I recently picked myself up a Bally 1979 Star Trek for my 50th birthday.
In Perth Western Australia the number of pinball machines that come up for sale isn't that many, which means if you wait for a perfect one to turn up you will never get one.
As purchased it was all working, but terribly filthy.
Once I got it home I set it up and we played it for a couple of days just to give me a chance to see if there were any issues I needed to be aware of.
Whilst my wife was playing it she commented that it played a lot slower that mt Chicago Coin Hollywood, I told her that was because the rubbers were shot and the play field was so dirty it was probably sticky.

Whilst inspecting the play field I touched one of the rubbers and it snapped in half just from me touching it, that was the signal that it was time to stop playing with it and it was time to strip it down and 'restore' it.
I don't have the funds to replace the play field, so will need to just clean up this one the best I can.
Unfortunately at some point in the past someone decided it would be a 'good' idea to protect the playfield by hand painting the play field with a hardware store varnish. This of course has yellowed slightly and there is no way I can remove it without damaging the paint under it.
With this is mind I will just be cleaning the play field, touching up the small paint losses by hand, waxing and then applying Mylar over the touch-ups.

I've just stripped down the play field and noted all the parts that need to be replaced and will be ordering this week.

All the boards need to have their capacitors replaced and their connectors renewed.
I'm not going to repaint the cabinet as I don't mind the machines showing their age as long as the are mechanically and electrically sound.

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I finished cleaning the dirt off the playfield and tried to polish up the brushed on yellowed varnish someone had applied in the past, but just wasn't happy with it, so I decided to take a risk.
I went and got the 'magic eraser' out from under the kitchen sink.
I wetted it with Isopropyl alcohol and gave it a test on a corner of the out lane and was surprised with the results, so decided to try it on a larger area.
I would carefully rub a little, use a clean paper towel to wipe away and check and then rub some more until I had most of the brush marks removed.
I then polished with Novas 2, it will never be perfect but it will be a lot better than it currently is.
The blue triangle on the right side and the red lane is my test area, you can clearly see the line of varnish below were I haven't worked on it.
I know I will be cutting into the original finish, but luckily I think the varnish was applied over a dirty playfield so it is lifting easier minimising the damage to the original surface. I've just given myself a lot of extra work

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Well this is disappointing.
I decided to give myself a break from cleaning the playfield and recap the solenoid board.
It didn't look too bad in place, but once I removed it and flipped it over it was a different story.
Atleast 3 of the driver transistors had blown in the past and when they went they actually burnt the traces completely off the PCB and whoever repaired it had subpar soldering skills.
The also reflowed the solder on the J3 edge connector and damaged the traces on that too and then filed the pins, so the edge connector needs to go but if I remove it I will likely loose several of the pads on the PCB. Onto top of that the transistors that they soldered back in the tracks have lifted where they still have tracks so the transistors flap on the front of the board if you touch them. It would only be a matter of time before new faults appeared on this board I think I will just cut my losses and replace the board with a modern one. I'm now dreading checking the other boards as I can see work on the MPU and rectifier board. I'll save checking them for another night.

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I've finished cleaning the playfield and I've touched up the paint to the best of my ability which I'm first to admit isn't much.
This is the first time I've attempted to mix paint to match an existing colour and whilst it is good enough for what will just be a player I still have a lot to learn.
I used the suggested paints but I decided to just hand paint rather than invest in an airbrush as I can't clearcoat this play field as it has already been hand varnished in the past and I don't know what was used and don't want to risk an incompatibility with that and the clear coat I would use, so I will be applying Mylar over the areas I have painted.
The playfield is far from perfect but it is a massive improvement on what it was.

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The old board is definitely not getting thrown away. It will be stored with the machine so if someone else wants to fix the card and put it back in to make it original they can.
I have a number of other hobbies, restoring vintage bicycles, horology, restoring retro computers and my first choice is always to keep original if possible, but I don't mind making changes if they are reversible and it can be restored back to original if someone else wants to.
So fitting a new board that will make the machine more reliable whilst keeping the original with the machine meets that criteria for me.
That and I had spinal surgery 4 months ago and my neck still hasn't fully recovered and I know the amount of soldering I would need to do on that board to fix everything would cause me a reasonable amount of pain.
I actually bought this machine for my 50th, I was planning on buying an expensive vintage watch for me to restore but I'm still a number of months away from being able to work on watches again so decided something bigger would be better and then I saw this machine for sale.
Lifting heavy things isn't a problem after my surgery, but crouching over head down like in watch work still is very much a problem.