So, I'm about to buy a first pin. It's my first toe into the water of collecting, I imagine.

I'm in a good location with a lot of repair people and, in fact, the table will remain in a location where I can work on it and be able to ask questions of folks more versed than me.

There are several tables available, but I've kind of zeroed in on these two. The price on either machine is easily affordable, the playfields have light wear and the games are in the care of a collector I know and trust. They are both what he'd call light projects, which seems about perfect for me right now.

Space Mission in particular seems to have a cottage industry behind it with completely reproduced plastics and backglass. The backglass is probably a loss. It's soooo bad. The playfield looks good. It will need cleanup.

Expressway looks great. It's clean and the colors are vibrant. The size appeals to me and, well, this being a first em, the idea of a 4-player em is a bit scary to me.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Steve, I ran across your video before I ran across your thread here when you shopped yours out. Admittedly, your thread left me feeling a bit overwhelmed considering all the stuff you did and had to do. The key to any big project, I think, is to break down big goals into lots of tiny tasks and BE PATIENT.

Buying both is not out of the question. They're both likely to stay where they're at for the during of my working on them.

There are reproduction Space Mission backglasses and plastics available. The BG is around $300 after shipping. The only issue I was able to quickly spy on the Space Mission yesterday were some warped plastics. I've read here that there are ways to cure that without buying repros.

Yep. I work in IT and a lot of these ideas still apply. It's easy to get overwhelmed by a big picture. At least it is for me, maybe others look at a goal consisting of hundreds of tiny steps and it doesn't phase 'em.

I tell you though, there are some things that seem so utterly impossible to me right now. For instance: dismantling a playfield to clean it. How in the hell does anyone keep all those parts in place. I hear the old saw: "lots of pictures and videos" but I've done that with some laptops and still have trouble getting them back together. A playfield seems infinitely more complicated.

Another thing I wonder about: How does one clean wires? Surely all that latex and plastic and rubber has got to be harboring some major sticky gunk and dirt. Does one literally have to pull a single wire out of the harnesses and clean them? Maybe that's the only way.

Gah, getting too worried just thinking about it.

Thanks! I will definitely keep it all in mind.

What does that book say about trying to attain perfection? That can be the enemy of working, too ... at least for me.

I hear you. I would not pull apart harnesses wire-by-wire in order to clean them. I was using that as a hypothetical for someone who was trying to get a machine perfectly clean.

Your list is something that I definitely want to do. How does one do all that work on the pf without pulling everything off?

One-step-at-a-time. One-step-at-a-time.

I'm finding that there's not a heck of a lot of information out there about Expressway. At least, I haven't found a manual yet.