Right the pandemic started I picked up this 1968 Gottlieb Domino which was in a storage room in a shuttered bus station. The game was sitting on the ground as you see in the first photo. Very damp environment so the back door was rusted through. Somebody had also wallpapered it with fake paneling. The next group of photos is from when I got it home and set it up. There was so much mold and mildew on it that I decided not to bring it into the house until it was scrubbed down. The backglass had some flaking and delamination going on. The playfield was filthy but overall in pretty good shape.

My initial reaction was to part the machine out but after replacing all of the fuses I plugged it in and the lights came on. After adding a couple of credits and pushing start, the score motor turned! MarkG and rolf_martin_062 on this board helped me debug the issue to a rusted/stuck Reset bar. Once that was resolved, I could get it to play a game with some coaxing.

This is when I decided I was going to use this machine to learn some new techniques I could use in repairing other EM's.

1) Fixing a cabinet - most of the seams and corners were split open
2) Stripping and repainting a cabinet - whatever paint was not ruined by the wallpaper, was flaking off
3) Fixing a backglass
4) Stripping a machine out completely - with all the mold and mildew, I wanted to make sure all the parts were clean since both me and my daughter are allergic to this stuff, her allerge is severe, mine luckily is milder.
5) Working on a roto-target, I had not worked on this mech before

I hope you enjoy this quick photo journal as much as I enjoyed working on this machine.

Alberto

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First thing I did was strip everything out of the cabinet and backbox so I could glue those back together. I also peeled off all the wallpaper. After spraying everything down with a mold-control spray, I brought the power board, playfield, and backbox mechs into the shop to start cleaning and fixing things.

The playfield turned out to be in decent shape, just some paint missing under the pop bumpers and where the ball lands coming out of the kickouts. There was also some melted rubber material that had become attached to the playfield. I gave the playfield a good wipedown with naphta and a rag but did not want to go crazy as some paint flakes were coming off as I was cleaning.

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The mold and mildew were so bad that after trying to brush it off with bleach with only some success, I decided to just repaint the inside of the cabinet and backbox with Kilz oil-based and then paint it.

After that I traced all of the artwork and then stripped the cabinet down to bare wood. I fixed most of the divots on it. After all, this is a 50-year old machine, some blemishes are expected. I used Krylon spray paints for the cabinet colors. When I pulled the rails off, it was a surprise to see how white the cabinet actually was. There was also a little bit of blue saved under the rails. For the yellow, I just picked a yellow that would compliment the blue.

Initially I tried to make stencils but this proved unsuccessful since I could not get the stencils to sit flat. Since the pattern on the game is geometric I used painter's tape to create the stencils. I lost the overspray look, but the end result was good.

I also learned how to create webbing using a Weiler brush - I was not super happy with how it came out but it's better than what it looked like before. The webbing on the cabinet came out better than the webbing on the backbox. Huge thanks to EMsInKC for pointing me in the right direction on this technique.

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Once the cabinet and backbox were painted, I could start the rebuilding process. At this point, I was comfortable bringing the cabinet and backbox into my basement where my shop is. First thing I did was but the power board back in. The power cord was replaced and wired with a ground per the instructions on vid1900 guide. I added the ground braid to all the legs and the coin door to make the machine safe.

I touched up the playfield as best as I could. My oldest helps me out with this as I have no eye for color and she does. She's not a pinball player but enjoys helping me out with re-build and cleaning.

The center plastic was broken. I need to send a huge thanks to Dave and the team at Upkick Pinball - they are a vendor here - for creating a custom plastic protector for the center plastic which let me put this back into the game.

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And here is the "finished" product. It's been fun to play it - had to sort some issues with underpowered flippers - for both flippers the fix was to replace the EOS switch, the metal was fatigued and the switch just did not work properly.

For the backglass, I used the advice from ForceFlow and used Krazy Glue and plastic wrap to preserve the badly flaking areas. Then I Triple-Thicked the whole backglass. Eventually I will go back and try to color in the missing areas.

The project is not yet finished as there are a few things missing and also new opportunities to learn new techniques:

1) The decals for the roto-target and stand-up targets are worn out. Once shipping normalizes, I will order replacements from Pinball Rescue
2) I'm printing out a new score card - so far my attempts have not been satisfactory
3) I would like to learn how to repaint the backglass
4) And this is a big reach for me, but why not? Learn how to use an airbrush to eventually re-fresh the playfield and clear coat it

For now though, we are enjoying the game.

Thanks to everyone on this board that helped me through the process.

Alberto

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David

This year was going to be my first Pintastic. I got started in the hobby October 2019.

I’d love to bring it, hopefully I can have those last few things finished on it.

Alberto