One of these has just been done pretty thoroughly, but I thought I would post anyway. Somethings will be duplicated, but other things will have different approaches. Below are photos of the game prior to restoration. The cabinet clearly suffers from water damage at one time but the inside and playfield we're still in very good condition.

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So I started by stripping the machine and then use some eco-friendly paint stripper to remove the old paint. The longer you leave it on the easier it is to remove the paint.

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The front of the cabinet had a fair amount of delamination so I had to staple it glue it and bondo it. There was also a good-sized chunk missing from the front corner, so I decided this was a good time to try Vids method of filling it with fiberglass resin. I must say it works great and I would definitely recommend it over wood putty. You can see I left the old paint under the coin door I did this for color matching purposes.

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So now it's time to prepare for painting, after some Bondo and some sanding I brought it into into a homemade paint booth I had built using a pop-up tent with sidewalls. Unfortunately, after painting,
the paint only highlighted Problem areas that I hadn't noticed before so it was back to more Bondo and sanding.

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I initially chose rustoleum heirloom white for the paint color. However after it was done I felt it wasn't white enough compared to the original color on the centigrade 37. So I made the decision to then try Krylon Ivory. Unfortunately the Krylon Ivory was even less white than the heirloom white. There is another forum that goes into more detail on wedge head paint colors here https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gottlieb-wedgehead-cabinet-paint-color

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So at this point I was going nuts having already painted it twice and still not being happy. I considered trying Restoleum blossom which another pinside had recommended. However I had a shade of Benjamin Moore paint that seem to be a perfect match so I thought I would try it. I saw the preval system for sale and a paint store and I bought it on impulse. I tried it with the Ben Moore paint and failed miserably. I learned after that for the Preval system you need to use a much thinner paint. So now I was forced to choose another color and I decided to go with the Blossom White. You can see in the picture where I had to remove some of the white to fix a run how yellow the Krylon Ivory actually is.

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So now I tried it with the Blossom White and finally it came out good. I was initially afraid it would be too white but it actually turned out fine. So now it was time to do the spatter. I have a speckling brush that I have tried previously and I also just had some small brushes and so I tried them both on some test paper. As it turned out the simple brush was the easiest way to go. I just thinned the paint with some paint thinner and dipped a little bit of the brush in at a time and flicked it. In the short time I got the hang of it and it came out pretty good. One mistake I did make that I didn't realize until afterwards is that I did not thin the paint enough and I wound up with some raised speckles.

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Thanks. Wait until you see what happened when I got to the other colors!

So now it was time do the stencils on the cabinet. I ordered stencils from the Pinball Pimp, so I didn't have to worry about trying to cut it out by hand, which was a big relief as it's a pretty complicated stencil with lots of circles and curves. I spent a lot of time selecting the colors as shown in the photo below. I finally decided to go with Montana kicking yellow in Montana good times.

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Yellow was the first color to be done and it went down pretty easy. I can't say enough good things about the Pinball pimps stencils. I mistake I did make was not realizing how heavy the pigment was on the Montana paint. As a result I used more coats and I should've and wind up with some raised edges that I later had to sand down.

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So now it was time to do the magenta. Everything went well until I pulled back the stencil and really looked at the color. What looked like a great match on my sample sheets clearly did not match the original color that I had left underneath the coin door. And this point I had to decide if I should just live with the color or try a different one. I was uncertain if I could safely paint over the color without making a total mess of it. I contacted the Pinball Pimp and he was willing to sell me just the one stencil I needed. So I then ordered Montana pink panther, a color that I had seen on another thread, and upon testing I decided that was the color to go with. It was tricky to line up the new stencil perfectly over the old color. In fact to make it work I had to cut up stencil into pieces to line it up perfectly. Fortunately when it was all done and came out great. A much better match. I would recommend to anyone doing a centigrade 37 to use Montana kicking yellow and Montana pink panther. I know the yellow has a more mustard shade on the older machines, but looking under the coin door one can see that the yellow is much brighter as is the pink. On mine I inadvertently sanded it so the colors in the picture don't give a true sense of how bright they really were.

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I screwed up some of the little circles in the stencil and they needed to be redone. Again I contacted the Pinball pimp and he sold me just the pieces I needed. Great customer service.

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One more comment on the stencils; they were fantastic, but even with them it probably took me four hours to do each color. You would think it wouldn't, but by the time you tape off each section wipe them with Naptha, hit them with the tack cloth, etc. it consumes a tremendous amount of time. I will say I was probably too much of a perfectionist in some areas.

So now it was time to clean up the metal. The legs and other parts got a bath in Evaporust and then buffed and polished. I was having a hard time getting a couple of side rail nails to seat properly, and I didn't want to dent it with a hammer, so I used a C clamp which worked well. The original coin door was a little rough, so I swapped the coin door skin with another one I had laying around. After that everything went back in, including a cleaned up motorboard.

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Forgot to mention that before I put all the metal back on, I clearcoated it with Krylon cover Maxx. I had a run on the head and made the mistake of trying to wipe it when it was wet. This caused it to tear into the paint below. Had to stop doing the head, let it dry, sand it out, touch up the spot on the head and eventually reclear. When it was finally done it was perfect, but what a pain. If you get a run, let it dry and deal with it later.

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The backglass I had wasn't bad, but it had faded and just wouldn't look great with a fresh paint job so I ordered one from Ron Webb. He does good stuff. I never realized how bad the old glass had faded until I put the two side by side.

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So I put the back glass in and that's going to have to do it for now. The playfield still needs to be completely shopped and some steppers and relays gone through. But that's going to have to wait until winter as I have other cabinets to paint and I need to do it now before the weather changes. Overall I'm very pleased with how it came out. And before anyone says it I know that's the wrong sticker on the coin door, I'll be ordering a correct one from the Pinball resource.

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Thanks guys. One of my all time favorites. Just some of the absolute best seventies Gottlieb artwork.

I can't imagine selling it. If I did I would be lucky to make five dollars per hour given the time I put in. You really can't do these well if you value your time, but I just love restoring them, as frustrating as it can be at times. I'm starting another cabinet repaint next week that I hope will go much quicker having learned from experience, but some things you just can't rush.

Thanks for the comments. It's a tough decision sometimes whether or not to repaint. I love a great original, but in this case the choice was easy. I'm not sure I've ever really seen a C37 with good original paint. Aside from the fading which really diminishes the impact of the game, the cabinet paint in general didn't seem to hold up well.

Just a comment regarding the spatter. I recently did one using black lacquer and it was much better. It's naturally thinner and leaves no raised edges when dried.