A customer brought in an EM Gottlieb 4 player "Surf Champ" for restoration. It belonged to the guy's parents and had been in a flood 15 years ago in which there was 5 inches of water in the main cabinet. He said they had gotten it out of the water quickly and had opened it up and dried it out right away. He said it had not been plugged in for those 15 years until just about a month ago. It did not reset so he started to "fix" it himself by cutting all the wires to the "S" (start) relay, adding a bunch of wires, adding a terminal strip, and jumping wires across the terminal strip. Naturally that did not work and then decided to bring it to an expert like me to repair it.

First thing I saw before even opening the machine was that the machine had been completely covered in WALLPAPER! It was horrible! His dad did that because he didn't like the cabinet graphics. Opening up the coin door showed it to be corroded, but not too badly. Looks like I will need to disassemble the coin door and run the metal parts through some C-L-R and Evapo-Rust. The bottom cabinet panel and the relay/score motor panel were completely covered in dried mud/silt. The stepper unit on the relay panel is all gunked up with dried silt, but not really corroded. The machine is definitely salvageable.

The playfield is in great shape but needs the usual cleaning and rubbers. The flood waters never even got close to the playfield or the backbox. I opened up the back door on the backbox and everything looked normal back there....no flood damage at all.

I'm attaching pictures of the horrid wallpaper covering and the silt covered relay panel (taken out of the machine). I have already removed that wallpaper and found absolutely beautiful condition original cabinet artwork intact. I've removed that cluster of home made wiring and returned the start relay wiring to factory spec. Next thing to do is start on scrubbing the dried silt off the wiring harness and everything else on the relay panel before washing everything.

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Surf Champ side.JPG

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Surf Champ stepper.JPG

Surf Champ motor.JPG

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Here's after I took off the crappy wallpaper.

Inside the cabinet, the tilt assembly cleaned up very well in Evapo-Rust.

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The coin door is going to take a while due to all the corrosion. I'll be using Evapo-Rust to get these parts decent looking again.

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The white paint is still white! Not yellowed at all. I can't for the life of me figure out why they covered this artwork up with wallpaper. Maybe it went with their shag carpets?

Depending on how nice the weather is this weekend, I may wash the wiring harness and all the relays, score motor, and jacks to get the silt off. I need a good hot day so I can left it all dry off in the sun after washing it.

Here's the coin door after removing the rust and cleaning/polishing. I used Evapo-Rust on most of the parts and C-L-R on some parts.

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You soak the door parts in Evapo-Rust overnight. The parts have to be completely submerged in Evapo-Rust and with a lid on the container you have the parts in. A little scrubbing with a brass bristled 'detail' brush was necessary on the heavily rusted areas. Sometimes not all the 'shine' is there in the metal after the rust is gone so then I soak in C-L-R mixed 20% C-L-R and 80% water. Then polished up with Turtle Wax chrome polish for a nice shine.

Took everything off the bottom relay panel. Got all the dried silt/mud off of it. I've cleaned all the screws and I can reuse about 90% of them. The ones that were badly rusted/corroded will be replaced with brand new screws.

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Took all the wiring harness, relays, score motor, and stepper outside on my friend's driveway and started washing it all off. First picture is before starting the wash job. The power transformer is triple bagged to keep it from getting wet.

The weather was overcast, but warm so I started washing everything down with Mean Green and Scrubbing Bubbles. Got out the toothbrush to scrub the wiring harness. Now wouldn't you know it.....about halfway through the wash job, it suddenly starts raining! So I finish as quickly as I can and drag the whole works into my friend's garage and start force drying everything with a big breeze box fan.

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I completely disassembled the coin door. It's the only way to get all of the silt/mud off of every piece.

I've got the machine fully operational now. I had to resolder EVERY light socket under the playfield to make them stay lit because the socket shells had come loose from the frames. The playfield is cleaned and rubbered. It looks great!

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Here is the operator's decal from where the customer bought the machine 30 years ago. I've never heard of that operator before.

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I had to disassemble and clean/lubricate every score reel on it. They were all sluggish plus the owner had taken one apart and put it together incorrectly. There was a score reset problem in that players 3 and 4 would not reset when you started a game. I traced the problem back to a wire broken off of the Z2 (players 3 & 4 reset) relay coil.

The Replay unit and the Player Unit were seized up and wouldn't budge. I had to get my needlepoint oiler and squirt a few drops of light oil into the pivots of the linkages. Then working the linkages back and forth by hand brought them back to life. I also had to disassemble the match number unit ("AS" type relay) and clean the copper foil on the two pc boards. Fortunately, this relay has connectors on it and can be unplugged.

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Less than $1000.

I played a dozen games on it yesterday and it plays great!

I was able to save the original Gottlieb legs. Evapo-Rust came through with flying colors to save the day. The legs look like brand new. I'll try to get some pictures of the legs.

I've been enjoying working on this machine.

When I first saw this machine on the guy's truck, I thought, "What have I got myself into?" After I got into taking things apart, I discovered it wasn't that bad. The cabinet had not started to fall apart or warp like you'd normally see in most flood damaged equipment. They must have gotten it out of the water quick and started drying it out right away.

I've been most happy bringing this machine back to life. It sure is a fun machine to play!

Draped moist towels over the wallpaper and let the moisture soak into the wallpaper about 30 minutes. The first layer of wallpaper comes right off. Now you're left with the wallpaper paste on the cabinet. I repeat the treatment with moist towels again for about 20 minutes this time. Then I use Harbor Freight Plastic Spreaders # 69563 to safely scrape the remaining glue off easily without scratching the cabinet artwork.

http://www.harborfreight.com/plastic-spreader-set-3-pc-69563.html

It's finished! Here it is all dolled up.

Disregard the funny looking sideart colors to the left of the leg in the picture of the leg. The sun was shining through the garage door on that side of the cabinet affecting color rendition of the camera. The colors are actually bright like the colors around the coin door. The legs are all ORIGINAL and were cleaned up by soaking in Evapo-Rust then polishing with Turtle Wax chrome polish.

The cabinet paint is all original too.

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Interior pictures.

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Yeh it was a challenge to clean up all the dried silt and mud. Would I do it all again? Hell YES!

The only thing missing from this machine is the "Total Plays" counter (meter). It was already removed when the machine came in and I don't have any 24 volt AC counters in stock.

I use Turtle Wax Chrome Polish on the metal after using Evapo-Rust.