I recently traded another pinside member for his TOM, as nice as it is the legs are not as shiny and new looking as I would like. Anyone know where to get the gold paint that will match up closely or exact to factory ? Last thing I want is to buy gold spray paint do all the work, install them and say holy cow those are off. Was also thinking of painting the side rails and coin door to match the legs. Good idea or bad idea ?
Thanks
Chris

Anyone ? I might just try it today since it seems nobody has done this before.

Try a hobby lobby or Michael's store.Surely they would have a brass or gold plating spray paint.You could also send them out to be brass plated but it would be about $250 for the legs.

Wowser $ 250.00 I could just buy new one's for that. Thanks I'll stop at michael's today.

I think those legs are chrome plated. If so, only replating them will get you desired results.

Painted legs compared to the $250 brassed and cc'ed legs will not compare, no matter what product you use. Painted over the brassed will also hurt resale, and given the minimum value to the machine as a whole that the brassed will cost, you would get that back in resale.

ctozzi said:

Wowser $ 250.00 I could just buy new one's for that. Thanks I'll stop at michael's today.

I have sent my Coke machine stuff to get chromed at a place there in Vegas. You should look into that.

They do a really nice job. They do brass plating as well. Havent done that but they were very reasonable on their chrome prices.

Here is their website.

http://chromeplatingusa.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=12

I would avoid painting over the brass. It will definitely look like paint, not metal.

Well I painted them today and they look fantastic. If I ever decide to sell the machine I will buy all new legs, lock down and side rails for the new owner if desired. Now I need to figure out how to remove the side rails so I can paint them to match. I removed the one bolt under the glass but I cannot seem to find how they are attached to the cabinet.

Wow, not bad, what did you use?

As for the siderails, there is a length long piece (or sometimes spaced out sections) of double sided tape between the rail and the cab. I *believe* if you want to save you can use a heat gun to somewhat loosen the glue and pry up carefully, but I would research that more on rgp, or maybe someone else can chime in.

Do not use a heat gun if you don't know what you're doing. A decent hair dryer will do it, but the main tool is a SMALL putty knife like 1.25" wide and some elbow grease.

I used this. I'll try the elbow grease method today.

It's not too bad, just keep pushing upward to break the seal in sections as you move down the length of the rail. It's a good shoulder workout. Use some common sense as you insert the knife against the cab and you won't hurt the artwork below the rail line at all. You will most likely have some leftover adhesive on the cab, but nothing Goo-gone can't help you with and some scraping. Try to get as much of the leftover off as possible, but it is not totally necessary to have it 100% removed.

Also be sure to use quality double sided tape. Something used for automotive body molding is good and can be found locally at auto parts stores for instance. It's usually pretty expensive there though. Terry at Pinballlife has great stuff that is priced right. I have seen some bad side rail jobs when people use sub-par double sided tape.

result is pretty good.
wanted to try that at the garage too (i work in a bodyshop) but wasn't sure what the result will be, but after seeing yours i might try that myself.
if i were you i'd clear those pieces to protect them and to give it a more shiny look.

Here is the finished product, those rails are a mother to get off.

At some point down the road I'm going to remove them all again and clear coat them all.

Know you need to do the LOTR sitting next to it. LOTR looks nice in gold. The TOM looks nice great job.

thanks even the wife said it looks really nice.

To remove the siderails, I use a 1.5 inch wide putty knife, drywall knife, a dead-blow hammer, and wide blue masking tape.

Remove the bolt on each rail at the coin door end, and the nail, if so equipped, on the other end. WPC-95s have nails, previous games don't.

Run a bead of blue tape along the bottom of the rail, and then take the drywall knife at an angle, and score the cabinet art *above* the railing. If you put the blade at about a 45 degree angle to the cabinet, you can use the bottom of the rail as a guide. This is important, because if the tape sticks to the sideart and rips sideart, it will be hidden by the rail when reinstalled.

Then, lay the putty knife against the cabinet, blade underneath the rail, and gently tap it with the dead blow hammer until it cuts through the tape.

It's important to use a dead blow hammer, as the hammer is rubberized and won't damage the cabinet if you slip.

Do this from front to back on each rail, and the rail just lifts off. Clean the adhesive off with your solvent of choice, goo gone, orange power, etc.

Apply fresh 3m double faced tape to the rails to reattach. I use the 7/8 inch thick stuff from my local auto parts store, comes in a 15 foot roll. Should be able to get 2 games out of 1 roll. 15 bucks or so per roll.

man it does look great, i'm curious how will the door look with the same paint.

definitly worth trying, thanks for sharing.

Actually I like it very much!

How did you prime the surface?

I had a machine before where the lockdown bar was painted with the same can but silver and I could scratch it off with my fingernail...

I think that the acid from your sweat is going to make the gold come off on your hands.

Plating would be the best for this type of job, and powdercoat would be the 2nd best.

Well this was a trial run to see how it turned out, I've painted similar items for my arcade collection in the past with as good results. I'll report back if the paint wears off or gets scratched easily. I will be clear coating them all soon to protect the finish. Next I'll try the coin door. Some point down the road when I feel up to it I'll have them all plated or powder coated. So far I'm happy with the results.

It does look good, I would just worry about wear on the lockdown bar.

looks very good for rustoleum and not electro plating.

Don't forget the header hinges.

Also I was thinking the shooter rod assembly and ball tip shooter knob coud use some color.

Knob would probably be better if not paint though.

again looks great
enjoy your game and keep pimpin

Paint your coin door. I used the same paint on my Lord of the Rings and did the coin door also. Looks great. You can just mask off the coin inserts and spray it. The frame comes off with four 7/16 bolts. Paint the bolts too.

I used the same paint. That paint was also rubbing off on my hands while playing even after three days of drying. I finally added two coats of clear coat over it to the lockdown bar and side rails and it stopped rubbing off.

What did you do to prep the stainless before painting it?

Wow that looks nice!

I prepped with a one step etch & primer.

Turned out nice.

ctozzi said:

I prepped with a one step etch & primer.

Can you tell me exactly what you used? You didnt do any sanding then? Just clean the stainless, spray on that primer, and paint? It's not rubbing off on your hands on the lockdown bar at all? How long did you wait for the rustoleum to dry?

You should paint your coindoor and plunger frame. Here's how that turned out using the same paint on my Lord of the Rings:

Looks good

I used this:
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=etch+primer+spray&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=13231721502941473520&sa=X&ei=BK55T8G6CcKU2QWZ9pi4Bg&ved=0CHUQ8wIwAQ

I did not sand anything, I used an industrial metal paint prep cleaner before the primer (3 coats). I did 4 coats of the gold paint, then on the lockdown bar 3 coats of clear coat. I am getting nothing on my hands as far as residue and it's looking great after a full weekend of plays. Since this turned out so well I was thinking of doing my LOTR next weekend.

Turned out really nice, you should be proud of your work.

That turned out much better than I would of expected it to. Thanks for posting the pictures and tips on how to go about it!

markmon said:

ctozzi said:I prepped with a one step etch & primer.

Can you tell me exactly what you used? You didnt do any sanding then? Just clean the stainless, spray on that primer, and paint? It's not rubbing off on your hands on the lockdown bar at all? How long did you wait for the rustoleum to dry?
You should paint your coindoor and plunger frame. Here's how that turned out using the same paint on my Lord of the Rings:

Attachments IMG_1049.JPG (186.8 KB, 0 downloads) 14 hours old</blockquote

he sprayed it with clear so the paint would not come off

Nice paint job and I used a gold chrome spray paint made by Krylon for the legs on my JD and had similar result as yours.

The previous owner of my TOM much have been a mad machinist as my lockdown bar, side rails, shooter rod, flipper bats and buttons were made from scratch using brass. Lockdown bar weighs double of a regular one and bats+buttons are a pound! They flipper bats looked nice but because they were so heavy it affected game play or else I would have had to upgrade to a stronger coil to drive them.

man, i think i'm gonna try this on my LOTR next week, then clear it at the garage.

you people just had great results.

Thanks guys. I am thinking LOTR this weekend and the TOM coin door to finish it all off.

Nah. You get the gold flippers from pinballlife or littleshopofgames for under $10 a bat. They weigh the same and do not impact game play.

My ToM is all gold (brass). Side rails, legs, lockdown bar, coin door.

This is why you shouldn't paint your side rails if you intend to ever sell/ship them. I just purchased a "Gold" ToM and had it carefully packed and shipped by NAVL. The paint doesn't hold up, so now I'm in the process of converting back to a normal game...

Bigdaddy1000 said:

carefully packed and shipped by NAVL

Doesn't look like it

Cardboard rubbing under the weight of the backbox... Not sure how you could prevent with painted rails. No other problems on game, so it was shipped carefully.

Bigdaddy1000 said:

Cardboard rubbing under the weight of the backbox... Not sure how you could prevent with painted rails. No other problems on game, so it was shipped carefully.

Right on, not that they could've avoided it I'm sure. I used to drive a truck so it's just disappointing
to see that. Still, I'm jealous of your machine. Love that title.

I played a gold, powder coated pin and some of the color came off on my hands a few weeks ago.

For ultimate durability, nothing beats stainless steel (or brass if you like to polish metal).

Nah. Powder coating will not come off on your hands nor will it scratch up. That had to be painted. I was going to say that powder coating rather than painting is the proper way to handle this. I've powder coated most my collection at this point and it's very durable. Pictures are in my gameroom profile and theres another thread here about it.

It was powder.

vid1900 said:

It was powder.

Then it was messed up powder not done right. Every stern game is powder coated. It's strong, scratch resistant, and absolutely does not come off on your hand.