(Topic ID: 296744)

1979 Stern Meteor Project

By Mathazar

2 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 230 posts
  • 36 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 44 days ago by Mathazar
  • Topic is favorited by 25 Pinsiders

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  • Meteor Stern Electronics, 1979

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#8 2 years ago
Quoted from KSUWildcatFan:

There are plenty of crappy Stern games that deserve being gutted and converted into Quicksilver or Star Gazer

Really? What are the plentiful "crappy" MPU-200 games that deserve to be converted that have the correct 16B-6 transformer? I take it you've never done this. I'll save you the thought process though...

The MPU-200 games are pretty rare, most with production runs below 2500 or far less than that. Meteor & Galaxy are the largest runs, around 8000 & 5000 respectively. The reason they are used for conversions is because they are cheaper, more plentiful, have the required parts to reuse, and quite frankly are not great games compared to Stern's best like Quicksilver, Nine ball, Star Gazer, etc.

And the transformer in an MPU-100 Stern is not powerful enough to convert to an MPU-200 game, especially if you want it to play correctly with enough power. This has been debated & covered in detail in other threads. If I was looking to buy a conversion game with a MPU-100 transformer installed, I'd keep right on walking.

My donor was roached, non-working, full of issues & beat to hell. Zero regrets converting. QS is probably the best classic Stern IMO, and since they are so rare it's nice to have another one in this world that others can enjoy.

Didn't mean to hijack. It's your game Math. I was only teasing you You do what you want with it & don't let anyone influence you. Happy reading though! I'm sure you can find some helpful resto tips in there.

1 week later
#32 2 years ago
Quoted from Mathazar:

My ultimate goal is to go with Reese Rails

I'll give my two cents on those. I installed RR on my QS. Yes they were high quality, but he predrills the mounting holes in the underside of the rail. This turned into a nightmare for me, because of course, his holes did not match up with my new playfield. And they were only off by a few millimeters, which made it even worse for redrilling purposes. It would have been better if I could have drilled the holes myself. I was snapping screws when mounting, they didn't line up exactly how I wanted, what a mess that was.

In hindsight I should have plugged holes & redrilled exactly where the hole needed to be, or just asked him not to drill. Next time I'll just save myself the hassle, buy the wood & make them myself.

3 weeks later
#109 2 years ago

Sadly no shortcuts IMO to making a cabinet look nice. If your going to go through the trouble of cabinet restoration, you'll be thanking yourself later when you did it right.

Remove paint---Sand.
Rebuild corners/edges with epoxy---Sand.
Fill dents & large grain with Bondo---Sand.
Prime with sandable primer---Sand. Repeat step.
Final primer---Paint
Then seal with clear.

Your products may be diffrent but the process is the same. It's the worst part of any restore, but it's worth so much in the end. Specially if you go it sell it someday. The sandable primer is the key, because it fills most of the small imperfections & makes the surface flat & smooth.

#112 2 years ago
Quoted from Mathazar:

I picked up some Durham's today and practiced on some spare plywood with different mixing ratios for viscosity, from thicker putty for filling in holes to thinner glaze to smooth out scratches. Not too bad. It's more flexible than bondo in that way, and more importantly it does not set as quickly as bondo giving me more time to work. Within 20 minutes it was set hard and touchable. In under an hour, it was sandable. 4 hours later, hard as rock.
Going to finish stripping the paint this weekend and then working on rebuilding some edges with wood epoxy. After that, and perhaps a little more practice on scrap plywood, I think I'll try Durham's for smoothing out the cabinet sides (and front and rear) to cover up that planking.

This trick might help you with the corners & the epoxy resin.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-2nd-restoration-quicksilver-scratch-build#post-5790793

1 month later
#136 2 years ago
Quoted from TheLaw:

Flitz gets a lot of love but I found it extremely lacking compared to mother Mag

This a million times over. Mothers Mag is my go to for polishing, along with the ultrasonic. It works so well that I hardly used my tumbler with Flitz last build.

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