Wichita, KS
Ok. Posting the entire project all at once here so bear with me. Here's the scoop. Found this at a local distributor's warehouse and it had been sitting with no glass for 10+ years. Boxes and other heavy items had been sitting on the playfield for most of that time which bend/warped all the plastics, the ramp, anything that was bendable, and needless to say, it was filthy. The MPU, power supply, and display had been robbed for some other game. Fortunately, those were the only missing parts. The backglass was in terrible shape as well. Someone decided to use acetone or some other thinner to try and clean it and ended up removing all of the white 'coating/paint' from the back. the cabinet was solid, no damage, but as you can see from the pics below, was in TERRIBLE condition cosmetically. I really had my work cut out for me but I was determined to bring this machine back to factory glory.
Started with a full teardown to determine what parts I would need and other necessities. Got all the missing boards ordered, rubbers, new posts, LED kit, etc. All the normal stuff as well as new glass and new lockdown bar since those were also missing. After tearing down the playfield, I realized it would require touch up in numerous places. I'm no Picasso, but I was able to get that done to my satisfaction. Not too many wear spots, but there were a few. Nothing too major. After getting the playfield fully torn down, cleaned, and assessed, I moved on to the cabinet. Now here's where the real work went into this.
Currently, there are a few sources for repro artwork for BTTF. However, it's all completely inaccurate. Wrong background color (too light of blue), wrong image boarder color (gray vs. turquoise), no shading, no half tones, incorrect watch image, etc. Because of this, I took it upon myself to scan a previous BTTF I restored with a hand scanner and painstakingly scanned the entire cabinet one foot at a time, stitched up and cleaned up all the images in Photoshop and reproduced the most accurate artwork possible. You can see from the pics how good it turned out. I'm willing to share the artwork if anyone wants it. Also, I removed one of the planks on the back of the cabinet, took it to Lowe's and they were able to color match the cabinet EXACTLY. I posted a picture of the paint code as well in case anyone wants that too.
While waiting for the artwork to get printed, all the parts I had ordered arrived including a new playfield protector. I deep cleaned, touched up, installed the protector, and reassembled the playfield. I was able to flatten out and reshape all the bent/warped plastics using a heat gun. It worked great. Saved me from having to get a whole new plastics kit. Got all the missing boards and display installed, hooked everything up, went over everything with a fine-toothed comb, and powered up the machine. To my amazement, everything appeared to be working except the solenoid that launches the ball into the shooter lane and the VUK solenoid were locked on. Quickly turned off the machine and found the diode on both coils shorted. Replaced the diodes but they were still locked on. Turns out the shorted diodes also shorted out the transistors on the brand new MPU for those coils. Fortunately I had some on hand, changed them out, and that fixed the issue. Tested every coil and every switch. The machines was 99.9% operational. The remaining 00.1% was a bad audio amp for the left speaker. The right speaker and cabinet speaker work fine but the left speaker just hums. The amp is bad. I'm going to replace it later once I get a change since it's not necessary at the moment.
So with the the machine running with no issues, I removed the playfield and began work on prepping the cabinet and backbox for the new artwork. Fully stripped everything down, cleaned, sanded, painted all exposed areas where there would be no artwork, sanded again, and applied all the artwork. It all turned out absolutely perfect. You can see from the pics and I think you'd be hard pressed to fine someone to disagree. Reinstalled the backbox on the cabinet, reinstalled all removed items, reinstalled the playfield, hooked everything back up, and it's still without issue. Running perfectly and ready to go! Super proud of this project. This is now one of the nicest BTTFs you'll see anywhere around. I'm posting all the new parts below along with a...(ahem)...crap-ton of gratuitous pictures.
Thanks for looking and any comments, good or bad, are appreciated.
-Mike
-) Full flipper rebuild kit
-) New flipper coils
-) New MPU
-) New power supply
-) New display
-) New rubber kit
-) New playfield posts (some were missing/robbed for another machine)
-) New artwork
-) New playfield protector
-) New drop targets
-) New drop target decals
-) New drop target springs
-) New springs for a few coils (they were missing)
-) New plungers for a few coils
-) Custom holographic 'instruction' card
-) Full LED kit
-) New legs
-) (Probably a few other things I'm forgetting)
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