yesterday night i finally decided on a potentiometer to use as a replacement for the pot repair and once again rs online's delivery was lightning fast. here's the new potentiometer which (hopefully) will fix my coundown problems
I would just bend one or two legs, the third leg can be in the existing hole.
as suggested by etienne, i bent two legs to make it fit into the pre-existing holes
looking good on location, doesn't it?
time to put this to the test - let's turn on the game, coin it up and press the start button!
click on the following picture to see what happened
YES, BABY!!! 
anxiously i hit the gas pedal and drove the car into the pylons! a loud crashing sound, a quick spin of the car, that's it. put the gear shifter into reverse and drove back onto the track!
YES, BABY - PART DEUX!!! from what i can tell now (didn't have a lot of time to inspect it thoroughly) everything is fully working! of course i'll have to drive a few test rounds, crash into tons of pylons and complete one lap in reverse, but my hopes are high that this is it!!!
one more (cosmetic) thing: taped directly onto the screen are a couple of glue strips to indicate the spots of the track where the player receives points (when reaching those spots). those glue strips are almost invisible to the eye, they must have lost part of their original color through the years. have a look, here's one of those glue strips photographed under good lighting conditions from the side, in reality they are difficult to spot
my idea is to replace those glue strips by (half-)transparent colored tape to make the "score-areas" more obvious, but i don't know which color to take! at the moment i lean towards yellow or red because it's the main color of the cabinet, but perhaps you have other suggestions / preferences ...
