At Escapism we care about Pinball and about people who care about Pinball. We encourage people to play pinball, and we offer an array of services to keep you up and running. We've played a few machines here and we understand that there are good ones, bad ones and ugly ones. We like working on the good ones because we know the joy they can provide. We never proclaim that pinball machines are an investment but the good ones are getting more expensive and harder to find each day. Like classic cars they become collectors pieces but they also require the owners to be able to look after them. If you're new to the game have a look at my pinball maintenance guide.

Replacing Rubber

We serviced a Space Mission by Williams in 2006. During a checkup visit in September of 2011 we saw that the rubber was still looking great. We see many machines made in the 80's coming in with crumbling and missing rubber, so your rubber will last more than 5 years but definitely less than 20. Our best estimates for rubber life expectancy is about 15 years. Flipper rubbers and post sleeves taking frequent impacts have to be replaced far more frequently at about 2-3 years or less. Once the pinball rubber starts crumbling on a machine it will cause rapid deterioration of your playfield. At that point you'll need to replace all the rubber. When you find you don't have the time to do it yourself, Escapism will be eager to help you out.

Refurbishments

Some machines are so much fun that over a matter of 30 or 40 years they get completely worn out. If it's a classic machine it might be worth it to let us restore it to its former glory. We can restore playfields and backglasses, repair electromechanicals where possible and even replace solenoid logic with digital electronics.

To find out if your machine was a popular one visit the Internet Pinball Database and compare the production numbers with other machines of its era. Once you get into it you'll soon have a favourite designer (ours: Pat Lawlor, favourite graphics artist (ours: Christian Marche), and so on. At that point you will have been assimilated by the Borg and there's no turning back.

Thanks for looking us up. Enjoy your visit.