coil twice in quick succession when the bonus was awarded, which made me think the zero position switch was out of adjustment. No such luck, as it was well-adjusted. The bonus relay (K) was also working properly with good switch gaps.

I put this problem at the back of my mind while I fixed other issues. I went back to it another day after successfully fixing the coin unit in the backbox. The bonus unit is the same type of single-step stepper unit as the coin unit. At this point I knew something was wrong because when activating the reset coil, the entire bonus unit would reset to zero. This would be perfect operation if only the bonus unit was a total reset stepper. Alas, it isn't, and it should only step up and down once with each activation. So, the reason the bonus was not getting awarded was because the bonus unit was fully resetting to zero before it could award the correct bonus amount.

I turned my attention to the same shoulder bolt that was a problem with the coin stepper unit. These bolts seize up due to the grease applied to them at the factory drying up and turning to glue. Sure enough, I took the unit apart, and the shoulder bolt was heavily gunked up. A quick clean was all it needed, or so I thought.

Shoulder bolt on the bonus unit assembly.

Shoulder bolt after cleaning.

The bolt cleaned up well so I went to reinstall it into the bonus unit. After getting everything aligned and inserting the shoulder bolt, I tightened it up. The bolt is held by a nut on the other side of the assembly, so I screwed this nut onto the shoulder bolt and then tightened it up some more. Snap! The shoulder bolt snapped in half—and I hadn't even tightened it very hard!

I should have heeded the advice in Clay's guides, which warns about the shoulder bolt's propensity to shear when force is applied to it. So, I ended up having to order another shoulder bolt (PSPA) as well as another as a spare. There are two main types of shoulder bolt, so be sure you order the right one. And, when installing the new bolt, make sure not to drive it too far before securing the nut to it.

Sheared shoulder bolt and nut (left) compared to a brand new one (right).

Of course, the other thing you have to remember is to secure the shoulder bolt in place with a nut. I had completely forgotten to do this after installing the new shoulder bolt, and was confused when the game refused to reset after the first ball.

Then I had a thought. The reset sequence needs to pass through the zero position switch on the bonus unit. I had just disassembled the bonus unit to replace the shoulder bolt. Maybe I'd stuffed something up? When I took a look, I found that the shoulder bolt was completely loose as I had forgotten to secure it with its nut. This created slop in the armatures that pivot on the bolt. The assembly wasn't able to increment or decrement properly with the shoulder bolt in this position. I installed a nut and tightened the shoulder bolt, and the issue stopped. That was it, and the bonus unit now worked properly and the game reset fully after an accurate bonus count. Yay!

Slop in the shoulder bolt pivot point as there is no nut on the other side of the bolt.

Tilt Bob wire Bent

When I first disassembled the cabinet I found that the tilt bob wire was very bent. This would have caused constant tilts during gameplay and may have even prevented the game from resetting properly. A good hammering on an anvil was all that was needed to straighten the rod out again.

Bent tilt bob wire.

All straightened out.

Plunger Refurbishment

The plunger on this game was in rough shape. The exterior trim plate (part no. A-8831) was extremely rusty. The barrel spring (part no. A-347) was also destroyed. Plus, the plunger shaft (part no. A-8833) itself had been battered flat, probably from the lack of a rubber on it. The exterior trim plate is only available overseas, so I decided to try and refurbish it myself. It went for an extended go in the tumbler, which actually cleaned most of it acceptably. There were still some rust patches which were too deep to be removed. The plate was repainted with silver paint and covered with a clearcoat. The plunger was smoothed using a bench grinder, until the edges of the plunger tip were round. The barrel spring was simply replaced. The end result was miles better than what I started with.

Original worn plunger assembly.

Refurbished assembly.

Playfield Artwork Repairs

This was Fiona's time to shine, as she did all of the playfield touch-up work on this game. There was a big gouge in the playfield near the upper left flipper. The gouge was caused by the flipper being mounted too low in the flipper assembly and too close to the playfield. This resulted in it dragging along the playfield on the upstroke. The gouge was a little deep but a playfield protector would solve the problem of the uneven surface. A little paint touch-up was all that was necessary to restore the artwork. A thin clearcoat over the top sealed it in.

Flipper gouge mark on the playfield.

Gouge mark repaired and cleaned up.

There was some significant wear around the pop bumpers. These pop bumpers had Mylar platters surrounding them to prevent exactly the type of wear that had occurred. The problem was that the old Mylar had dried, lifted, and was basically acting as sandpaper every time a ball ran over it, causing big patches of paint to be lifted from the playfield. I removed the Mylar patches and gave the area a clean. Luckily the colours here are quite simple; just some orange, teal and black. Unfortunately most of the great touch-up work is covered by the pop bumper skirts when they are reinstalled!

Paint wear around pop bumpers.

Pop bumper wear repaired.

Some patches of paint were missing around the bonus inserts. The 9000 insert was the most affected, with only minor bits of paint removed from the 8000 and 10,000 inserts. These inserts are a little sunken from age, heat stress, and material shrinkage. Therefore the ball tends to bounce around a little when rolling over them. The uneven surface results in wear where the ball gets pushed upwards, on either side of the 9000 insert. The colours here are relatively easy to match; just yellow and black. You'll need a steady hand here to get the key lines around the inserts just right. 
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Playfield wear around the 9000 insert.

Wear repainted and sealed.

The black key lines around various playfield inserts in different parts of the playfield were worn to some degree. A lot of inserts were sunken or shrunken just a little, and the movement caused the black paint in the key lines to crack. So these were all painted over wherever neccesary. 
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Black key lines around inserts were worn.

Black lines touched up.

Chime Plunger Rebound Rubber Replacement

The chime unit has an adhesive strip of rubber which acts as a rebound rubber for the chime plungers to rest on. This rubber is usually dry and falling to bits after decades in a game, so I decided to replace it. Except, instead of replacing it with another strip of beer seal or weather strip, I inserted new rubber grommets into the holes underneath each plunger. Williams part no. 23-6420 is a perfect substitute, and the holes are the right size for the grommets, too. This is a much neater solution than the original strip and makes for easy replacement when the grommets wear out.

Original strip of adhesive rubber below chime plungers.

New Williams grommets installed for each plunger.

Advance bonus Lamp Not Working

The spinner shot on Eye of the Tiger is a fun one to make. Similarly to other EM machines, when the spinner is hit at speed, it spins like a madman and the spinning target relay and the score reels flipping like crazy is a really satisfying sound. I like to make this shot a lot, and it builds your bonus based on the number of spins you make (five spins adds to your bonus multiplier). The status of your bonus build-up is indicated by five green insert lamps under the playfield, which form a circle around the blue drop target bank. 
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"Add Bonus" insert lamps.

I had sorted out a few lamp issues elsewhere on the game which were combinations of dead globes and corroded lamp sockets. I was left with one of these green insert lamps in the bonus series. It would not light up. I used some alligator clips to connect a working bulb to the power wires, and it lit up without issue. So the problem was to do with the socket itself. I tugged on the power wire a couple of times and it pulled away from the tab at the end of the socket. Eureka! This must be it!

Unfortunately, it wasn't. I soldered the wire back onto the socket but it still would not light. I began to suspect the socket itself was flaky, so I started probing around with my multimeter. When testing resistance between the common uninsulated wire and the socket, I started getting some jumpy readings. At this point I started to push on the wire itself, and realised that it was no longer attached to the base of the socket. These solder joints are usually loaded with solder and hold quite strongly, but this one gave up. I reheated the solder blob, added some more, and made sure the wire was secure. This fixed the lamp.

Broken wire to lamp socket before reattachment.

Common bare wire resoldered to socket base.

Playfield Protector Installation

A lot of purists will probably be upset at the thought of installing a plastic playfield protector on an electromechanical game. And I get it. The ball is a lot quicker on a playfield protector, and feels a lot more "floaty". Plus, it can be kind of weird to have a ball silently flying across the playfield when you're so used to the sound of steel on wood. 

The main reason I wanted to install a protector was to level out the inserts on the playfield. Many of them were slightly sunken or cupped from age, heat stress, and shrinkage. So I could either pop out every insert, flatten it, smooth it, and fill it, or I could just install a playfield protector and achieve the same effect. The playfield protector was the easier option! It took me a while to find a playfield protector because I was searching for one for Eye of the Tiger specifically. But remember: Gottlieb made far more Sinbad (four-player solid state) games than Eye of the Tiger. And they both have exactly the same playfield, as the silkscreened game numbers on the playfield show.
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Game numbers silkscreened to the top edge of the playfield.

They are available from Playfield Protectors. I made one mistake when installing the protector as a preliminary test fit. I got the protector stuck under the yellow lane guide near the left flippers. I pulled it up a little too hard, and the protector cracked. Damn. Moral of the story: remove this plastic lane guide before fiddling around with the protector. None of the other lane guides caused any issues at the protector could be pushed over them without issue. There must have been something weird about this particular lane guide that caused it to catch on the protector. 
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Damage to the playfield protector near the left flippers.

There are a few components that have to be removed so the protector can slide onto the playfield. They are: pop bumper bodies, spinner, and all four flippers. The protector can be slid or pushed past all of the other components. The spinner doesn't actually need to be fully removed. I simply uncoupled it from one of its retaining brackets, and then threaded it through the hole in the protector. 
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Loosen the bracket holding the spinner into place so that it can be threaded through the playfield protector.

The pop bumpers are a little trickier. Unclip the caps to reveal the lamp and screws within the body. Remove the two screws. Now we need to release the lamp socket. The socket is held in place via its power leads, which extend underneath the playfield. I cut these so the lamp holders could be pulled up through the playfield. The left pop bumper connects to a blue wire, while the right one connects to an orange wire. The other leads of the sockets connect to a common power wire with cloth insulation. 
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Wiring to the pop bumpers. Blue wire to the left pop bumper, orange to the right.

The last thing to remove are the flippers, but they're easy. Two grub screws secure the flipper bats to the crank assemblies, and they pop right out after loosening. Once that is done, the protector can be plopped right onto the playfield. The protector might need to be adjusted slightly around the star rollover switches so it doesn't interfere with their activation. But otherwise, this protector seemed to fit nicely. 

Test fitting of the protector.

Make sure the protector sits neatly around the star rollovers.

The protector levelled the playfield out nicely. No more ball hops around the sunken inserts. The ball movement is buttery smooth now, and speeds up the game a little bit. Ball action around the pop bumpers gets particularly intense with the protector installed. Even though it does change the characteristic sound of the ball rolling over a timber playfield, which is a particular vibe with EM machines, I think it works well on this machine and doesn't detract from the gameplay.

One modification I made when reinstalling the pop bumpers was to solder longer wires to the metal leads of the lamp sockets. Then, I connected these to screw terminals, and reconnected the original wires that had been cut to the other sides of the terminals. This allows for easy removal of the lamp sockets in future, simply by unscrewing one side of the terminal. 
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Installation of screw terminals for the pop bumper lamp socket wiring.

Reassembly

There's not much to reassembly of most EM games apart from the individual mechanisms under the playfield. Eye of the Tiger doesn't actually have many complex mechanisms like other EMs do. Varitargets and rototargets come to mind as mechanisms that can be a nightmare to reassemble and adjust. Eye of the Tiger just has drop targets, and if you take the entire assembly apart and clean it in one go (unlike what I did!) you'll have it back together in no time. The pop bumpers also get a good workout on Eye of the Tiger so be sure to rebuild them, too.

All of the rubber rings were replaced with transparent silicone rings. This is my preference when a game has a playfield protector on it, as natural rubber tends to perish and shed, getting under the protector. Silicone rings avoid this problem. I made one change to the playfield rubber chart, too. The leftmost lane guide is supposed to have a 1-1/4" ring around the two posts on the top and bottom of the guide. This isn't necessary, and fitting each post with a 5/16" ring makes for much easier reinstallation of this lane guide as you don't need to install it while it is under tension from the rubber.
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Modification of the rubber rings around the leftmost lane guide.

All of the lamps were also replaced with #47 incandescent globes. While I tend to install LEDs in all of my modern games, I prefer the look of incandescent globes on EM machines. The #47 lamps are slightly less bright than the standard #44 pinball globe, but emit much less heat. This makes them a better choice for EM backboxes and playfields where heat can damage silkscreened artwork and inserts, respectively.

​Ultimately, there were two lamps which I ended up changing to LEDs instead of the traditional incandescent. These were the two lamps directly to the right of the pop bumpers, behind a rubber ring. The rubber ring is the only protection these lamps have from the ball, which can hit them at high speed when deflected by the pop bumper. The mounting holes for the lamps are also cut very close to the ball area. As a result, these lamps get smashed quite often, as occurred in approximately the tenth game I played once I finished this restoration! The LEDs do look a little weird when the rest of the machine is fitted out with incandescent globes, but I prefer this to having to clean out broken glass from the playfield.
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I like the look of transparent silicone rings on this playfield.

LEDs installed in the high-impact area to the right of the pop bumpers.

Take note of how you install the lane guide on the right side of the playfield. According to the manual, this should be a one-sided plastic lane guide (part no. A-9393). Like an idiot, I installed mine the wrong way around, which isn't a good idea as it leaves the plastic exposed to ball hits. After a few, it broke! So I simply cut off the broken side of the lane guide, and just used the top piece of the lane guide to cover the lamp in this spot. It's actually a little easier this way, as the rubber ring is easy to get to when the lane guide has no sides! 

Broken lane guide from ball impacts.

Lane guide plastic after "modification".

Conclusion

After having some time to play and get to know Eye of the Tiger, I can definitely appreciate the slower gameplay and stricter—yet simpler—rules. Knocking down each of the drop target banks with a single ball is much easier said than done. The quadruple flipper setup is also interesting and leads to a lot of frustrating drains before you get used to the fact that you can't simply lift a flipper to trap an incoming ball anymore! But, I like it. It plays quite fast for an EM game and I do love drop targets, so having ten to play with makes it a drop target shooter's dream! None of my other games have quite as many drop targets, so if I'm in a sniping mood, Eye of the Tiger is usually my first pick.

Restoring your first EM machine is a big learning experience. EMs operate very differently to modern games, and the troubleshooting techniques you need to use are quite different. Simple issues such as switches getting stuck or drop target replacement are more or less the same for all eras of machine. However, tracking down faults with game resets, score reels, and EM-specific assemblies is an entirely different ball game. As I'm so much more familiar with solid state games, I actually find them easier to troubleshoot as I understand their theory of operation. EMs will take a bit of getting used to, but I'm sure I'll eventually become as efficient at repairing them as I am with solid state games. Unfortunately it seems that EMs are bought and sold somewhat less often than solid state games, so it might be quite some time before I find another good project which I can add to my collection.
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