Hello, first post as I am in the planning stage of restoring my TAF machine. This is my personal machine with NO intention of ever selling it.

From my research it is a late model unit (routed but better than most) and it has a standard blue graphics head printing but a GOLD cabinet with gold legs and side rails. The play field is standard. Someone also put a Gold Rom in it.

The cabinets have some scratches/gouges/dings into the wood layer and heavy wear around the flippers (white showing). I need to glue some head cabinet plywood that is starting to de-laminate but nothing mechanically too serious. The insides are so black with filth it looks like it was in a coal mine.

My question is how should it be restored?
1) All matching Standard/Blue decals (regular model style and replacing all gold HW with Chrome)
2) All matching Gold decals (keeping/restoring all gold HW)
3) Try to keep the mixed build using new decals as it seems to have come from the factory. (I am presently not too fond of the mixed look.)
4) Skip new decals and just spot repair and hand touch up the existing artwork.

What would YOU do?

Thanks for your thoughts!

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Here is a pic I had available, not well lit but mostly there. I am certain this is NOT a real gold machine. The main flaws I can see without stripping the field are the normal ones.
Chair hole wear, some minor planking in the clouds over the left magnet, right ball return drop position wear deep into the wood just above the rollover switch, some chipping around a few inserts. The UV serial number and the sticker serial number match. It is a CCC manufactured playfield. The date is not readable.

Someone put crappy black and white replacement apron stickers on as well, yuck.

Still on the fence deciding if I want to do a play field swap since I need to strip it all to clean it anyway.

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The reason I think it might be as shipped is due to the following notes I found on the Internet Pinball Machine Database ( ipdb.org ), But it could very well be a Frankenstein build just as much! Either way this is one of my "grail" machines so it's going to get some TLC after all the hard work it's been through.

[quote]
Pat Lawlor comments further on these Later Production games:

The record breaking game was #20,232. That game is the one we all had our picture taken in front of, and then on the cover of Replay. The inside of the game was signed by every worker on the line that day, and is in the possession of Gene Cunningham.

Larry, you are correct that the final few games were made with the Gold. That's because you do not just make 1 cabinet when you are doing screen print production, you make many. Once the change was made, they just kept making them. Yes, there are mis-matched cabinets out there, probably orphans on the "hospital" line at the factory. That's the area where games with problems were kept until the techs could get around to fixing them for shipment. Another possibility is that Odd parts were sometimes assembled to get the last few games of any run out the door.
[end quote]