When I picked up this Congo, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do with it. I hadn't actually had a lot of time on the game, but I really like Trudeau's games and my friend Tommy (Tsskinne) was a huge fan of it so when a decent deal on one popped up on CL I went for it.

The game was roughly 95% working, with a few switches here and there that were dead or broken, but other than that it actually played great. It was however FILTHY. This game was bought by an individual from an operator roughly 10 years ago and the owner said he had put roughly 100 games on it in 10 years. He said it was that dirty when he bought it from the operator......which I guess isn't surprising. If the game had ever been cleaned since new I would be surprised but you never know. All of the ramps were in good shape with the exception of the top of the Volcano ramp being broken a bit. This should be fixable though with some fiberglass and a paintjob. Some broken plastics in the usual places. The lower playfield window was broken on a few of the tabs, but it still holds in just fine and is actually pretty clear. The reason it was so clear is that it had a piece of mylar over it, which came off without leaving any glue residue....bonus! The gorilla mech had a busted weld like a lot of them do. That has been welded back and fixed so the gorilla works as it should. Here are a few shots of the game as I picked it up and got it going.

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I spent roughly 3 weeks playing the game in its dirty state and really grew to enjoy it. It isn't a very deep game, but the shots are really satisfying and it has some great audio. Seems like a keeper for the time being anyways. The cabinet is in solid shape but has the usual fade, but isn't faded all of the way to white.

At this point it was my intent to just get it cleaned up and put it on location at a local boardgame store I have some of my games at. However, the more I began to think about it and also began to see how many repro parts were available for the game I thought it would be fun to do a full restoration on the game. It really is a pretty game and I had some ideas for some customizations that would look great as well. So, full restore it is. Here is a current to-do list on the game. I will be updating this thread as I make progress.

-Playfield- very little wear, mainly on the shooter lane. This will be fixed and the playfield will be clear coated.
-Ramps- In good shape, but I went ahead and bought the repro ones while they were still available.
-Plastics- A few broken ones here and there. New plastic set purchased, along with Swinks protector and sling protectors
-Cabinet- faded but solid. I actually acquired a structurally nice No Good Gofers cabinet from my brother that I will be restoring and converting to a Congo cabinet. My current Congo cabinet will be converted to another game I have in the waiting. The NGG is the nicer of the two cabs so I wanted to use it on this project as I am going for as high end of a restore as I can muster. Decals have been purchased and are currently lying flat under a piece of glass awaiting install.
-Armor- All armor and other metal pieces such as support rails, coin door, shooter, etc will be getting gloss black powdercoat.
-All coils underneath the playfield have been converted to Molex connections for easy swapping out and also easy reassembly once the playfield is clear coated and cured.
-Lighting will be converted over to LED's using the Comet Sunlight LED's to give it a bright but natural look.-
-Red LED DMD installed with red filter-

As you can see I have my work cut out for me, but I am a teacher so I hope to use a lot of my summer break to work on this. I am going to make this as nice as I can possibly make it and we will see how it turns out. I know this will make some of you cringe, but when it is done it will be going on location for all to enjoy Also I plan on bringing it to TPF 2016. Should be fun Here are a couple of pictures attached of the progress so far, but I will provide a link to my dropbox folder I will be putting all of the pictures in. Enjoy.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zecpvkw1mjwx0kh/AAAP3k0UrVz0a5fREH5Z3oPfa?dl=0

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I sure hope so Thanks.

I didn't play in the tourney this year so I was unable to look at it. Heard it was nice though

Finished stripping the head this evening. Did I mention I love my Festool sander?

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Finally had some time to get a bit more done this weekend. I got the playfield stripped and sort of cleaned. It was a dirty thing, that is for sure. I have a bit of repair to do on the kickout holes, but other than that the playfield is in fine shape. I will polish it really good to try and get rid of the ball trails and then scuff it up and get it ready for clear. I am also going to sand the bottom of the playfield and put polyurethane on it.

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Ya it's not really that bad at all after you have done a few games. I do take a lot of pictures and everything has a label attached to it.

Those are for the carriage bolts that attach to the metal corner brackets on the inside.

Not much lately. I am a teacher and the end of the school year is always hectic Plus I have had to work on my car lately. The cab is completely stripped and I just have a bit more sanding on the inside to do. The playfield is stripped, top and bottom just waiting for sanding and poly on the bottom and clear on top. I hope to get some more time to work on it soon.

Ok, back at it. I will be posting more in the coming days hopefully. I finally got the playfield ready and prepped for its first coat of clear. I still need to fix the damage on the kickout holes, but that should go quickly. I spent a few hours really going over the playfield with 0000 steel wool to flatten it out and give the clear a good surface to stick too. I have also been polishing and rebuilding all of the mechs. I will get pictures of those up soon.

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Ya, only wear was in the shooter lane and kick out holes. Easily fixed. Game had a good coat of clear on it initially so it held up well.

Thanks

I noticed I haven't updated in a while. The repair work on the playfield started a while back. We began by fixing the shooter lane and kickoff holes. Unfortunately when we were masking off the area around the mystery hole the tape pulled up part of the mystery insert.........WHHHYYYYYYY!!!!!!

Luckily it was a pretty easy fix. We also painted a lot of the wood areas to cover up the damage and repairs. The color was insanely hard to match but it turned out pretty good IMO. Once it is all put together you don't see 90% of it anyways. In between messing up the decal/painting and such, the playfield has gotten two coats of clear. I am hoping that is all it will need, but time will tell. I will let it cure for a couple of weeks before we block and polish. Fingers crossed.

The cabinet is ready to prime and paint as well, so hopefully that will happen soon.

We also cleared a few more playfields while we were at it.

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The last picture is of the fixed insert and the last coat of clear.

Short answer.....no. I have no idea what the formula was. My mother (who is an artist) and I sat and slowly mixed paint for over half an hour before we came to the color we did. Even then it wasn't perfect. It is definitely an inexact science at this point for us. I would love, love, love to know the secret formula that Chris Hutchins or HSA uses.

Nope We are just using airbrush paints.

Finally some progress made again on Congo. We are getting some other things out of the way so we can focus on this pin. I am really excited to make some progress towards getting it back together.

We blocked the playfield to find any low spots and to get a start on fixing a few issues with the clear. As you can see we have some problems around the Amy targets and some other low spots on the edges of the inserts. We are going to use an eye dropper with clear to fill those, then block again and hopefully apply a final coat of clear. Fingers crossed.

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Thanks, I really hope I get it done by then. I haven't had much opportunity to work on it lately. And no, my games will never go into the tourney area. I do not like that only people that pay to be in the tourney can play them.

Starting to pick up some momentum again!! The (hopefully) final coat of clear has been applied. Just waiting for it to cure and then we will block sand and buff it. Before the last coat was applied I went ahead and sanded the bottom of the playfield to clean it up a bit. Looks much better now, but you will have to trust me since I forgot to take a picture

I hope to get the cabinet painted within the next couple of weeks. I am also going to be sending off all of my metal cab hardware to get powdercoated gloss black. I think I am going to do the wireforms in black as well. IMG_20151206_162234.jpgIMG_20151206_162230.jpg

It has been a long time coming, but the playfield is finally finished! Now the real work begins A lot of work went into this playfield, even more than we thought there would be. It turned out great though.

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Thanks It was a labor of love for sure. Have to thank my dad for putting up with my pickiness regarding how I wanted the playfield to look in the end. He did a fantastic job shooting the clear and polishing it out on the final pass.

Small update. The new siderails have been cut and drilled and I am in the process of applying the stain now. I am not sure how I will like the color until they are dry and I can hold them up next to the playfield. I was hoping for a bit lighter color but this might be ok.

If all else fails I can always paint them black.

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Some progress today. Decided just to go black on the side rails. Looks good. T-nuts and pop nails installed as well. Cab is ready for some more primer.....

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Bit more progress. Things are starting to accelerate now that stuff is going on the playfield. I have to thank TSSkinne for loaning me his Congo so it will help mine go back together quicker. I can rely on a machine instead of pictures for reassembly...

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uh huh....

Bit more progress. I have the top almost complete and the bottom is done with the exception of the pop bumper lights and lower playfield. I also got a set of plastic protectors from Indypinhead and they fit great! Stickers from Flashinstinct on the stand up targets also look nice. They were pretty pricey but at least they look good. I also need to print out new coil wrappers. I have an idea on those

More soon.

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Back from Pinburgh and back to work. Today we tackled the broken volcano ramp. Using fiberglass and epoxy we formed it I and trimmed and cut it out with a Dremmel tool. It turned out pretty good and is very strong. It is also translucent. Painting it with translucent orange first then opaque gray should work well. The inside isn't as pretty but you won't ever see that

Sorry if the pics are out of order. Hard to do on an iPad.

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Got some cab work in today. Worked on the head some more including getting the head decals installed. The inside bottom of the cab was looking pretty bad with the shiny clear applied as it is pretty bad wood and we didn't want to fill and sand the bottom forever. The solution was to use textured black paint to flatten it out. It worked really well and made it look much better. The area around the speaker will be covered so it will look fine.

Getting closer

(edit: REALLY annoying that the pictures always show up out of order on Pinside!!!)

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Got them from a buddy who got them from a place in Europe...not sure where.

A little preview of the graphic that I am going to be putting on the back of the head on the cabinet. Had to simplify the colors a bit due to it being cut out of vinyl but I think it will work.

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More done today. Vinyl applied to the back of the head and the decals applied to the rest of the cabinet. The cab is now ready for its final coat of clear to protect the decals. 1 (resized).jpg2 (resized).jpg3 (resized).jpg4 (resized).jpg6 (resized).jpg7 (resized).jpg5 (resized).jpg8 (resized).jpg

Thanks, getting closer to the finish line. Starting to get excited

We already sprayed clear over the decals on the head and it covered just fine. Looks really good.

2PAC, not sure the brand though. I will check with my dad as he is the one that does the spraying. It is the more expensive stuff I know that. These decals being printed on vinyl with a solvent printer are prone to marking easily so the clear will just protect that.

Thanks, this is something we started with my dad's Taxi and we liked it quite a bit. Since we are doing other custom stuff on the machines like powder coats and such that it doesn't make sense to put the warning label back on there.

Ground braid is in as is the upgraded speaker. Some other bits and pieces installed as well. Probably one more evening of work on the cab and it will be done.

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Sort of, my dad's basement. We were working outside but the mosquitoes started feeding, so we moved it inside Plus the coffee table was just the right height for working in the cab.

Little more progress today. Slowly getting there. The hard part right now is getting time to work on it.....

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Almost there!

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The decal is one of a kind sorry

I needed to clear over mine as they weren't laminated. If they are laminated and you are happy with the finish, then I don't see the need to clear over them.

Flatten out, meaning taking the shine off. The clear we use is really tough stuff and it takes a long time to get that slick shine off

Been a while but thought I would update. Game is nearly done. Cab is complete. The floor looks kinda weird in the pics, but it looks really nice and even in person. Almost there...it has been a long haul.

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yes

Thanks guys. I like that insert idea. Did you have to put a new back panel graphic on to install that?

Playfield is in and I turned it on. It didn't blow anything up so that is good! Have a lot of little issues though, so now to track all of those down. TPF less than a week away!

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Thanks . All issues save one are fixed. I have no sound.... so taking the boards to a buddy tonight to see if we can't figure it out. See you at TPF!

That's the plan I have one for it, just have yet to put it in.

Sound board is fixed!! Just a few odds and ends to clean up and she will be ready to pack up!

Bad cap.

Some pics before bed.

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They are the translucent ones. Not sure where I got them. Probably Pinballlife.com

Thanks, ya I am not a fan of color bombed GI at all. I initially had cool white in the GI but I didn't like it. I was going to go with warm whites, but didn't have enough. I did happen to have exactly enough sunlight GI bulbs from Comet to do the top side. I am also considering going all of the inserts in warm or sunlight as well. The text on the inserts really gets washed out. I am not sure I have enough to do that right now though.

Just realized I have to replace the bulbs in the pops as they are warm whites, not sunlight.....BAH! Taking that ramp off is a pain.

Sunlight from Comet

I did yes. They work great in spots IMO. My spotlights on the left are missing their reflector as I ran out. I am going to have to steal the ones off of my Avengers LE for TPF and buy some more

yes, I have tried several different things and settled on red and orange for now. Still not really happy, but didn't like the plain sunlight down there either.

The ones in the pops I mean Eh, I have already taken that ramp off about a dozen times this week, what is one more?

Well, all of my items on my checklist for issues and adjustments are marked off. She is in as good of shape as she will ever be probably..haha. Nothing more to do than put her in the pinball armor and load her up for TPF! Might as well get a few more glamor shots in while I am at it. :p

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Success! Thanks to all that stopped by to chat and to the kind words about the pin. Definitely made all of the work worth it. Congo was a trooper all weekend at TPF. Only one minor issue with some loose screws. I forgot to check the audits for plays before we left but I don't think there was a time that I was in the area that the game was not being played.

Huge thanks to my dad for all of the help on the pin. It would not have looked half as good without his help.

So glad to have this project finished up! Now onto Revenge form Mars!

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My pleasure. I am happy so many people enjoyed it. I forgot to see if anybody put up a new GC on it. I actually can't wait to get it back home tonight and play it as I haven't had but 10 or so games on it since I got it back together

Thanks, it was very humbling as there was some incredible games on display. I personally thought there were at least 4-5 90's games that were just as nice or nicer than Congo. Judging is a subjective thing though. I personally thought Marty's Fish Tales was the nicest machine at the show with my brother's Twilight Zone right behind it.

Thanks for the kind words. I had a few people ask how much I wanted for it, I just responded with 'A Lot'

yup it is still there and will probably be there for a while