This page includes info regarding my 1974 Gottlieb Sky Jump single player EM wedgehead Pinball game. I bought this game from my friend Kevin for an undisclosed amount. There were 4,200 of these games made and it was released in May of 1974. Ed Krynski was the designer and it has beautiful artwork designed by Gordon Morison who is one of my favorite artwork designers.

The game didn't turn out to look as good as I remembered it several years before I decided to return to the game and get it up and running to my satisfaction, mostly due to the touchups which ultimately caused problems. I bought it at a decent price, but I knew going in that I would have to do touchups, find some plastics for the game, replace the posts, lane guides, and pop bumpers plastic since there was original parts and they were pretty yellowed. I don't mind doing this because it makes the game look quite a bit better with nice clean white parts rather than that dirty yellowed look old games have after sitting around for a while.

After I magic-erasered the game, I discovered that there were quite a few touchups done on the playfield. I also found where two screws had lifted up the playfield top plywood layer due to screws that were too long attempting to punch through the playfield from the underside. I used an Xacto knife to cut out the raised area and then filled it so that it was flush with the surface. The crappy touchups were done using enamel paint, most likely Testor's enamel. The colors were not a very good match, so I removed the touchups with Magic Eraser soaked in alcohol, and I did acrylic touchups that as usual, were OK, but not perfect. I followed this up with my first clear-coat using Varathane.

The blue areas down near the flippers in the center of the playfield looked great after initially shooting the playfield with Varathane, but as it began to cure, the blue enamel color that had stained the wood showed through and left splotchy areas everywhere the original touchups had been made. Grrrrrr, it looked so good right after shooting the playfield, I really thought I had done a great job on the acrylic color matching. I guess in the future I will really watch out for cases where something like Testor's enamel paint was used since the pigment can evidently interact through the acrylic paint as the Varathane cures.

After reassembly, I encountered lots of problems with the game not working correctly. Most of this had to do with the scorewheels needing some serious cleaning as well as needing to clean feature bank switches, score motor switches, several relays switch adjustments, the "F" relay for the score match, and the ball count unit that was causing the game to eject 6 balls in order to finish a game.

(click picture to enlarge)

Sky Jump Flyer

Restoration Pictures

The pictures below show my Sky Jump game starting with how the game initially appeared, followed by pictures at various stages of disassembly, and a few final shots after clear-coating and reassembly.

 

Lower Playfield	Drop Targets
Another View of Drop Target Area	Left Slingshot Area
Above Drop Targets	Upper Left Lanes
Upper Left Playfield	Left Pop Bumper
Pop Bumpers	Duped Plastic
Flipper Area
Tools Used To Disassemble Playfield
Plastics Removed Upper Playfield	Plastics Removed Slingshot Area
Posts Removed Center Playfield	Posts Removed Upper Playfield
Posts Removed Right Slingshot	Stripped Playfield Pop Bumper Area
Stripped Upper Playfield	Stripped Drop Targets
Stripped Lower Playfield	Stripped Center Playfield
Magic Eraser & Alcohol
Drop Targets After Magic Eraser	Special Area After Magic Eraser
Upper Playfield After Magic Eraser	Left Pop Bumper After Magic Eraser
Pop Bumpers Removed	Flippers Removed
Drop Targets Underside Playfield	Drop Target Bank Removed
Parts Removed From Playfield	Ball Count Unit Ensure these rivets are clean or you may have an extra ball ejected when the game ends.
Backglass Reveals Missing Red Colors	Upper Playfield After Clear-coating and Before Reassembly
Drop Target View After Clear-coating and Reassembly	Playfield After Clear-coating