Jumped into the deep end tonight as I begin the biggest shop job of my short but adventurous pinball career. I bought this game last week and new I was going to be cleaning it up, but I'm definitely going further than expected - partly by need with raised inserts, partly just because I don't know how to stop taking things apart.

Starting this thread because I know I'm probably in too deep and lots of eyes on this process won't hurt me any. I have a neighbor with significant experience who offered some suggestions today - I owe him and appreciate his help! Hopefully I won't have to abuse his kindness too much along the way.

Pictures today highlight the biggest issues to deal with at this point.

Cosmetics are my nemesis. I plan here to mask off the art work, sand, and repaint the black. The back of the head has some water damage, so that will take some significant sanding to flatten the fiberboard.
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Apron paint has been removed by some over zealous cleaning at some point. Not sure what I will do here besides removing the paint.
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At least five inserts like this are raised - hoping that heat + clamp + glue will solve this issue. This is one of the reasons the project has gotten bigger, but it is a big deal because the ball is deflected too much off them.
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Magnet Wear - might try to touch a little and slap a piece of mylar on top.
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Saucer wear - Same as above - maybe I'll try some wood filler and touch up, not sure.
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Hack on this little board holding the relay on the back box light panel will get redone.
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A good vacuum and some scrubbing bubbles will attack the inside.
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It seemed necessary to pull the playfield to get to the plastics on the back. Next time I'll have a plan of just how I'm going to set down the playfield BEFORE I remove it by myself. Trying to avoid building a rotisserie, but I'm already regretting not hacking something together.
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A little more progress - rotisserie (shout out to vid's guide) built Monday, more playfield stripped today. Yesterday I took a break to install Eli's Tron ramp mod which is freaking awesome. On Rollergames, I'd be lying if I already didn't feel like one of those projects that will get sold as a basketcase... Must have faith in the all the pictures I'm taking.

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Thanks - for the inserts, My plan is similar although I think I feel more comfortable trying with a clamp first unless there is a downside to that.

Shop job on steroids? There was no way I was going to insult some craftsmen & artists by calling this a "restoration", but I am surely going beyond the normal wax/rubbers/fix the switches shop job.

pics or it didn't happen?

So not too much to report as I'm waiting for a couple items, but I've gotten the tumbler going and have cleaned the snot out of the playfield after removing pops, guides, and other stuff. I've decided to stay conservative and not try to pull the Mylar so its just gonna be what it is aesthetically.

In the short time I've had today I managed to clean all wiring harnesses not contained within the head. Of course I didn't remove the harnesses from the playfield, but I did clean what I could. Using a 1 simple green: water on a shop towel I got pretty good results (pics, before and after below). The wires in the head will be removed and put in the ultrasonic once I get one.

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Got a few minutes this morning and this evening. Lots of parts running through the ultrasonic which is awesome. The biggest news is I got the inserts leveled which was a lot easier than I thought. I used a hairdryer and deep c-clamp with superglue underneath.

First pic- demonstrating the raised insert
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Hairdryer:
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Clamped! Didn't take much effort or time. I spent WAY more time considering it than doing it.

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Lots of random things going on, including many batches through the ultrasonic. Started to rebuild the pops today, but need a stapler and some tubing to finish. An Amateur Tip for you to save a minute- assemble the plunger/flanges/spring into the little bracket before mounting to the bigger bracket - see right to left in the photo below. Originally I tried mounting the smaller bracket to lock down the coil but that didn't work out so well.

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I started trying to paint a little on the cabinet and found that the blue tape I bought removes a good portion of the original paint so I'll have to try some tape for "delicate" areas and see how that works. If it does not, I don't know how I am going to repaint the black on the head which could really use it. No picture, because I was too frustrated and quickly did some touch up work that will of course need to be redone since I didn't bother to prepare the surface... Wish they sold patience at pinball life.

I've been traveling a lot, so not much work - but I did get in today and mount a couple odd parts. The main project tonight was assembling a work bench - weenie I know, but I hate working with wood and for 129$ at HF I'm pretty satisfied. My workshop is new as well, so I have a lot to do just to get it situated, like moving tool boxes and such from the main garage.

A couple general pics below, as you can see I'm all spread out and temporarily sharing space with my buggy while its home for a couple weeks.

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I am all over the place, organization/plan would help! I'm bouncing around between tasks at the moment.

There are a couple big sacrifices I'm making with the playfield -

1) I'm not painting the couple of worn spots on the pf. Instead, I've merely covered the few bare spots with a badly matching paint pen (Molotow - nice, but just don't have the exact colors). The black was great, but the other colors are pretty ugly. Luckily enough the spots are pretty small and I think when its all put together they won't be that noticeable. Either way, the cabinet looking decent is more important in this case.

2) I'm not trying to remove the mylar. The mylar is really bad in some areas and heat couldn't settle it down, but I'm just not willing to go "all the way" with this pin. If I was, I'd probably just buy the scratched up NOS pf from marco and have it professionally touched and cleared.

One benefit of watching some of the great restoration threads here (Bryan Kelly, Vid, Whridlsoncestood, pinballmiked, HEP, etc) is that I have a better idea of my limits and when to say enough is enough (I live by the Pareto principle!). Someday I'll have a pin restored by a pro- and it will be worth every penny to have it done right.

Rebuilt the drop target mech tonight. Somewhere along the way the targets got very slow moving down and it seems that TONS of novus or wax had made its way down into it gumming everything up. I used the ultrasonic on the brackets & coil but used alcohol and cleaned the rest by hand and only replaced the springs and the coil tubing. Works very fast and smooth now. Before and after below.

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I talked to the Marco folks and they sent me pics which looked pretty bad. It could have just been the camera angles but I would surely want a money back guarantee. FWIW, they did say they'd negotiate on the price but I didn't even bother. It is NOT a diamond plate.

Just had a bit of time today to get a little work in, so after setting up some shelves in the new shop I turned to Rollergames. I wanted to get the flippers put back together, but one of the coils was pretty warped so I'll go ahead and order a new one and do those another day. My original schedule was delayed for a few reasons, but still hoping to have this complete soon.

Drop target assembly and pops were completed. Amateur tip: before you stable down your vinyl tube encased lamp lead on your pops, make sure there is enough room to actually fit the coil bracket back on. I had affixed mine tightly next to the mounting screw so I had to make some adjustments.
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Then I got 1 side of sling switches replaced - the old ones were a bit nasty. For some reason the switch with the diode was reversed from the original which made it a bit tough to get installed, but I think I found enough slack in the wire harness to make it work.
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Until next time-

I found some more time and after replacing the other sling switches I replaced the sling coil sleeves as well as a couple others. The sleeves weren't too bad looking but holy cow I can tell the difference in smoothness just by moving the mechanism by hand. Coil sleeves should probably be a given like rubbers during a shop job.

Tackled the head today. I'm leaving the cabinet as-is - just some touch up, cleaning, and a coin door repaint. For the head I didn't intend on making it look new since I can't redo the art and I wanted it to not look too out of place with the cabinet, really was just going for good looking from 5 feet. I masked of the art an then hit it with some semi and I think its a bit better than I had hoped. The downside of this approach can be seen at certain angles including in one of the pics below as the outline of the art is pretty noticeable.

Also painted hinges and the door, will have the door installed tonight. I will wait to install the head until the pf is back in, providing someone doesn't offer a compelling reason to do different.

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Managed to get back to the shop after the kids were in bed. Put the coin door back in and put a few things back up on the playfield. It was nice to get rails done on one slide as there was quite a bit of sagging going on in the middle of the playfield. If I decide that there are at least a couple more playfield swap type projects in me I will consider a different rotisserie design that will be more supportive AND allow me to put the rail/backboard up on the top of the PF.

I love putting things back together, especially right now when I'm getting to pick and choose easy stuff.

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The wall ramp looked ok - just the normal cracked part - until I took it off. It is a disaster, broken in 3 places, significantly in two. I bought the one on eBay that only has one bad part that hopefully will be covered by the cliffy. After that I'll take a bit more time and working on repairing the original to have as a spare.

Nope - project is stalled for a new parts order, the ramp issues, and the center plastic which covers the 3 drops was cracked through so I need to figure out how to reproduce or at least mend it. Lots of surprise issues in this game that have popped up along the way besides the plastics and the bad inserts. I still have a couple board hacks that must be fixed that I haven't begun work on.

I certainly missed my Xmas goal, but I feel the end is sometime in January.

Okay, time for an update. Today I did 2 repairs to the ramp, both based on recommendations from my neighbor SSpinball. Repair 1 was to take care of a hole created by ball impact. It isn't noticeable when its on the machine and given its location it only took a piece of packing tape to finish the mold for a block of hot glue. See picks below - laying of the tape, glue filled, then tape removed. Turns out really nice and I think it will last a while.

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Repair 2 wasn't so easy, but I think it will work. I'll check back in a few months and own up if it didn't. The ramp was busted in the same ol' normal place they all are- at the entrance to the wall ramp. I thought a cliffy would cover it, but it was busted all around the ramp. To repair, I cut a piece of paper to use as a stencil then used plastic from a 2 liter coke bottle with epoxy to reinforce the plastic. It seems pretty good - not completely attractive up close, but the cliffy one side and the VUK on the other will hide the repair when installed. Pictures show before, during and after including a bit of a test fit.

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Also got some more of the wood rails and ball guides put on, now comes the difficult part of figuring out the posts and such and doing all in an order that keeps me from having to redo stuff....
Also picked up a couple EMs so there is now a back log for the pin-shop.

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I got a few hours to play on this over the last few days, and everything is going great. I got the test outside of the cabinet completed today with everything installed except the ramp and wireforms. One lesson I learned - DO NOT trust that the work done before you was correct. One flipper coil was wired backwards and I rewired it the same way without thinking, assuming it was correct. Well, the previous coil had a blow diode - which somehow made it work ok.

Luckily all I blew is the fuse, which was undersized anyway - I dunno if that's what saved the transistors or not.

For future reference, Vid's illustration of coil wiring (http://forum-s3.pinside.com/201210/453694/48662-i.jpg)
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Four wireforms, a big ramp, small tamp, diverters, and plastic that can't be seen with sneeze guards everywhere. Was that enough Mr. Ritchie?

Almost done. Waiting on a new drive for the tamp diverter and then I will install the playfield and finish from there.

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This is one way to do it. I think I will try another, although at least one jumper wire looks to be necessary.

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So I Hakko'd the mess off the little board and then re-pinned the board and put on a new connector. If this was a routed game I might considered crimp on pins put for this application with LEDs I think the IDC connector I had laying around would be fine.

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I was proud of that fix on the back box relay board - but quickly deflated when it didn't work. I had checked everything from the transistor down and was ready to buy a new relay board from GLM when I decided to check continuity again and this time it seemed flakey at the back box interconnect board. After a closer review, I found that the single wire in the 16 pin connector had apparently broken off - and in a fit of laziness someone just pushed it back in - ON TOP of the original broken piece of wire - see pic, 6th pin over. I used a new connector and what do you know? The back box GI flashes and everything is good with the world.

This, on top of the new diverter drive link I received today, which is awesome, means the playfield is ready to be inserted this evening after the kids go to bed.
Get your own link here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/roller-games-owners-help-with-some-minor-issues#post-1381032

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