Setting my silverball resto aside and starting my winter projects, hoping to eventually find my list insert at some point. I picked up Comet this summer and had to do cabinet work just to make it structurally sound. Replaced a drop target reset finger and got it fully working. I have had cyclone for about a year and fully shopped it when I got it. It PLAYS 100% but the knocker and 2 flashers do not work. I am working through that now before a teardown. The cyclone has day 1 mylar and is in good shape. I am also repairing battery damage to a Pinbot and will be tearing it down along side these 2 in a different thread. I plan onclearing the 3 playfields at the same time to be more effiecient.

Here is the comet when I received it.

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I don't like overlays and I can't justify spending what a new pf would cost, so I will be doing a bunch of work to the comet. I picked up new ramps from Mark at freeplay40.

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Here is cyclone's playfield. Looks good but there is a line where the mylar ends and the colors aged differently. Also it looks like someone "touched up" the in-lanes with sharpie possibly?

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I had to fix this just to move it.

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Currently I think my problem is coming from u28. I have a dead signal coming from it on the lines I am having issues with. I replaced u19 and the transitors and predrivers seem to test ok. Sr7 is out of spec on a few lines so I will replace that. I have the chip for u28 on order.

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And that is a reflection on the last pic. I have 2 traces repaired and covered with epoxy to protect them. The opoxy is reflecting the light.

I replaced one ramp and the feeris wheel is still in good shape, but the cyclone ramp was broken and I repaired it for functionality, so it will need dealt with. Same thing with the subway ramp.

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Tearing down Comet while my other projects are waiting on parts. Center ramp in not bad but is cracked a little. I know this is not a ramp I can buy so I may have to work with it. The entry plate is beat up and the ball did not go over it smoothly so I will have to deal with that.

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The spiral ramp is not too bad if someone was looking for an original. Has the usual corner issue but mostly in tact.

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Not too concerned about the orange and yellow repaint, but there are a couple areas that will take some time.

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And this...
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I am surprised it survived as well as it did considering no mylar.
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Finding some broken plastics as I go.

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This is the cleanest machine I have worked on. Well maybe my Rescue 911 is cleaner, but it's not like anyone ever played that game much.

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I go way overboard as far as bagging and labeling.

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All 3 pop bumpers have the metal plate broken.

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Top side is done. Time to flip and take the underside down to bare wood.

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Haha!!

It's actually the only way I can afford nice games. I get broken games for very little and spend some more on materials and put a ton of hours into them. I do the work because I enjoy it. These are also the games I grew up playing and the ones I want most. There is also a very small market for used games up here.

Shoot, I clear coated a solar city for practice. And I restored an F2K playfield. I don't just a game by what someone classifies it as ( ie. A, B, C title). I enjoy the work and saving games that others might part out.

This drives me nuts. Every game I ever deal with has these pounded down through by the flippers. Just why?

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I am less picky about bagging underneath. One for all plates, 1 for all lights, 1 for leafs and 1 for harness covers most of what I need. I have this lower part ready to slide over. I work from the bottom up following the main harness.

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Yeah but someone always pounds them down and cracks the underside.

Boogie woogie woogie woogie

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Bottom needs an initial cleaning, then I will put the siderails underneath. You can see the line just from 1 wipe.

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Couple spots with mylar. The red 10,000 circle looks like it was added after wear had already started.

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I blast the whole piece of mylar and then start to blast a spot and pick at it. Just a touch of the red came up, but that will be an easy fix. Time to start deep cleaning.

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Lots of planking and swirls that will be tough to completely cover. All in all I think I have a good starting point for a playfield. Even for "this title" LMAO!

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Well, that was a fun day's work. Time yo go play my Diner. Still have to print off the serial number stickers and a few small things but it is done.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/diner-restoration#post-4615080

Thanks. Yeah, I usually will end up with less into a game than most people pay for a players game. I don't drop thousands buying a new pf / bg / decals / etc... I buy clearcoat in a 2.5 gallon batch total between clear and hardener. Between Cyclone, Comet and Pinbot I have well less than $1500 total tied up so far. I do my own board work and all mechanical repairs. The investment for me is the time. And in Alaska, the days are very short and cold in winter so it works out. As far as Comet: I will end up with probably less than $500 invested by the end. For Pinbot I will end up about $700 total. Cyclone was my most expensive game, but it was a game I absolutely love. I may end up with $1700 in that game, but I paid more just to purchase it. I buy all my parts and material in bulk when I can which also helps keep costs down. So for me, buying this era of pin only makes sense.

Thanks. Believe it or not, these help motivate me to log my restorations.

Using the light and naptha, I got all the old wax that was still clinging to the paint. I am just about ready to put a thin coat of clear down to lock in what is still good. Not sure if I am gonna use an intercoat or just mix up some 2 part clear. I'll know soon enough though.

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1 nice coat of an intercoat clear. Now I should be able to use frisket film without pulling up this paint. Seems very thin in parts. I use circle templates and liquid frisket in an airbrush to make the black outlines around the inserts. These ones aren't too bad though. I think I will let this cure for a couple days and maybe work on the coin door or something.

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These will need a bleach treatment.

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Believe it or not, these were just as bad at one point.

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Gonna mask off and repaint the yellow, orange, white and beige completely after filling in wear spots. I may be able to get away with less work on the red and green areas. I tend to take days to match colors. I keep adjusting until I cannot tell the difference.

These came out fairly nice considering.

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This is uncharted territory for me. I have never had a coin door so clean. You can see a slight bend in the door. Not sure if I can fix that. Usually I get these and they are so dirty inside and out. I will need a new decal and repaint but not too bad. I imagine I will need new plastic plates too.

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Sort of in a holding pattern right now. Hard to believe working on 3 machines. All waiting on parts and I do not want to move to the cabinet yet. Making a plan for touchup now. Here are my trouble areas. I will need to repaint all the large areas to cover up the planking and swirls. I will start to match colors over the next day or 2.

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Reflowed this relay for cyclone. Insert lights would fade and return if you wiggle the connection. I will replace the connector too. Also looking into a whole column that us out on the lights. Its the lights around the mystery wheel.

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Turns out it was the relay. I have a couple spare boards though. Put a new one in until I replace the relay. Messed a little with the column that is out, but no luck yet. Gonna call it a day though. I minimally do something minor to one of my project daily, with some exceptions of course.

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I am going to hand paint the cars back in. I am not a fan of waterslide decals, mostly because I have very little working knowledge with them. I also do not have the equipment. I saw your playfield and it looks amazing. I would like to do the grey, but man that is a lot of fine detail to paint around. I will probably see how it goes and at least attempt to redo the grey.

So I was reading the lamp matrix wrong. It was listed as mystery wheel but for some reason I thought it had to do with the actual wheel. So I actually have 2 columns out and it seems like the tip42's are to blame. Need to order some I guess.

Time to start matching colors to get ready to airbrush. I need to repair all this yellow.
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I will match it down here where it is still vibrant and unfaded.
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Here is a dab of straight yellow. I need to decide: lighter or darker? More orange or more green. This doesn't always work especially if you need a flourescent tone. This looks like it needs to a little to the orange. I will wait till it dries and coat in naptha to verify before adding any red.

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When I get real close I sometimes use a picture to pick up small pigment differences that I cannot see.

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Quite a ways from pure white. Do I match existing or repaint to pure white? Was it even pure white originally? I am thinking it is best to match what is here but I wonder.

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After drying it seems too dark. Trying a couple shades lighter in a small mixing tray before adding to a larger batch.

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Thanks! It will be tough to paint around all the words. I haven't messed witn waterslides either. I may keep the beige, but match what was under the mylar.

Thanks. I get the help of the others in the fam too. I am logging this, but I do not claim to be an expert in anything. Just enjoying the ride and learning as I go.

Thanks. I actually replaced that one with a repro already.

The only mylar was around the pop bumpers and a piece was over the already damaged red circle.

Gonna swap out u28 on Cyclone since I got the chip in the mail yesterday. I know it is far from ideal, but I have gotten fair good at using basic tools for board work. I have even had components fall out just using these cheap suckers. At some point, I will look into getting a proper setup with a desoldering gun.

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I cut the pins on an ic though to help prevent damage to traces and such.

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This was 1 hit from the sucker and the pin is ready to go. Not all are that clean but I love it when they don't fight me.

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After running down the whole chip you can see I still have some cleaning up to do and this is where I lose traces if I am going to. I like to have my wife hold the pins while I heat it up with the iron but even then there are times that it fights me.

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This one came out pretty clean. I was a little worried about the one trace between the 2 pins, but it tests fine.

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Again, I am no expert and learning all the time. Pretty happy with the solder on this. Getting better with each project. This is another reason I am restoring lesser titles. If I mess up, it's not such a big deal.

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Thanks. I will look that up.

Ok, messed things up now. Had everything except sol 7 working. Was probing and must have jumped something and now I have no blanking. Sometimes if I hit the power it starts the blanking and displays say factory settings, then it all goes blank. Time to do some research.

Seems coincidental as it works fine after resting. I will not worry about this since I plan on rebuilding the power supply. I swapped out u19 to see if that is why sol7 will not fire. U19 is normal during attract. In test on sol7, the input is low pulsing high, but the output is low pulsing to nothing. 2 seperate chips do the same thing.

Well I am gonna deal with my lamp columns and sol7 when I put it back together. I want to get this playfield stripped since I imagine some of the colors are gonna be the same. Cyclone was in a pizza shop about a mile from my home growing up. Spent countless hours hanging out playing it. Was extremely happy to find one and I put cointaker premium leds in it a year ago. It had new rubbers, but we actually burned through a pair of flipper rubbers. At one point before it was accidentally reset it had over 2500 plays from my family. It has to be well over 4000 by now.

I am definitely gonna need a set of plastics for this one. This right ramp is in bad shape but it is available. The blue ramp has a couple issues where the screws come through but that ramp is very hard to find. I will likely have to work with what I have.

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My biggest challenge is gonna be how the grey has ages differently where mylar was.

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Happy with the progress so far. Gonna pull the playfield at this point and get the last few items off the top.

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Working on this playfield still. Found a couple hacks that will need to be remedied. This playfield has so much mylar it is gonna take 3 days to clean it off.

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Back is gonna need a good scrubbing. Not sure what I am gonna do with the existing wires stapled down yet. Getting there.

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Ready to see if this mylar comes up nice. Couple trouble spots that will need fixed already.

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Mylar was coming up nicely but I only had a half can. Thought for sure I had another full can somewhere.

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I really wanted to get down to this insert. Can't tell if it is cracked or not.

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Ok, it is literally mylar on top of mylar.

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Trying to rebuild this original aux driver board for cyclone. It had a newer systems board in it that was compatible. This board was mangled. Just got a load of tip36c's in to finish it.

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The mylar came off real nice without any damage. On a bad note I do have a cracked insert. Not sure if this one is replaceable or not. Also the canned air I got this time had a bitterant and that stuff is nasty! Don't they consider legitimate purposes where that stuff is a negative?

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Thank you for the tip! I always struggle at that point and pull up a trace or two.

I didn't have much luck using the alcohol / flour method on my f2k, but it is really doing wonders on this mylar adhesive. I don't think I knew how to do right back then. This is about 95% clean without much effort.

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Think I will finish this then go play some pinball!

Actually did no work on my projects yesterday, mostly because I got stuck playing Diner. It just kept making press that button over and over. Anyway Cyclone pf is all cleaned up. Here are my problem areas that will need addressed. All this grey that has faded will be my biggest challenge. I will be waiting for the intercoat to come in. Used the last on Comet.

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Gotcha! Yeah, it is very discolored anywhere the mylar was not used. Gonna be a pain painting around all that. Still need to find that thread someone mentioned.

Seeing the two next to each other makes me want to redo the grey on Comet. I imagine they were close to the same color originally.

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The yellow is very close and it will work for both games. If I was not painting the whole thing I might tweak it a tiny bit. Naked eye seems on, but the pic shows the slightest differnce.

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Moving slow last couple days. Finally have all that mylar glue off and a final naptha cleaning on Cyclone. Ready to give it a blast of intercoat.

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Moving forward! Just need to let this cure and then both playfields will be ready for the airbrush. I got a good deal on these hobby airbrushes. Got 4 in a set and tons of accessories and tips. Good for what I need.

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Thanks!

Comet is masked off and ready for the yellow.

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Cyclone is now ready for yellow too. About to start a 4 day conference for work so it will be this weekend when I get to airbrushing.

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I have not had these issues yet, but perhaps I should be more careful. I use createx balancing clear for an intercoat, and so far I have not had problems. Maybe I should try to paint sooner though? Thanks

Thanks! Got some work done finally. I have been putting off the airbrushing long enough.

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Had problems in some areas peeling the frisket. It took about 5 coats to cover with this yellow. I found a better technique as I went and would do it better if I had it over again. I am hoping I can brush in most of the touchups from here.

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You can see issues here and these will need the most touchup work.

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Still have more touchup to do but much better than when I pulled the frisket.

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Gonna start touching up cyclone's yellow. This is our Thanksgiving week at work so not much has happened. I have frisket coming in tomorrow so hopefully get more airbrushing in by the week's end.

Trying to decide on the white for Comet. If I go back to pure white, it is quite a rabbit hole. I think my best bet is to match the brightest parts where the mylar was.

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Just not my style. I like to preserve as much as possible. Nothing wrong with replacing with repro parts, but it is just not what I enjoy doing. I don't worry about recouping time spent, since I don't plan on selling.

Yeah, I will likely do off white. Otherwise where do I stop? All the people have white on them too. Too much detail to chase down.