On to the next project! Here are my previous ones if you weren't following them before:

Bally Black Jack (1978)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-first-restoration-1977-bally-black-jack-ss

Bally Eight Ball Deluxe (1984)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hardtop-install-and-restoration-for-eight-ball-deluxe

Bally Mata Hari (1978)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/hardtop-install-for-ss-mata-hari

Stern Meteor (1979)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/1979-stern-meteor-project

A couple of years ago, I bought a nice player Black Knight from a guy on Facebook at a reasonable price. Upon receipt, it actually played well with only a few switches needing adjustments along with flipper rebuilds. I performed that maintenance along with putting in a playfield protector to overcome the badly cupped inserts and I've been enjoying the machine since. With 4 restorations of other pins now under my belt, I decided last year that barring any new projects, Black Knight would be next on my list. I can't find a F2K project at the moment, so here we go!

At first glance, you may ask "why restore?" when it looks ok and plays pretty good already. I want it to look and play like new, and perhaps even add a custom touch or two. I loved the way my Meteor restoration came out late last year and I would like to duplicate that success with my Black Knight. And since we're starting with pretty good bones here, I'm hoping this one goes fairly easy.

The bad:
- Playfield has tons of ball swirls that no matter how hard I try to clean, I just can't get them out without experiencing paint loss
- Playfield has loss of artwork here and there from 40 years of wear and tear. Could those spots be touched up and cleared? Yes, but out of my skill set. Plus ball swirls above.
- Inserts are BADLY cupped, radically affecting ball trajectory.
- Some GI lights blink during nudging. Likely bad sockets - will be replacing many and reflowing soldering everywhere.
- Cabinet paint is faded and scratched
- Cabinet has deep scratches and gouges (and a few initials carved in here and there)
- Rear of backbox has hole punch-thrus from a previous owner who put in wire clamp screws that were TOO LONG
- If you lift the playfield with the power on, the machine sometimes resets. I likely figured this one out already during tear-down today....found a loose grounding wire near the transformer. All new grounding braid will be going in the cabinet after the re-paint.
- While all displays work, there is some burn-in evident but only visible with the game off. I'm on the fence between keeping these original displays or converting to new LED displays like I did on my Mata Hari restore. Budget-wise, I'll probably keep the originals since they look fine while the game is on.

The good:
- Backglass is perfect. I doubt it's original, but it doesn't look like a CPR. Maybe it's a Mayfair?
- Both sides of the backbox door look really good, probably won't repaint. But the backglass rattles even when locked in so I think the door depth needs to be adjusted.
- Cabinet is structurally sound and even the corners look good. Repairs of scratches and gouges will be easy.
- Machine was 100% playable before tear down and has been pretty reliable for the last couple of years.
- Plastics are in nice shape. Not sure they're original...they look a little too good for that.
- Playfield underside and wire harnesses are surprising clean....I don't think I'll tear that stuff down for cleaning.

What I already did 2 years ago:
- All boards bullet-proofed, old caps replaced with new, and 100% reliable
- NVRAM added to MPU
- Flipper rebuilds
- New rubbers, but time for new ones now anyway
- New legs and levelers
- All GI and control lamps converted to LED

What's the plan now?
- Hardtop install. Don't hate! I've done three of these already and I LOVE them. I'm not interested in touching up worn artwork, clear coating, or living with the ball swirls that I can't get out. Even just working on this project during weekends, I'll probably have the hardtop phase completed within a few weeks.
- Repair and re-paint the cabinet with Pinball Pimp stencils
- Tear down, clean, and rebuild all sub-assemblies (slings, drop target banks, ball troughs, outhole kickers, etc.)
- Tear down, clean, and rebuild the coin door
- Ultrasonic clean and tumble polish all other metal bits (and polish by hand the bits that won't fit in my cleaners/tumblers)
- Replace flaky lamp sockets
- New power cord
- New ground braid
- Reflow all solder joints
- Even though everything has been working the last 2 years, repin the IDC connectors to Molex for more longevity and reliability
- New rubbers
- New side rails
- New playfield posts
- Custom Reese Rails
- Enhance darker areas of the playfield with LED strip lighting under some plastics

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Tear down has begun! Got the topside of the bottom playfield about 95% de-popped tonight. This weekend I'll be cleaning up the grime and dirt and sanding the artwork off of the inserts. With a little luck, I'll get to the polish-inserts phase. With a little more luck, maybe even lay down the hardtop. But I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time trying to improve the ball shooter lane. I want to get this bottom playfield done before moving on to the smaller, upper playfield.

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Cabinet is set aside for now. I'm thinking that May will be the playfield restore and June will be the cabinet restore.

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On tap for this morning - disassembling and cleaning the two 3-bank drop target sets from the bottom playfield. And putting in some new targets and decals during reassembly.

This is my first early Williams drop target bank. I've done a couple dozen Bally/early Sterns which seemed daunting at first but got way easier with each one completed. These Williams designs are way different....time for lots of reference pictures during the disassembly!

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Nice day outside today so instead of working on drop targets I went ahead and prepped the bottom playfield for the hardtop.

I'm not one of those hardtop guys who removes all artwork and clearcoats the playfield before laying it down. You DO NOT need to go through all of that hassle, tho I have done it that way myself one time before. All you need to do is remove the artwork on the inserts and a little bit around them. Then polish up your inserts - for me, I go thru wet sanding 800-1000-1500. And during that process this afternoon, the cupping on every insert was extremely evident....none of the insert centers would get touched by the flat surfaced orbital sander. The polished edges and the hazy center of each insert stuck out like a sore thumb. I carefully sanded away the artwork and polished the insert centers by hand with loose sheets of sandpaper. The hardtop will bridge the cup voids perfectly without the need to mess around with trying to level each one drops of clear.

Using a small diameter dowel wrapped with various grits of sandpaper sheets, I sanded away 40 years of dirt and grime from the shooter lane to get it looking a lot better. Final step was to apply a light coat of rattle can polyurethane clear gloss on the shooter lane and the apron area where the bare wood will show thru the clear portions of the hardtop.

I'll let the poly outgas for a few days and put on the hardtop sometime next week. While I'm waiting on that, I'll get to work on those drop targets and start getting some metal bits through the ultrasonic cleaner and tumblers.

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I may have to do that with the upper playfield - the lower had no mylar, but there's a big ring of mylar around the upper playfield pop bumper. I'll worry about that in a couple weeks.

Hardtop alignment test (protective coating still on) - happy to say, this lines up better than any of my previous hardtop installs. Rule #1 is always line up the inserts and don't worry about the other holes as those can always be adjusted. And if some inserts don't line up, try to make sure that all the ones visible from the players positions line up and force the unaligned ones away from the player's position. In this case, not only do ALL inserts line up but pretty much most of the other holes do, too. I usually have to dremel out (widen) at least a dozen holes for posts, wireforms, etc. Sometimes holes in the hardtop are missing and you've got to punch in some new ones. For this bottom playfield, I'll need to adjust only 1 or 2 holes, add none, and all inserts look great.

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Well, I hit the first set back. And there's nothing much I can do about it except sigh and move on.

I laid down the bottom playfield hardtop today. Alignment test was perfect. I locked in the position with clamps. I did three practice lay downs before removing the adhesive backing. Each lay down was perfectly aligned....the hardtop was locked into place. I removed the adhesive backing and laid it down. Much to my dismay, a few inserts edges have a bit of bare wood showing through where they did not before during lay down testing. Something moved, despite three clamps holding it in place. First time that's happened to me in 5 hardtop installs.

When I get perfectly aligned test lay downs, I don't paint any black outlines around the inserts. Might consider doing that all the time no matter what going forward. Oh, well...time to move on and not obsess.

Then I hit the second set back but was able to overcome this one despite being a little nervous. I did not notice during my hardtop hole check that 4 holes were missing for the flush wireforms below the flippers. Not sure how Outside Edge missed that? There are 2 other holes missing in addition to that for the roll pin that breaches the playfield surface at the tip of the flippers (for the flipper alignment guide). I drilled the holes into the hardtop needed for the wireforms and got those in ok, but I'm choosing for the time being not to drill holes into the hardtop for the flipper alignment roll pins. If I decide to do those, tho, it should be easy as those playfield holes go the whole way through the playfield, so I could just drill up thru the bottom of the playfield and not worry about getting it wrong from hardtop via topside.

Set back #3, tho I knew about this one Friday: I bought a set of custom Reese Rails last year for this Black Knight knowing I'd be restoring it someday. I never opened to tube of rails Taylor sent me last year until this past Friday. My mistake: come to find out....I'm missing a rail from the package (the left/bottom inside rail for the shooter lane). I reached out to TaylorVA this weekend and I'm hoping he gets back to me soon. He's been MIA from his Reese Rails thread for several months, presumably taking a break from his side hustle. His rails are great - this is my third set!

I've also decided to take a few shortcuts. I'm going to tumble and polish the metal bits that are visible topside, but for hidden stuff (sling mechs, drop target mechs, outhole kick mech, trough parts, etc.) I'm just going to ultrasonic clean them and get them working nice and smooth.

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The early SS Williams drop target mech is way easier (and more elegant) than the early SS Bally/Stern drop target mechs by a mile. Dis-assembly, ultrasonic clean, new drop targets with new stickers, new coil sleeves, re-assembly, all in less than 20 minutes each (and that's with a 6 minute clean). Back on the bottom playfield now, along with some other metal bits installed that spent a couple days in the tumblers.

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Several GI lamps have been driving me nuts for 2 years, flickering when nudging and sometimes going out altogether only to come back on after another nudge. Reflowing solder no help....time to replace 40 year old crusty lamp sockets!

Using a 6.3v wall wart modified with alligator clips, got a successful GI test after replacing all of the lower playfield GI sockets. Man handled the lamps from topside and wiggled the each set of wires from underneath, no flicker! Ending tonight's session on a good note.

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Thanks...it's coming along. Getting distracted with family stuff for a few days but will return to BK this weekend with the goal of completing the bottom playfield so I can move on to the upper.

Still have to shim. A year or so ago, OE started including some extra PET-G strips with the BK hardtop to use as shims for the ramps. I'm assuming they started doing that for all titles with ramps (the other hardtops I've done are EBD and Mata Hari, no ramps).

Ha! I have it backwards! Great eye, Gornkleschnitzer .....I just confirmed with my tear down photos.

I think the bottom playfield is just about done:

- Hardtop installed. Not happy with the accident during laydown causing a slight mis-alignment with a couple of insert edges, but waddaya gonna do.
- New lamp sockets.
- New drop targets with new decals.
- New Reese Rails finished in black instead of the OEM natural wood color. I still haven't heard back from TaylorVA on the piece missing from my BK order so I painted the original inner shooter lane rail black and cleared it. It's passable enough in person, but if you look at it closer you can very much see the difference in the high quality craftsmanship and material that TaylorVA uses.
- Flippers rebuilt with new prawls and plungers, springs, leaf switches, and coil sleeves. Also put in new black bats (with the Williams logo) instead of yellow.
- New posts. Went black instead of red. This will be a theme throughout the restore with most choices being able to go back to original colors if I find it "too much" once it's done.
- I haven't been able to find black acorn nuts (for the plastics) in stock anywhere so I went with red temporarily until I find them.
- New rubbers
- Sling assemblies, outhole kicker, drop target assemblies, and trough disassembled and ultrasonic cleaned.
- Smaller metal bits tumble polished, larger metal bits hand polished.

Going to start the upper playfield tear down sometime this week.

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Tore down the topside of the upper playfield this evening. Will be pulling out the drop target banks and pop bumper this weekend for disassembly, cleaning and rebuilding. Also flipper rebuilds.

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Drop target banks out and on my bench for cleaning and rebuild, pop bumper out (will go back in with all new parts), and flippers out. Time to tackle the mylar.....two spots. A big circle around the pop bumper and a small curved strip and the entrance/exit of the left ramp alley, and partially covering half of the Extra Ball insert.

With a heat gun on low, the mylar came up pretty easily - got both pieces up without lifting any artwork from the playfield. Good practice for when I need to pull mylar from a playfield that is NOT getting a hardtop, lol.

Pretty sure the mylar around the pop bumper is factory....paint looks pretty nice underneath. The mylar near the ramp alley was a little thicker than the pop bumper, and there was paint damage already under the mylar. I'm guessing an operator/previous owner stuck that on there to prevent further paint loss.

Now on to GooGone to get the mylar's adhesive residue off.
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Time to sand the inserts. No artwork on inserts to remove, but now's the time clean them up and get them nice and smooth and shiny.

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Well, heck. I wound up removing all of the artwork in addition to sanding the inserts, even tho you don't have to (and I usually don't when prepping for a hardtop). Just like when I go to trim my beard once a week, every once in a while I wind up coming out the bathroom clean shaven, much to my wife's surprise.

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Upper playfield ready - playfield sanded, inserts wet sanded up to 2000, compressed air to get rid of most particles, quick naphtha wipedown, and then twice over with a tack cloth.

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Hardtop lined up perfectly with inserts. Using 5 clamps instead of 2 to hold it in place....no laydown mishaps this time around!

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Bingo! Perfect install. I see only 3 holes in the hardtop that I need to widen out to line up with playfield holes, no hardtop holes missing.

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Next up is cleaning the metal bits and rebuilding subassemblies over the next few days, then it's on to repopulating early next week.

Yep. I bought several warm white Comet LED matrix strips (https://www.cometpinball.com/products/lighting-strips) and will be fooling around with lighting up some of the darker areas. Once I get the playfield back together on the rotisserie, I'll experiment with some different configurations to see what works and what looks like overkill.....I don't want to go too gaudy. The current GI LEDs are cool white and I'll be swapping those out for warm white as well.

Got the upper playfield fully populated and attached back on to the lower playfield. I started playing around with some matrix LED strips to illuminate the darker portions of the playfield - here are the 4 locations I'm trying first.

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I also added this lamp by the upper ramp entrance. On my OEM playfield, the cutout for the lamp socket was there and the cutout on the hardtop was also there, but there's no evidence (screw hole on the playfield underside or any supported GI wiring) that a lamp socket was ever installed on this machine. So I put one in. Curious if other Black Knight owners have this lamp missing???

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So here's the completed playfield - one with GI off, one with GI on, and one with GI and the room lights out. Not 100% sure I'll keep the lighting this way, but I'm going to give it some time (everything is easily reversible). The LED strips, even the frosted ones, are a bit brighter than expected. I could trim the strips and lower the SMD LED count to help dim, or I could install Comet's brightness control add-on and dim them slightly. I think I'll experiment with the latter - fortunately, Comet Pinball is local to me (15 or so miles away) so I'll probably drive over there some time next week and pick up a few more doo-dads.

Here's the tally for the upper playfield:

- Hardtop installed, no alignment issues
- New lamp sockets, including installing a new one near the upper ramp entrance that was missing from the OEM playfield (but the cutout was there).
- Comet LED matrix strips in various locations.
- New drop targets with new decals.
- New Reese Rails finished in black instead of the OEM natural wood color.
- Flippers rebuilt with new prawls and plungers, springs, leaf switches, and coil sleeves. And also like the lower playfield, put in new black bats (with the Williams logo) instead of yellow.
- New posts (black).
- Red acorn nuts (for the plastics) temporarily in - found some black ones, should be here next week.
- New rubbers
- New pop bumper cap, skirt (black), and spring.
- Drop target assemblies and trough disassembled and ultrasonic cleaned.
- Smaller metal bits tumble polished, larger metal bits including ramps and guiderails hand polished.

Now with the playfield done (at least till it's back in the cabinet, powered-on, and triaged for any little gremlins that might have been introduced during the restoration), it's time to move on to stripping the cabinet and backbox and getting ready for a Pinball Pimp stencil re-paint. That prep work will likely start next week as I have holiday weekend plans with the family.

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Fairly productive day - got the lower cab all torn down and ready for sanding this week. Have a few dings and gouges to repair, but nothing major. This is my 5th cabinet restoration and by far the most structurally sound of them all before starting repairs.

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Will also begin working on refreshing the Tilt Board and Transformer Board this week as well. Sorting through the metal bits this weekend, picking out the ones that will be polished in the tumblers and which ones I'll be sending out to be powder coated (lockdown bar, legs, and side rails for sure).

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One other thing I've noticed while tearing down this cabinet is how original everything is....no hack jobs and most of all, all of the screws seem to be the "right" screws. Usually this is where you find a hodge-podge of different/non-matching (or missing) screws holding stuff in that have found their way into a cabinet over 40+ years. The only bad thing I've found is some dangerously frayed pieces and sections of the ground braid. Looking forward to getting a nice, new and shiny ground braid in after the cabinet gets the Pinball Pimp re-paint treatment.

Actually, yes! I didn't take any in-progress pictures of the Black Knight tear down from a distance, but this is what it usually looks like when I'm doing anything serious on a pin in my rec room:
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For the most part, the cabinet is in really good shape - no corner or edge repairs necessary. Just a few dings and gouges that will fill in nicely with wood epoxy. This one is probably the most serious on the right side of the backbox....that jutting piece (top center) will break off during sanding, nothing a little wood epoxy can't fix.
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The back of the lower cab has A LOT of scratches and gouges. If these don't sand out nice and smooth, I'll put a thin layer of bondo, glazing putty, or Durhams wood putty over the back.
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The back of the backbox has some annoying damage - several protrusions, bulges, and outright broken wood from a previous owner using wire clamp screws that were TOO LONG. A previous owner just torqued away on these too-long screws when securing the internal wire harness and breached the back surface in multiple spots. After sanding down, I will likely remove the broken fibers, fill in the cavities with wood epoxy, and sand down smooth.
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Lower cab work has begun. I'm an advocate for chemically stripping the paint off of these old cabinets. Who wants to sand for hours (and hours), going through numerous pads that get clogged up every few minutes, and risk breathing in 1970's lead paint dust debris?? Even if you're wearing a mask, now you've got 1970's lead paint dust debris all over your driveway.

As long as you take the proper precautions and handle with care, chemically stripping with acetone is the way to go IMHO:
- do it outside for proper ventilation
- wear a mask, protective goggles, and chemically-rated rubber gloves
- Let used rags/towels dry out in the sun by laying them flat in the driveway
- properly dispose of the used rags/towels according to your local county's regulations

Here's the left side - took less about 30 minutes. With the vast majority of the paint now gone, I'll spend about 20-30 minutes sanding out what I can of scratches, gouges, and dings as well as prepping for wood epoxy or glazing putting if the issues don't all sand out.

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Here's about 20 minutes of working with acetone and shop paper towels on the right side of the cabinet....

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It wasn't until I got the cabinet out into the sunlight today and looked at it from an angle that I noticed someone carved into the side "Mocos - Low Rider". I've had the machine in my rec room and have been playing it for almost 3 years, and I never noticed.
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Much easier to see it after stripping the paint! If it doesn't sand out, glazing putty will take care of it.
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I did find some damage over and above the usual scratches and dings that I'll have to fix. It wasn't until my son and I were carrying the cabinet up from the basement and into the garage that a chunk of wood in the back right corner fell off....it must've been holding on by a thread. The piece of wood was probably held in place by the leg. Nothing a little wood epoxy (or maybe resin) won't fix....

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