So.... I bought this Eight Ball Deluxe pinball few months ago... Or at least what was left of it! The price was low. Very low. Some could find it was not low enough when looking at the machine... But come on, it's an EBD! and I always wanted an EBD...

I took care of 3 or 4 project machines in the past, but I never started with a machine in such a bad shape. It spent the last 15 years in a warehouse where water was dripping on its glass, slowly rolling into the lock bar, and getting out through one the front corners, along one of the legs. It obviously caused some pretty bad damage to the cabinet. The MPU is corroded like crazy, there is no backglass and the lamp board got deformed by humidity. The playfield is heavily used, but not water damaged.

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I decided to take the challenge to bring this machine back to life. My approach won't be to "restore" it, but only to get it to a "playable" state (at least for now)... To qualify for this, the cabinet needs to be solid and clean, the machine needs to work and to look and smell good enough to be moved from the garage to the house This is likely going to take me months... The hard part will be to do all this without spending money like crazy, I would like to *try* not to spend $3,000 to end up with a $1,200 pin!

Even before starting working on it, I already bought some things (who never did that?). I found from a fellow pinsider an used backglass... Not in perfect shape, but will be OK for this machine.

If everything goes well, one day I may install a hardtop and stencil the cabinet. But this may be months from now (years?). As I said, my first focus will be to just... make it play!

Things purchased so far:
- Birch plywood 2ft x 4ft 3/4
- Plywood 2ft x 2ft 1/4
- 2x2 pine wood for corners
- Used backglass (Pinside)
- New black legs (Pinball Life)
- Leg bolts
- Leg levelers
- Metal bracket (Home Depot)
- Wide leg brackets (Pinball Life)
- Bally sticket for coin door (Pbresource)
- Misc metal screws (Home Depot)

Yes it does! Once I drilled the door's lock I managed to pull the lever and release the lockbar, of course it needed a bit of force. I was positively surprised to see that the inside was not "that" bad. The manual was even there, in a relatively good shape! Sadly, there was only one quarter in the coin box

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That would be awesome! Mine is falling apart... Thanks!

I was surprised by these as well... it looks like there is one inline fuse per solenoid, see picture below... to protect the circuits when solenoids get stuck ?

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Thanks for thinking of me! Appreciated! However, it looks like it's an used apron on which was put a large sticker. I could do this on mine, it's not too damaged by rust. I would have bought it if it was a silkscreened one.

The now empty lower cabinet... in all its glory
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You may be right.... One of the leg is definitely going to be hard to bolt on But I have to see the positive side of things... The other 3 corners are pretty strong!

For sure the front of the cabinet is dead, it won't be able to hold a coin door anymore... and the corner of the right side is gone too... but not much to lose trying to fix this (except my time!)

I'm going to do both... fix this cabinet... to be able to assemble the game and make progress on the whole machine. won't be pretty but will work and won't cost much.

In parallel, I'll look for a donor base cabinet. When I find one, I will take my time to prep, stencil and so on... To make a nice machine, without rushing things.

Now all the rotten wood is gone...
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I need to build a full front panel and a piece of the side... and of course replace the bottom plank.

Using a router pattern bit, I built a piece of plywood replicating exactly the missing part.
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I also cut a rectangle of plywood for the front panel...
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Now I need to make all this tight and solid. It's going to be a mix of miter joints, pocket holes, strong wood glue and some reinforcement brackets... to be continued....

Thanks Lovef2k for all the information! Unfortunately no table saw here... But I have a circular saw which can do 45 degree angles, and a router... Should be good enough for the job.

I'm planning to do miter joints for both sides, I never tried this before, so I bought a miter router bit few weeks ago to try it out.
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To make things easier, I improvised a really simple custom router table (thanks youtube!):
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And I made some miter joints using scrap wood... It took a bit of time to adjust, but once set up, it worked great:
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Finally, once satisfied with the trial joints, I routed my new EBD plywood pieces:
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And... I'm working on the coin door integration!

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I forgot about this one! I guess I need to buy another router bit... a slot cutter. Or do you know any other clean way to drill such a slot ?

Drilling "pocket holes" to attach the two parts of plywood together...
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Prepared to glue and screw in the 2 pieces...
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Using my awesome router table to build the inside corners of the cabinet...
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Here are the corners and other inside wooden parts. I modified a bit the original set up... and planned to add a custom metal bracket and some wide leg brackets... all this to tie everything together and reinforce the location where my cabinet is a bit weaker than normal (the side with the assembled plywood)
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This cabinet will be on its 4 feet this week-end!

Assembling stuff at night... I like this picture

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I like a lot your "looking old but playing fast" EBD playfield! I'm applying the same spirit to this cabinet

Yes! horizontal braces to hold sides in place. You can see one in the pic I just posted.

I updated the first post with everything I purchased for this repair so far... And will update on a regular basis.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bringing-back-to-life-an-eight-ball-deluxe#post-5618590

Drilling leg holes with a custom fixture, to make sure they are at 45 degrees, and spaced correctly.
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And finally... ready to be up on its legs:
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Still a bit ugly and in need of a big clean up but solid!
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Thank you @dasvis, @mathazar, @uphamj! Still a long road before I can hear "quit talking and start chalking"

Cool! Some pieces of advice: Practice a lot on scrap wood before you do it on your final plywood. You can practice with any wood, but do it at least once with the same plywood, to get the "feel" of your wood going through the router bit (very different depending on the type of wood). Height and horizontal depth of the router bit have to be very precisely adjusted to get the 2 sides of the join to match well. If you don't have a template (I did not), use trial and error. Once you find the position that works, route a piece of wood you'll keep as a fixture to later reproduce the same exact position.

Let's take a pause and leave the wood working aside for a little bit... Let's talk about backbox electronics...

First the MPU:
Well... not much to see here, we can move on right away I guess if you want to explain to someone the damage battery corrosion can do, this is a good picture!
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Then the lamp driver:
Mmmm... this one got reworked in many spots... we'll see how it goes.
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The solenoid driver:
Not that bad but... why are some transistors missing ??
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Aux lamp driver:
Ok-ish... it looks like someone added a big ground connector... anyone familiar with such a mod ?
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And the most important one (because hard to replace)... The Squawk and Talk!
I have big hopes for this one... And it looks good. I ordered already the replacement capacitor kit. Someone did a weird parallel capacitor hack.
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I knew from day one that my MPU was not usable.
I'm planning to go with a LISY35 from @bontango. This is a little project on its own! We'll see how it goes.

Quick Sunday night update...

This week-end I emptied the backbox and inventoried all its parts.
It is not perfect.. but in better shape than the lower cabinet... and... filthy!
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Some planking and damages on one side...
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The lamp board is the worse, completely water damaged at the bottom...
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The harness got the dishwasher treatment... it recovered its colors! and Ican touch it without getting my hands dirty and greasy!
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And finally... Sunday night activity... Shotgun replacement of the Squawk and Talk capacitors... hoping it makes it work!

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Regular detergent... read more here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cleaning-playfield-harnesses-vids-guide

I "bench tested" it... unfortunately the capacitor replacement did not help... I still get a locked on led I'm not really surprised, but I had ordered the capacitors, so I guess I had to install them

Thanks again for the lamp panel! And I ordered new light baffles, as suggested.

Look what I got in the mail today! Thank you SO much Lovef2k !
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A bit of sanding and a light coat of white paint will make it like new!