I have been working on my F-14 restoration for a while now, but I move pretty slow.

I only get a few hours a week to work on it, so I wanted to at least make a little progress before I started a post on it.

The playfield was restored and cleared by whridlsoncestood, you can see his thread about it here:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/f-14-playfield-restorationwhridlsoncestood

I'll start with some pics of how it was from the start:

F14_Before_Starting.jpg FrontFaceDamage.jpg FrontCornerDamage.jpg BackboxDamage1.jpg

Pics of the start of restoring the cabinet.

Before sanding
Cabinet_Before_Sanding.jpg

after the sanding
Cabinet_First_Sanding.jpg

first coat of primer
Cabinet_First_Primer.jpg

first filling/sanding
Cabinet_First_Filling.jpg

second coat of primer
Cabinet_Second_Primer.jpg

Here is another pic I had taken of what the inside of the cab looked like.

NastyCabinet.jpg

Yep, the decals are from planetary. Already bought them a month or two ago. Sitting in the mailing tube waiting on me to finish the painting.

I used spray. I can't imagine trying to use a brush on something like this.

This weekend I will be doing the first coat of black.

Just a rattle can, especially for primer. I have a HVLP gun, but I hate cleaning the setup, so I figured rattle would be fine, even for the black coat, since decals are going over it. The blotchiness you see in the pics isn't from the spray job, its mostly because I have already started working on smoothing the latest coat before I remembered to take a pic and I've already gotten oils from my hands all over it. Before the next coat, it gets cleaned with cleaner then a tack cloth to take away any dirt/oil/dust I have introduced during the sanding/filling.

I use Krylon brand spray, I personally find it better than Rustoleum.

I will take some closeups of the corners and edges as well. They were so banged up, and I "rebuilt" each one of them by building up a huge layer of putty and sanding it back down. They are all really sharp 90 degree edges now.

Mine is getting a bath, so I wasn't able to label anything. Just going by pics and memory. I took a pic of every place I cut wire, and left a small 5-10mm section of wire on the solder side of the cut, so I could match it up later if need be.

Tonight my buddy is coming over (BadBrick here on pinside) to help put the side decals on.

I've already put the leg brackets and ground braid back in, as well as put the front decal on.

Pics coming tonight after the decals are on, can you tell I'm excited?

We got the decals on, there is still a little adhesive residue around some of the edges, and some paint got "trimmed" off as I was trimming the decals back, but it came out fantastic.

Any white you can see around the edges of the decals will be taken care of in the next few days, but i was excited enough to go ahead and post pics. Thanks to BadBrick for his help.

DecalsOn_FirstPass.jpg DecalsOn_FirstPass2.jpg

I like the satin, I think it actually looks really good. I used a satin undercoat as well, so it kinda matches the sheen of the inside of the cab as well.

You are welcome any time you want. We've been playing Yukon on and off tonight, plays so good for an old EM.

Don't know the girl in the blue unfortunately, but there are a ton of them like that here, lol. Charleston was recently named the #1 city for having attractive people.

Lots and lots of beach bunnies.

The white edges are gone now, I masked everything off right to the edge of the decals, and resprayed the corners and seams so they disappeared.

Gonna put on the rails and some of the internal hardware in tonight. I bought new rails from Doug Huse, and the other metal stuff has been tumbling and been run over the buffer.

Comparison pic with the white edges, then the pic with the white edges gone.

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DecalsOn_PaintTrimmed.jpg

I took a small chisel, put it between the nail head and the rail and lightly tapped with a small hammer until it moved out enough to grab and pull on.

Barely made any marks in the rail, and the ones it did came out when I regrained the area. Only problem I ran into was that it wasn't as easy as I had hoped to take out the dents in the folded over lip that sits over the glass. I'm not experienced enough to do that and make it look presentable.

I ended up decided to buy a new set from Doug Huse at letsplaypinball.com. Email him and let him know that you need rails for an F-14. They aren't cheap, but I didn't expect them to be.

I didn't fill in the nail holes, because the new rails I bought also use the holes.

I wouldn't necessarily call them threads. They rotate as you pull them out, but it really was no where near as difficult as I had built it up to be in my mind.

So, in a "twisted" turn of events, I knew I had bought 3/4" nails because I couldn't find 1/2" in stock anywhere, so I had begun taking them down to 1/2" nails. I had laid them against the side of the cabinet and thought they were definitely too long. On a whim, I tried one, and the thickness of the rail is JUST enough to keep them poking through, but they are longer than the original, so they grab another 1/4" of new material/hole as well.

They are holding just fine as of now. Got the right rail on, gonna do the left in a bit if I dont fall asleep in the chair first.

Thanks again for your help.

All of the little bubbles dissipated, and masking/painting is definitely the easiest way to get rid of the seams/edges. I got the right rail on last night, gonna do the left one tonight.

Thought I would update with some more progress pics.

Since the last update, I have put the rails, legs, and backbox hinges back on. Installed the pinball pro sub, put the new plunger assembly on, repainted the coin door, and put the lockdown receiver back on.

The lockdown receiver was pretty bad, so i decided to paint it and redo it the way I thought looked good. I know they didn't do these style labels on this machine, but I like them.

I also dipped the handle in plastidip a few times to give it the same look as some of the newer games.

CabinetComingTogether.jpg CabinetComingTogether_SideView.jpg RedoneLockdownReceiver.jpg NewSubwoofer.jpg

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