Picked up a The Simpsons a few days ago, and I've made some progress that I'm pretty happy about!

I'm sure many of you who surf the Facebook pinball B/S/T groups saw this posted here in St. Louis. I'm a massive Simpsons fan, so naturally I needed to have this for my collection. TSPP, Kooky Karnival, and of course the arcade game are on my want list. This will be the deepest I've ever torn down a pin, so it will definitely be a learning experience.

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While I'm putting a ton of work into this, I'm not sure that I'd call it a full restore since I'm not repainting anything on the playfield, and I'm not doing an underside teardown at this time. I figured I would see how the game acts once powered on - if it works, I'll leave the underside as-is and wait until a replacement playfield comes available. That's assuming such a thing will ever exist.

I will be stripping and priming the cabinet once it isn't 105 degrees outside. Probably a fall project.

Anyway - let's get started!

Overall, I picked it up in "meh" to "bad" shape. Playfield was filthy, with a bit of wear, but certainly less wear than many I've seen around the internet while researching this machine. The cabinet is very solid and didn't show any signs of direct water contact, however it was definitely in a humid environment. The paint is all flaking off with almost all of it missing from the coin door area. Lots of lamp sockets are fairly corroded. Lots of trash in the cabinet itself, including several rusty screwdrivers and the original manual. It was missing the playfield power board and the displays too. On a positive note, the boards that were present look pretty good! Original or close to original batteries were still there and had juuuust started to corrode, but none of it made it to the board. Also a positive - this is the best smelling "bad shape" cabinet I've ever bought. NO signs of mice, no signs of bugs. Just smells like an old wood cabinet. So that's pretty cool.

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I'll do individual posts for different steps. I have like 300 pictures of this thing so far, so paring down still leaves me with a lot I'd like to show.

After doing some triage and putting in a couple parts orders, I got started on the topside tear down. Regarding parts ordering - over the course of a week it turned into 6 orders, I think. Turns out I'm pretty bad at consolidating parts orders!

Like I mentioned, the playfield was filthy. What was left of the rubbers were absolutely shot. Since this was my first playfield teardown, I made sure to go nice and slow and still sober enough to drive in an emergency.

For each section, I would take a before picture, take a labeled picture of the parts, and take an after picture. I have these Home Depot organizers that I've seen mentioned here and on KLOV that I've 3D printing dividers for to double up the compartments.

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An assembled before picture is in the post above, here in the playfield after teardown. Filthy!

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I found a couple "field fixes" after teardown too, such as this wood screw and wrapped rubber. I'm guessing the original owner didn't have the right replacement for the rubber behind the drop bank.

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And instead of replacing the missing guide wire, how about another wood screw and an old rubber post? Upper-left corner of the picture - I didn't realize that it wasn't supposed to be there until removing the post.

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As you can see, the bracket on that kicker at the left outlane is snapped in half. That coil and the knocker are both seized up tight with the plunger plastic component melted. Coincidentally, they are the exact same assembly. I'll trace back those circuits and verify that the drive transistors for those coils are OK before replacement.

Here's how it looked after cleaning! I did all of this in one evening over the course of 4-ish hours.

Cleaned up pretty nice! The only issue I'm not sure how to tackle is that the mylar over Bart's face has delaminated, so it's a little bubbly/crackly if you run your hand over it.

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Definitely my favorite transformation so far has been with the main plastic ramp. I just think it's SO cool - I've never had a game with this long of a ramp!

As you could see previously, it was on theme - FILTHY!

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A quick wipe down with some Novus 1 and it looks AWESOME! No cracks or chips that I can see.

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Unfortunately, the MILLIONS panel will take more work. This is the brunt of the bad sockets I've found. Weirdly the playfield sockets are fine, and again there is no sign of standing water. I don't know why these corroded worse than everything else.

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Turning to the boards for a moment, I learned an immediate lesson: at this point, I think I was in day 4 of refreshing this cabinet. I had made several orders, a couple of which from Marco had already come in. I took a little closer look at the power supply and found what I came to learn is a very common problem with these Data East PSUs.

The lesson learned - look at and order PSU components first because you're going to be SUPER itchy to start testing once you get your playfield re-assembled!

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CN1 is absolutely toast. I've got a rebuild kit on the way. The rest of the PSU looks OK, at least.

I did find that fuse F2 in the backbox (not on the PSU) is blown while working in this area. Requires further investigation.

Regarding the missing playfield power board - I took the simple route and ordered a Rottendog board from Pinball life. This will be my first Rottendog product after hearing about them for years and years. When I cleaned out the cabinet, I saved every random screw or hardware piece that I found "just in case" - turns out whoever pulled the PPB dropped all the drops in the bottom, so they were all there just waiting for me. Thanks, person who stripped out this game!

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For the displays, I went with a Wolffpac Tech display kit in classic orange. I didn't realize it was a build-it-yourself kit when ordering, but at that price point it makes a lot of sense. Went together well and fit right in!

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Playfield reassembly was pretty uneventful - I just went in reverse order of my parts box and referenced my dozens and dozens of pictures. I'm not sure I have the rubber right around the 3 target bank, but that's an easy adjustment. Got what's left of the plastics all shined up as well - eventually I'll do a replacement kit because almost every plastic on this game is chipped or snapped. For now though, it looks OK pieced together.

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Lamp sockets for the MILLIONS panel are still in transit, so it's not installed let. At this point the PF is back in the cabinet for the time being, though!

Cooling towers on the pop bumpers are always a topic of discussion. I have three "usable" ones, and there were two "could be used in an emergency" towers in the bottom of the cab, amongst the junk. There is already a cooling tower 3D model online, so I'm going to print my own replacements.

I did a test in purple (it was already loaded on my printer) and it turned out really well. I bought some translucent "watermelon red" filament at Microcenter, but it's definitely "Starburst pink" once printed.

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I think I'm going to see if I can find a good translucent grey so they can be more "cooling tower colored" rather than red.

The speaker panel is in OK shape - light amount of rust on the inside that I'll take a wire brush to and repaint. The outside finish looks great, so I probably won't touch it for now.

Couple lamp sockets here that I'll replace, the rest I can clean up. I'll be interested down the road if there are any good sound upgrades out there for this machine.

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At this point, I think the thread is caught up. Hopefully I have PSU parts today! All told, I have about 6 calendar days worth of work into this thing.

Received an order from Action Pinball today!

Replaced CN1 on the PSU and replaced the connector on the wiring harness as well.

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I've moved the cabinet out into the main gameroom as well as I received a set of new black legs from Marco. My workshop isn't tall enough to stand up a game. Got the repaired PSU installed and plugged the game in without the PSU outputs plugged in. 5 and 12 volt looked good, so I shut down, plugged everything in, and - it's alive!!

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Still waiting on an order of lamp sockets, so MILLIONS is still out of the cabinet. Yes - I had a fire extinguisher handy, haha.

At this point, was able to coin up. My right flipper was clearly running only on the "hold" power. I couldn't confirm as my multimeter doesn't poll fast enough to see the 50v spike. I pulled my flipper controller and found that transistor Q2 had a cold solder joint. Touched that up and both flippers are nice and strong! Shockingly strong, actually - much stronger than my Gottlieb Genesis that this will Replaced some REALLY loose flipper plungers and we're good for now. One has been clearly missing the bushing for a while, so I need to find that. The bolt that runs through the plunger has had its threads worn down.

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With the flippers straightened out, it is technically playable! Lots of small adjustments are needed, but all of the major features (pops, VUKs, targets) seem to be working as intended. Sound works well too - currently only running through the cabinet speaker until I get the backbox speakers back in place.

Tonight I'll be building out and soldering in the kickback and knocker assemblies, as well as cleaning the underside of the apron. I'm heading out of town for a work conference on Monday, so I'm hoping I can have this thing electronically buttoned up by then! That would be a 2 week turn time.

Received my shipment of lamp sockets for the MILLIONS panel and got them swapped in. Man the old ones were bad.

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Now that I'm in the shake-down phase, I went ahead and put the game in the line up and reinstalled the backglass. Looking good!

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My to-do list is, in order:

-Continued shakedown runs
-Install NVRAM to eliminate batteries
-Finalize a filament choice for the cooling towers
-Everything about the cabinet

Minor details

My local Microcenter finally had "silk silver" filament in stock. I know the original towers are red, but I liked the idea of seeing how it would look with "natural" looking towers. This filament does let light through, but I will definitely need to get brighter bulbs for it to be seen.

Unfortunately, I shattered a light bulb under that back-right plastic while taking out the green wireform, which means I have to take the plastic ramp out of the cab which means the whole damn playfield has to be lifted off of the pivot points and propped up. So... that's a chore for another day.

But - here's how the grey towers look unlit!

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Thanks! I had a feeling it wasn't an uncommon issue. I'll take a look into that.

Worked through my pop-bumpers after finding that top-left wasn't responding very well. All three were VERY grimy and out of adjustment, so I tore them all down and cleaned. Coils were still good, all three had their yokes cracked in half!

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I did find that one bracket had two corners broken off, but found a reasonably priced assembly on ebay in yellow. I DID Gorilla Glue the corners back on and it's actually holding up very well, so I may run with it until it breaks and keep the one I ordered as a spare.

One thing I'm excited about was results of testing a couple LEDs for the pops. With the 3D printed cooling towers, a traditional bulb didn't have the look I was going for. In person, it was very dim. In pictures, I'm surprised how bright it looks (see below). I bought some LEDs that I swear were listed as warm white, but they're definitely too cool to be considered warm. That was a bummer. With my order to Marco for pop bumper parts, I gave some of their more expensive "high output" bulbs a try and they look great!! Looks like the cooling towers are glowing. I may order the same LEDs in red to see how those look in my next order.

I don't have plans to fully LED convert this cabinet - I would like to see some well-lit examples of how a Simpsons "turns out" with a good set of LEDs before taking that dive. That's the main reason I was looking at yellow LEDs for the cooling towers - that way it blends in a little better with the traditional incandescent lighting throughout the rest of the GI.

Here's a comparison in photo and video:

Top-left has the high-output yellow LED. Marco part number 05-555Y-HO.
Top-right has a traditional bulb.
Lower-center has the "definitely not a warm white" LED.

"Lower" brightness during attract.
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Probably "peak" brightness during attract.
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And here's a few seconds of attract where you can hear the flasher buzz over my loud-ass AC

Turns out, red was the way to go. Truer to the original color for sure!

Marco part number 05-555R-41

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Also finally replaced the coil on the 5-bank - now it consistently resets!

I've learned a lot working on this machine, most notably:

When buying a dumpster-fire project, just shotgun-order all of the coils, links, and springs. I've probably spent as much in shipping multiple orders as I paid for half of the coils. Not worth it - I'd rather have spare parts laying around than burning a ton of cash in shipping multiple small orders as I find more issues...

Anyway, cabinet work should start in the next couple weeks!

Time to get off my butt - let's get to the cabinet.

I stripped everything, THEN found that I didn't actually have all of the replacement art. I'm missing a side. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. Oh well - ordered a set from Retro Refurbs and sold a couple things over on KLOV to offset the unexpected expense.

Anyway - I was able to finish gutting the cabinet, got it stripped, and got the first round of Bondo done today. I'll need to finish sanding tomorrow, probably do some Bondo touch ups, then I can paint. I have several home paint projects, this cabinet, and a Galaga that I need to paint so I picked up a Wagner Flexio 3500. My first attempt at spray painting that doesn't involve a can - we'll see how that goes.

Y'all know what a stripped cab looks like and I'm gonna show you anyway, but first order of business is patching this hole that I can only assume was a "credit button".

Before:

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During:

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Stripped and Bondo'd - I blew through three batteries for my sander and had to bondo the head with paint still on it:

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Once sanded, that extra hole will be totally invisible. I'm already glad I've started this process.

All in all - the cabinet is really solid under the flaking paint. I'm going to put down a white layer outside, and I'm going to black out the inside due to the staining on the bottom.

Well this has been a learning experience. It's absolutely not the first time I've worked with bondo, but I made a rookie mistake that set me a day or two.

To make a long story short, I found a couple big sections of the plywood sides that were solid, but planking through the primer. So I bondo'd them. Turns out I didn't put near enough hardener in, so even a day later I was left with half-hardened goop. Wound up sanding it all off. They were big enough sections that I wound up just sanding back to wood all over and starting fresh with the primer. Oh well.

At the end of the day, I think this yielded a pretty good result. Bondo is done, primer coat is smooth. I also got the black sprayed in with vaguely the same overspray pattern on the body. The head.... I've got some overspray to clean up on the mount plate. I thought I could "guide" the spray of the gun a little better - clearly not. I was going to paint the entire bottom of the cabinet too to hide stains but opted to leave them as-is.

Still have a few touchups to do, but if I didn't call this "good enough for sideart" sooner than later I'd go nuts nit-picking. Yes - I'm gonna deal with the overspray in the head....

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Art is en-route from Retro Refurbs!!

While the playfield was out, I took care of a few other odds-n-ends.

I asked in the "Owner's club" thread about the post that should have been in-between the flippers. I bought a couple random posts and couldn't get either of them to work! When looking in the hole, it looked like whatever they were supposed to screw into was askew. Looked under the PF - great, gotta take a flipper mount off to get to it.

Took three of six screws off the mount and the mounting ear fell into my hand - it was cracked completely off the mount. GREAT! I look at the other flipper - it's cracked too! Look at a few assemblies on ebay - THEY'RE ALL CRACKED TOO! Must be a common issue.

Considering the flippers worked and felt fine with the broken mounts, we're gonna try JB Welded mounts. They feel pretty strong after curing. If they fail again, I'll buy replacements. $60 worth of mounting plates after unexpectedly buying $200 worth of art, on top of alllllll of the other crap I've bought for the cabinet... Needless to say, I'll be a little pickier with my projects in the future!

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Meanwhile, I finally figure why the posts I bought won't seat - the t-nut is completely missing. D'oh!
Luckily, Menards carries a couple different t-nuts. Grabbed a 10-32 and now I have my center post!

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My right VUK would occasionally not be able to lift a ball high enough into the wireform, so I opted to rebuild both. Turns out the caps were more worn than I expected!

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And finally - I was able to get the right wireform to get rid of the ugly drywall screw holding in a rubber post at the top of the playfield. This was easily replaced with the PF removed since the MILLIONS panel needed to be removed. Of course, I'm left with an ugly hole but... the PF is rough as-is so it's fiiiiiiine.

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Oh - Thanks for the info! I’ll put that on the shopping list.

Cabinet is done and decaled! The Retro Refurbs decals have the same issue that I've seen mentioned elsewhere in that one side of the head graphics isn't aligned right. Oh well - it still looks a ton better than it did before!

I'm kinda "yadda yadda yadda"ing the rest of this documentation since it occurred immediately before and after Expo. I rushed the pre-Expo work and didn't get a ton of pics, and post-expo I'm trying to make room for my next project.

I wouldn't call this "done", but it's 95% for my purpose. I'm happy with the way most of the decaling came out - this is the very first time I've ever applied art to a cabinet. One side of the head is a little lumpy as I had to pick it up and re-apply, but the other side, front, and body decals all went on great. I still have a little paint touch up on the head in the black area.

I didn't do anything to the coindoor as I intend to replace it - unfortunately there is a hole drilled in the front, but I'm not in a rush to get that swapped out.

I also need to re-install the inserts in the front - gotta pick up some finer grade sandpaper and a Dremel buffing wheel later this week.

I learned a ton through this project - mostly a lot of "don't"s for the next one!

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