Documenting Taxi hard top install, cabinet repair and general rehab. My plan was to do the documentation posts along the way but that didn't happen so will do a shorter fast-forward version.

Late December '19, my father-in-law asked me if I was interested in a pinball machine that was donated but no longer wanted by the place where he volunteers at. My kids and I help out there at times as well. He said it had to be picked up quickly or it would be trashed as it wasn't working right and they just wanted it out of there. So the next day I go with him to pick it up, excited that it's a Taxi that looks good from 20 ft, complete, fires up, playfield looked presentable with a quick look, cabinet was rough, with some operational issues. Had to drill out the lock to get it folded and bundled up. I didn't want my 80+ father-in-law to help so it was the first time I loaded a pin by myself. The facility did want anything in exchange but gave them a small donation.

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Get the game home and give it a good look. Playfield hand been painted by hand and covered with cheap mylar around the pops , wear on a lot of the inserts, and general wear and dirtiness outside of the mylar lower on the playfield. All ramps had a crack or broken tabs, topper was broken and riveted together. Cabinet was generally solid but issues all over, worst was lower front edge, looked like a soda was spilled on the machine which ran down the front and caused the plys to separate and break apart. Bottom edge all around was generally rough.

Boards looked generally good and had TNT service tags from 2004. Battery holder was converted to a lithium battery in a way I hadn't seen before.

Replaced flipper coils, found a shorted flasher that took out a fuse and a bunch of associated solendoids, same with a shorted knocker coil. Reseated ribbon cables which fixed the garbled displays. After those things were fixed it played pretty well.

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January: Disassembly and rotisserie fabrication

Wasn't going to be able to live with the playfield condition so decided on a hardtop, proabably after reading vid1900 hardtop install guide. Was going to need a rotisserie so decided to build a floor based model of wrd1972_PinDoc tabletop design.

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February: Playfield disassembly and sanding, cabinet sanding and inital priming

Sanded around playfield insert but eventually ended up sanding the entire playfileld which is not necessary but no downsides at least with the Taxi hardtop.

Sanded the cabinet to bare wood and surveyed the damaged lower front and bad bottom edges.

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March: Playfield: prep, hardtop install, assembly, relay board repair.

Prepped the playfield for the hartop install. Initial attempts were to clear the inserts but after 3 attempts there was crazing of the clear on the inserts. Not sure what the problem was, maybe to cold to spray in the garage. Changed course to polish the inserts instead so worked up to 3000 grit then Novus 3, 2, 1 with good results. Lightly sanded and cleared the shooter lane.

Hardtop install inspector approved prep and install. Was extra careful with canned air and tack cloth to avoid trapped hairs! As Vid says, the hardtop was not in perfect alignment with all inserts to had to be careful with picking the best position.

Received new playfield relay board and swapped over components.

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March: Cabinet: bottom front cut out, replacement panel fab (x2), bottom lip replacement, epoxy, routing.

Started on the front bottom repair using direction from Freeplay40 post. Measured and cut out bad section, cleaned up the mating surfaces, fabbed a couple of replacement pieces from a Home Depot sourced small plywood section which was relatively expensive but relatively low quality. Took some time to do with not having a table saw or router table. Picked the best one and dry installed it. Initially went with screws down from the bottom edge but this ended up causing displacement of the plywood. Fabbed another piece, bought a HF doweling kit and drilled from the bottom edge into the main cabinet for the dowels. Glued all edges, installed the replacement piece and set in the dowels from the bottom edge in. Turned out pretty good.

WIth that done, with guidance from vid1900 cab repair thread, I routed out the bad inside bottom lip and glued in the window screen trim. Then taped up the bottom and filled low areas with fiberglass resin mixed with glass microspheres to make it easier to sand.

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April: More cabinet epoxy, priming with a brush, head sanding then cabinet and head bondo

I had put on Kilz oil based with a brush but got major brush marks and ended up sanding almost all of the primer off to get it flat again.

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May: More cabinet and head bondo/sanding, paint booth #1 attempt, paint booth #2, then primer via HVLP

More bondo, sand, rinse and repeat.

So after poor results with primer via a brush and more reading on Vid's cabinet thread I decided to dive into HVLP and bought the cheap HF gun. Needed a paint booth so had a great idea of a pop up tent in the driveway with PVC framework, fans and plastic enclosure. Had to wait a week for relatively good weather then started to set it up but gave up on that idea 10 minutes later when the wind came.

Switched gears to jamming a PVC/plastic paint booth into my cramped garage. It ended up being about 7'x7'.

Mixed the Kilz oil based primer 4 : 1 with naphtha and shot with about 45 psi and the needle almost all the way out. Turned out much better than the brush method. Sanded up to 400 grit to be ready for paint.

Spray primered the head interior and front edge and started spot putty in prep for black spray paint on these areas.

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June: Painting the final color 3 times (or more)

For color, searched here and elsewhere for recommendations and initally tried Rust-o-leum Marigold then Golden Sunset spray cans which were both not good.

Then went with the Behr 3300 color recomendation in the Taxi thread and elsewhere. Took the color code to Home Depot but they couldn't decipher it. Went back with a piece of the new decals to scan and mix. Got home and knew I'd have trouble with spraying because the 3300 was so thick. Thinned out with water to 20% which is twice the recommended amount, still too thick, tried to spray with bad results and it was tacky after days. The excess water was probably affecting the chemical reaction. Sanded most of that off.

Behr 3300 results, blegh.

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June: Paint attempt 2

Then went to Sherwin Williams for oil based cabinet paint and HVLP recommendation. They had no one with HVLP experience but scanned the decal and mixed the paint which is only available in gloss. Sprayed the cab (again 4 : 1 naphtha), went on good but the color was not right. Looked OK in the paint booth but way off against the decals. Apparently the scanner was picking up mostly yellow and not the red which is very fine specs on the decals.

SW custom mix 1: Also blegh

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June: Paint attempt 3

Back to the store, scan and mix, color didn't look right in the store so the rep custom mixed another adding more red. It turned out to be a close match and complimentary to decals. Paint, sand a couple of runs, paint, sand a couple of runs, and finally the last yellow goes on. Also painted the black on the head.

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Thanks for the kind words. Will get more updates out soon.

Missed a major March activity: Playfield assembly...not many pics though.

ln addition to the hardtop are new plastics, new ramps (including a blue spinout ramp),Titans, departure ramp protector, carry passengers target, drop target stickers, pop bodys, caps and sockets, and all new star posts.

Hardware was either polished or replaced. Flippers rebuilt including new coils. Drop targets disassembled and cleaned. Ball guides polished and regrained. Wireforms were in great shape and just needed some cleaning.

More playfield pics later.

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Also in June: Coin door rehab

Disassembled the coin door, straightened out some dents in the door, scuffed up the parts and resprayed.

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Yes, my neighbors thought I was crazy with months of sanding going on in the driveway. And then coming out of the garage after the painting sessions looking like Walter White. I now understand why pro restorers often start with a brand new cabinet.

July was a busy month: First up, WPC style cabinet skids.

So this was my first experience with a non-WPC pin and the accompanying back panel damage because the cabinet glides do not protect much when it is standing on its end. So to protect the new paint I bought some poplar at HD and had it ripped down by a friend ('cause I have no table saw). Painted them separately then glued and nailed them to the cabinet.

Haven't tried it out yet with the whole thing assembled, folded and stood up.

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July: Cabinet decals

Like a lot of this work, this was my first time putting decals on. Searched around for decals and ended up going with Bay Area/PPS but was then told they were out of stock so searched some more and found free-play.se had licensed Next Gen in stock. Quaility was excellent.

Got installation pointers from Pinside and YouTube and decided on the dry method. Measured many times, especially for the sides to make sure the little guy in Santa's bag didn't get covered up by the side rail on the left side (and it just barely worked out). Big ups to Jjsmooth and his Taxi restoration thread for the idea to shine a flashlight through the empty start button hole to get the front decal lined up at the traffic light...that is one area that being a little off will stick out big time. Trimmed edges back using a straightedge and a bunch of new Xacto blades. Added decal protectors and cut out the decals around them.
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July: Assembly goes quick now

Up on original legs that were in good shape to start with, soaked in evaporust overnight, then lightly polished. Leg bolts were lightly polished too. Stern style legs brackets were installed.

Side rails, coing door, shooter installed. Flipped button switches and caps and power cord were replaced. Everything else in the cab already had a general clean-up and polished hardware. New topper.

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August: Shooter lane cover repair

The apron was a nice survivor and cleaned up nicely after carefully removing the TNT sticker that was dead center . The shooter lane cover had a crack near where the ball contacts and the paint was not in good shape so stripped the paint, welded, ground, sanded, primed, some bondo to fill the low spots, prime, and black paint. Mneubey was awesome and helped out with stencils for the two colors.

Found nice instruction cards at pinballrebel.com, fixed up some spelling errors in Photoshop and printed them out.

Also tried out a Titan lockdown bar receiver sticker.

Printed out Inkochnito designed fuse diagram, caution, patent and other labels.

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August: Last odds and ends

Recapped most of the sound board and C30 on the MPU.

Replaced few interconnect board headers.

Repainted upper and lower speaker panel channels.

I had sanded and polished the lockdown bar but it had a couple of small dents that I couldn't get out so got a nice used on from @schmitty.

New ribbon cables.

Touched up transilte around stop light where the light board had rubbed on it. Added a vinyl sticker to prevent that from happening again.

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I'm probably missing few things but that is pretty much it. It is together and playing well. Thanks to all of Pinside and the Pinsiders that helped out along the way...I couldn't have done it without this site.

I wish I could keep it but it's one pin more than I have space for so will be posting an ad soon.

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Heads up on the high rotisserie, it moves a little end to end when doing things like sanding inserts. I added a brace to one leg of one side and playfield clamps and some paint. Haven't tried it out yet though.

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