Thanks! =)

Prmailers: nice! Pm me if you need any tear down pictures, I've got plenty now.

More progress will come later today. Im into the painting jungle now trying to produce something good but kinda hard.

Yeah it's not worth it if I was going to sell the machine but right now I'm sure im gonna keep it. It's also nice to go all in and learn how everything works from the tiniest screw to clear coating the playfield =) love to read similar threads so it's nice to give something back!

TheDrewster: Maybe you should do it one more time just for the fun of it =)

Anyway, been busy working but I have been trying to find a method to duplicate the artwork of the playfield. Its not really needed on this particulare one since its in kinda good shape except for smaller spots and the bigger gray and white areas. But I thought it might be good to test the colors and the clear before i do the real thing so i printed a part of the artwork and used a type of "carbon paper" that is used to make copies of reciepts and stuff. I managed to get a piece of the art onto a wood piece that I grounded with acrylic white ground color. The plan is to mask of the areas/colors one at a time and airbrush them with the correct colors. The result so far is not that impressive but atleast you can see what im doing at the moment =) I will make all lines straight when doing the painting and I figure i must do the small astronauts by hand in black as maybe the last step... too much work? ofcourse! =) But its nice to learn some techniques while im at it.
arttest.jpg

Prmailers: Oh thats nice! Like christmas evening Yeah let me know.

New cabinet decals arrived today! Looks very good and will be a pleasure to add to the cab.
decals.jpg

Yeah it will be interesting to see! Im gonna spend part of the week-end on prepping the cab. I think it has come apart a little at places and there are pretty much small areas where wood is gone. So it will be interesting to see how much work it is. But im looking forward to it since it will, hopefully, look very good after its done! Only waiting for my tumbler now, it should come in like a week or so, so I can start making the old metal parts look like new. Seems the remaining work is pretty straight forward but time consuming and a bit hard here and there too.

A side note, I mentioned earlier in the thread that the original art work looks blue through a camera or on pictures unless the white balance is tweaked to extremes. The same goes for the new decals so I hope they will change a bit of color depending on the ambient lighting conditions. A cool feature or side effect that is nice to preserve.

More to come when there is any progress (or steps back).

Allright, did some sanding on the backbox today. I have the new decals in my posession but still it felt a bit weird to sand of the old artwork on the sides. I took some measurements just in case for aligning the new decals later on. I used a sanding machine for the job with a kinda "sharp" grit paper on it. I will go down in grit size for fine tuning later on, maybe down to about 240 or something to make the surface as smooth as possible. Im also planning to paint the box with some primer for even better result. And there will also be some wood repair work needed. Some bits in the corners are missing and I will also glue some parts together.

Im not sure what to do with the backside, with the yellow caution text. There are decals for this part too but it would be even nicer to paint it. Stencils are available i think but the ultimate thing would be to laser cut a metal plate to get something that can be used over and over again. We will see what I end up doing. Another way to do it is to just clean of the back side and touch up the paint. It is actually in kinda good condition.

Speaking of painting, does anyone know what kind of color to use for painting the black on the cab and the backbox? I have some rattle cans with a black color that is a perfect match to the original color. I used it on the backbox hinges for example. The problem is it is for metal stuff like car rims and I feel it might not do any good to the wood. I mean metal should not have any moisture allowed through the paint but the wood would like to "breathe" a little as far as I know. Any suggestions on what type of color to use? I'd definitely prefer spraying it instead of using a brush or roller...

Now the pics, "there goes my bride":
decalsaway.jpg

Yeah some kind of spray it will be! Dont think i have any friends in a paint shop but we have done (me and a friend) some car doors with good result. Should work this time as well. Only annoyance is to bring the compressor gun and other tools together since I do not own them. Otherwise it's a good suggestion having it done at a body shop! I'll have to think about it. I want the best result but also feel it would be awesome to do it myself, if I succeed that is =)

I agree, dont wanna waste the new decals. I will look into different options.

Been working on painting the rest of the coin door lately. Still a pain to get the old color off but looks kinda good so far. A bit worried the paint will come off easy from minor wear but i hope its just me. Sanded the parts down to 400 grit, cleaned with rubbing alcohol and then sprayed 3 thin layers of primer on them. After that 3 layers of the black paint.
coinpaint.jpg
coinpaint2.jpg

Next up was the holes in the front of the cab that someone decided to drill to fit a "real" lock down bar. Might have been a good choice back when the game was en route but not anymore so they had to go. Used a heat gun on the decal til small cracks emerged, fairly low heat required. Then I sanded the surface and used a dremel to clean the inside of the holes of rust. (Paved some ground for sexual oriented jokes here, keep em coming... ) I then used the chemical wood I tried on the playfield. Feels like it fits better here actually but we'll see! The result looks kinda messy right now but after sanding about all of it away except for whats inside the holes it should be fine. I pressed as much "wood" as I could into the holes til it came out on the other side of the ply.

While doing the heat gunning I started to think about what the best method is to get rid of the original decals on the sides of the cab. Heatgun would work but take a lot of time but I think ive seen other ways of doing it. Will research a bit!

wood.jpg

cya later!

Been sanding off the chemical wood and the pic below shows how much of it was sanded away. First I used a "low" grit paper (dont know what its called as opposed to fine grit like 400) and as a result there are some marks left from it on the wood around the holes. Will be taken care of later when the final preparation is done. Otherwise it will be seen through the new decals. Anyways the holes themselves are now gone and sanded with fine paper.
sanding.jpg

Another thing, think I need a cat in my workshop because there are some sun flower shells in the bottom of the cab. That means some mice are around Some of my friends who also use the place for different projects has reported they too have noted this among their things. No problem so far as long as they wont chew on the game
mice.jpg

More fun stuff in the mail today
tumble.jpg

I hope so =)

Been working on the coin door, cleaning and different bits and pieces. Also did some work in the back box repairing the wood and preparing it for painting. Have finally found some spray paints that should work, been asking around in paint shops and some local guys to see how important it is for the wood to "breathe" etc. So next thing is to figure out what to do with the warning text on the back of it. Im doing a little research there too, if its possible to make a mask in like thin aluminium or something to be able to spray the text back after painting. I assume it will cost too much to laser cut one but at least i will hear what options there is. Been looking in the forums too but it seems the best result would be from sending the back part to get it printed by someone with the right tools. Have also seen there are some stencils available but it feels like too much work since the back side is not that worn. Might keep it as it is with minor touch ups even though it would feel like a short cut.

Have also scanned some coil wrappers and polished them a bit in the computer to be able to print them and get them new looking. There are wrappers available to order and also some premade pdf's from "inchognitos" site but I felt it was pretty fun to make my own and as a side effect the original imperfections of the text will be preserved.

wrap.jpg

More to come!

Cleaned some of the lamp boards today. Hardly no difference visible in the pics but it came out pretty nice.
Next is what my coin door looks like atm, im gonna order some parts for it before reassembly.
Third picture is some parts from the backbox on their way to the tumbler. Looks very nice allready but a little polishing wont hurt. Im gonna paint the bolts black again too before putting everything back.
Not any major updates as of now but there will be more anyday!

boards.jpg
coinnow.jpg
waytotumbler.jpg

Oh! That's a nice tip! I will have a look in the local paint shop and see what they have. Sounds like something powerful, self etching.

By the way, the cabinet black. Like the inside of it and the front of the back box and so on, is it supposed to be shiny/glossy, dull or semi glossy? From what I can see right now and on other machines it looks like glossy paint but with some more dull coating. Hard to explain. Have seen restorations with high gloss black but I'm afraid it would give a plastic feel to it. What are common practice here, if there is any?

Andy

Allright! Will have a look! Its getting about time i finish the cab so I can start the assembly again!

Hi there! I tested some wild method for the lamp boards. I flushed them with water and then sprayed a product used for kitchen cleaning on them. It removes grease and dirt and is called "vim". I'll post a pic tomorrow. After like one minute I again rinsed with water and then quickly used my air compressor to blow away any remaining water. The procedure ended with the boards put next to a fan with hot/warm air, gently drying them over night. It's a fan for spreading heat through out the house so not that hot. Don't know if it was a bad way of cleaning them but I guess we'll see! Tested it on the small boards so I can replace them if something bad happens.

Yesterday i got some new bumper parts! Always like christmas when stuff like this arrives
So Ive been disassembling the old ones and started to rebuild new ones, however I did not get far because i need the parts that are in the tumbler but at least i got a small taste of what it will be like to put everything back together.

Still working on the playfield though as well as the cab, takes some time because i work a lot and then there is always the family to take care of. But anyway Im making progress which is good! Since its my first restore its actually kinda nice too to have some time to let things sink in when learning.
bumperparts.jpg

I also found something that i think is pretty close to the Magic Erasers you guys have in the US. Tested with denaturated alcohol on the playfield and the result was very good! Much better than my 1200 grit sand paper and alcohol... so ive wiped down the whole playfield with this and its getting closer to the painting!

magic.jpg

Richthofen: Here is the pic of the product I used to clean the lamp boards. "Super Vim Kitchen", seems to work like any similar and standard kitchen cleaner. It removes grease and dirt and can be used for normal "kitchen appliances". Has no particular warning like do not use on this and that. Time will tell if it paved the way for bad corrosion on the boards.
vim.jpg

Next is a pic of something i found at work the other day. Its a hard table "board" that got me thinking that maybe some day i could make my own playfield. =) Im dreaming of building some machine from scratch some day, like a replica of something from parts. But thats another thread and story!
project.jpg

Need to enjoy some hockey on TV now so cya later

Look at all those nice new parts. Putting nice clean stuff back together is always fun. I take it you have rebuilt pops before.

Hi there! Yeah its very nice! =) Its my first time with the bumpers but I have plenty of pics and have kept one of them assembled for reference. Will do that last one when the others are done. Seems the trickiest part is the wiring for the lights and switches and the flat "tracers" that are stapled to the underside of the PF. But I will sort it out sooner or later.

smokey_789: I guess that when the project is finished and I look back I will have the same impression like you

Prmailers: Thats a nice tip! Im not sure how much parts to tumble at the same time. Small screws and bolts I think one can put quite many together but parts like the bumper rings might get small scratches if they go with too many other parts. Just a thought. I will try them on the buffer and see what it does!

Andy

The socket is more or less leaning, if you find the post about the trick you are welcome to share it! I Will have a look too and see if i can find it. Thanks for pointing it out! Been thinking about it but just thought, well thats how these stuff are made.

Me again =) could this be the lamp socket trick? Making it straight with a zip-tie? Anyways a good guide that will help many!

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-rebuilding-pop-bumpers

Cool! Ill try it =)

MustangPaul: You're very welcome to ask for advice! Thats the good point with this forum =) Id gladly share anything Ive learned along the way!

We'll see if I have any answers but at least I have plenty of pics from the teardown and can always have a look on the otherwise hard to reach parts of the machine (double meaning =) ). Also nice to have someone to share solutions with so I may send a question or two in return

=) you'll never know! Always something that will be confusing. More updates soon!

While doing the bumper rebuilding I tested a method of cutting coil sleeves to the correct length. I read about it in Bryan Kellys IJ restoration thread. It worked out very well and here is how I did it in case someone would like to see it in action.

Tools/parts needed: Sharpie, sanding paper (pretty fine), tube/pipe cutter, old coil plunger/piston, old coil sleeve of the length you want the new one to be, new coil sleeve with the same diameter. Since the sleeves are kinda soft I used the old plunger as a support inside the sleeve while cutting it. In the end I used the sanding paper to gently remove any notches left from the cutting. Be careful not to sand inside the sleeve though

The good thing about this is that you can order one long type of sleeves for your coils and just cut it in the desired length. Less part numbers to care about. Thanks Bryan for the tip!

coilsleeve.jpg