I know there's quite a few Whirlwind restorations on here, but I thought I'd add mine in as it's my first attempt at a machine restoration.

My dad's favorite machine had always been Whirlwind. In the early 90's, I'd be doing laps around the arcade while he always played Whirlwind. I'd blow through $8 in quarters, while he only went through $2. In the coming years, I realized that you could play a lot longer in pinball if you got good at it and then i started gravitating towards the row of pinball machines as well. I outgrew going to the arcade with my dad in the later teenage years and then the arcade closed before I ever had a chance to return with him.

Flash forward to 2006. Out of the blue, I ask my dad if he knows of a good reason why he shouldn't buy a Whirlwind pinball machine. He says that he couldn't think of one, but he really doesn't need one. A week later, he calls me and says, "I couldn't sleep last night and just kept thinking about how much fun it'd be to have a Whirlwind machine. How do we get one? Where do you get one? Is this possible?"

I hunted down a local machine on RGP a couple of hours away in Shinglehouse, PA. I negotiate with the guy and we go do the pickup. The machine was in pretty good shape, but then again we had nothing to compare it to. It had see a lot of exposure to cigarette smoke. It took a few weeks of airing it out and cleaning the inside of the cabinet to get the old arcade smell out. It was finally good enough to be allowed into the house.

There were a few areas of the playfield that were worn. Cliffy's were added along with some leds, and new rubbers. Later I installed some nvram to eliminate the need for batteries. That was good for several years, but there were some minor things going wrong with the machine. It would start a multiball at the wrong time, sometimes the ramp wouldn't lift and you could hear it keep trying to lift the ramp. The cellar coil was weak and you could no longer shoot the inner loop from the plunger.

It's time to do a full restore of the machine. I've been wanting to overhaul the machine to get it back to new condition and working perfectly, so I bought a playfield from Mirco along with a set of the radcals. I just got the machine over to my house last week and started taking pictures and ripping the machine apart. I used to work in a circuit board factory while I was in college so the electronics don't scare me. I do a ton of woodworking, so i'm comfortable with working on the cabinet. New to me will be painting, with an HVLP sprayer and then getting everything back together in working order.

Here goes nothing....
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Since I'm using radcals on the machine, I'm not completely taking the machine down to bare wood. I want to just repair all of the missing corners, dents, and remove the layer of cigarette tar. First thing up was removing the side rails. Black double-sided tape underneath. I used a putty knife and they were easily removed.
It took a bunch of naptha and a straight razor to remove the remaining glue. Removing the glue was actually the worst part.
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I had a lot of corner damage. Not as bad as some machines that I've seen on here, but bad enough. I went through the how to guide for restoring cabinets and i got some fiberglass resin. It was amazing and worked better than i thought it could have.

Original corner with dam set up. I used some brass that I waxed. I had brass laying around and i could easily bend a sharp corner in it.
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removed
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Sanded
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Now that I've got the cabinet all repaired it was time to prime it. But first i used a tack cloth to remove any remaining dust.
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This is my first experience using a HVLP sprayer. I used oil based kilz primer and a Harbor freight gun. I figured i'd make plenty of a mess, so i built myself a Dexter style murder hut in my garage with a fan and incoming air filter.
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I had some trouble with the gun starting off. I was using the 1.8mm tip and it was spitting like crazy. The paint wasn't flowing well. I thinned out the paint and then it started working much better. Not great, but much better. Turns out it was a rookie mistake. I was using the wrong needle. Who knew that there was a matching needle for every tip? Not this guy. Like I said, rookie mistake.

I had some areas that needed all of the splatter sanded off, but other areas that turned out quite well. My murder tent worked great. No over spray in the garage and no dust in the tent.
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Topper Restoration

So much like many of the other Whirlwind toppers out there, mine was yellowed from age and smoke. It had the common crack that was on the front bottom.
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The inside was gross with the area under the cage where no one had been able to clean it.
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I clipped out the rivets from the back side and just pushed them out the front. No drilling needed for rivets like this. I let the pieces of mesh soak while i refinished the rest. I didn't really want to remove, buy and apply new decals, so I masked them off. While doing so, I found that the entire bottom was extremely weak and prone to cracking.IMG_20190813_203943 (resized).jpgIMG_20190813_204921 (resized).jpg
I decided that while i was fixing the crack with some fiberglass, that I would glass the entire bottom flange.
with some fiberglass resin and fabric.
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I trimmed the excess off and cleaned up the edge.
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Then it was on to painting. I just used some standard Krylon from a rattle-can.
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Once dry, I removed the masking, which was about 99% perfect. My cut lines weren't dead on in a couple of minor places, but they won't be see from 6' away.
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I still had quite a time cleaning up the mesh. The years and their dirt were not kind. But once they were finally clean, I reattached the mesh with some 1/8" x 1/4" rivets.
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When it's ready to go back on the machine, I'll redrill the holes through the fiberglass and resin.
Topper is like new. $105 saved.

Circuit Boards

The boards in this machine were quite dirty.
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It looked like some of the dirt had been cooking on some of the resistors based on the patterns on the boards.
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I took all of the boards off of the backing plate, removed the snap in lugs and then cleaned the panel. It wasn't obvious how dirty the panel was until the dirt started coming off.
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All of the boards were cleaned with simple green water and some light scrubbing with a brush.
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Everything looks great again once installed.
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Transformer

Just a quick cleanup here. Wires needed to be cleaned, and the rest is just cosmetic.
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Varnish removed from the screws and brackets, winding was masked off and a quick spray of paint. A very thin coat, just to make it pretty. New tie wraps and ready to go. Sticker was masked off so i don't ruin my warranty

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The first setback is upon me. I figured something had to go wrong. It was bound to be in the painting process as that is what i'm least familiar with. So, I was using Kilz odorless oil based primer, which i guess is not as good as the original oil based stuff. But being in NY, the government has to make sure that we're safer and can't trust people to take care of themselves.
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The cabinet was sanded to 150 grit and all was was vacuumed out and then tack clothed to make sure the surface was ready. I sprayed the primer, waited a day and then sanded and proceeded to paint. All looked well.
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Then i pulled off some tape, and along came not just the latex paint, but the primer as well. In fact it was tearing off in sheets. I'm so glad NY was worried that i couldn't use a respirator at this point that i didn't really mind that i'd have to start over.
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No, actually I'm kind of pissed that i get to sand all of this off and not only waste all of the paint and sandpaper, but the time as well.

So in another thread the determination was that the primer wasn't really dry. Potentially due to the humidity or other factors and I rushed it a bit, so my fault. But i still blame NY. The latex paint sealed in the primer, causing it to re-soften and detach from the wood. The latex stuck to the primer well, but that was a complete disaster.

New plan. Sand it all off tomorrow and re-prime the cabinet. I'm going to talk to the folks at ppg and see what the recommend for a primer. I'm leaving for a trip on tuesday, so the primer will have 10+ days to cure before i re-paint. This time i will be painting the white first. That was another rookie mistake.

I will be moving them, but I only have the cellar ones. I'm waiting for the other to come from cliffy. I talked to him and although there were some initial issues with them fitting on the mirco playfields, he has a new design that works on both. So there shouldn't be any issue with the new ones that i'm getting. I'm not sure if that means that if you have the old version that there may be issues...

The color is beautiful, but it doesn't match the radcals. Also, the paint shop couldn't match to the gloss surface of the radcals. The color kept coming out wrong. So I had to hunt down the color.

I printed out a sheet of the pantone colors
https://www.pantone.com/color-finder#/pick?pantoneBook=pantoneSolidCoatedV3M2

Then i compared it to the radcal front. I found a color that will be very close and work with the color scanner. In person, it's very close to the two colors with the X. More i think to the upper one.
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The original color under the legs is this:
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So... Entire cabinet and head stripped and sanded back to bare wood, again. This time I used a new primer and new paint.
Primer: Xim UMA Primer. This stuff was thick and a huge pain in the ass to spray. It splattered a lot. I really hated it, but it worked well, and dried hard. I did a quick sand with 200 grit and i was ready for painting.
Paint: PPG Breakthrough. This paint sprayed amazing. I thinned it with 10% water and it went on easy, and dried fast and hard.
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My color match isn't perfect, but it'll do. The only part that you really see the paint on is the front of the head.
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Radcals

I was worried about putting these on. There's not much out there about how to do it except for Mirco's easy as can be video. Well, it wasn't as easy as it looked. But I think on a newer machine it much be much easier. In preparation, I set all of the heads of the bolts in the head to be sub-surface.
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That way I don't have to drill any holes and it just looks smooth. The head was as easy as could be. Line it up, slap it on and done.
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Preparing the sides, I installed the spaces that go under the legs. Radcals are .045" thick. You don't want the lags squeezing up against them.
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I started with the cabinet up on some boards, legs off. Then taped the radcal to the edges of the cabinet and across the bottom. The boards served as a flat edge on the bottom.
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From reading about installing these, Mirco said that you don't need to remove the rails. Well, on a whirlwind you most certainly do. I traced the side rail on the protective sheet of the radcal.
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You can see how far down the side rail goes. The second line is 1/4" above the first. That will allow the rails to overhang the radcal. I was using gorilla mounting tape, which is also .045" thick, so in theory, the tape will provide a spacer from the cabinet that is the same thickness as the radcal. I marked the side rail, drew a line and applied the tape.
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I set the rail off to the side and cut the radcal on the upper line that I offset from the traced side rail. Here's a pic of the opposite side, showing the cut, which is not pretty, but will be covered.
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The scraps that were cut off
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Once it was ready to go, I left the painters tape along the bottom edge and removed what was holding it on the top and sides.
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I pulled off the backing and raised it up, from front to back, smoothing it along the way to remove any air bubbles.

At this point, you must remove the protective film. I was really hoping to leave it on until my project was finished. The rail will pinch the film and make it very difficult to get it all off cleanly.

I removed the backing of the gorilla tape, lined up the rail with the little carriage bolt up front and then squeezed it on. I added clamps, just to make sure that the bond is solid.

The side needed holes drilled in it for the bolts that hold the play field support and the head pivots. Since one was a carriage bolt, that hole must be square. Unlike wood, you don't want to let the bolt make this hole square. I used a brad point bit. I needed a 1/2", and 3/8" for the sides and a 5/16" bit for the front. I drilled from the inside out, applying very little pressure as the bit spun.
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I trimmed up the corners with an x-acto knife and it was square.
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Side done
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The front was a little bit harder to line up. The left side of the front piece buts up against the left side piece and the right side of the front overhangs the edge of the right side piece. I don't think there's a magic way of doing this at home in a one shot manner, but i think mine turned out quite nice.
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Recessing the bolt heads was a lot easier than drilling holes that close to the edge. There's not much clearance for the drill on the inside of the head and I'd rather drill from the inside out for a perfect clean hole. I'd have to square the holes too.

I didn't think the lock down bar had enough room to spare an extra .090". Looks tight enough as is and I didn't want to risk having to cut the radcals after the fact.

Also, depending on the machine, the side rails are covering up the plastic guides for the glass. I'm only .060" away from those being exposed. If I put the rails on top of the radcals, these would be .015" from exposing the plastic. They would still be covered, but barely. I'd want to be aware of that before hand and not be surprised by exposed plastic.
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The problem with the front piece is that it's so flimsy. The top and bottom are thin and it flexes a lot. I would have rather had a solid piece and cut out the coin door opening with a router. When i put that piece on, it was really floating. If i did it again, I would have had a rigid piece of wood overhanging the top edge to get that flush instead of just eyeing it. I was focused on making the start button centered, which I already had installed. I started at the button and then laid the rest on. I ended up pulling it off, just above the start button, and putting it back on about 6 times. This adhesive is strong. Once you really stick it on, you're going to ruin the piece getting it back off. Look close at the start button location. With my placement of the left side piece on first, the front is flush.
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You can see how i did the edge on this side.
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And then on the right (edit: these are hard to photograph with the gloss finish. You can see how in focus the reflections are.)
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2.) Does the back box come with top and sides or just sides?

Just the sides. That's why I wanted a good layer of paint on the machine. Any gaps or exposed areas will at least be the same color. Or roughly in my case.

3.) What did you use to cut the flipper button holes with?

The Flipper hole area was completely removed, otherwise i would have used a forstner bit. You can see that I traced the hole in the scrap that came off.
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4.) Why in the hell would Mirco make a RADCAL that has to be cut like you had too is just beyond stupid and even worse is his video makes it look like a stick it and forget it install but clearly there's more to it than that. In your case a whole.lot more. I have a TAF I want to do but that's a crap ton of work.
Thanks!

I think the end result was worth the effort. If all of these steps were laid out, I still would have done them, and actually, I would have preferred to see that it was a bit more intensive than it initially appeared. At least then I would have planned for more time. As I said in my other post, I was really concerned about the lock down bar fitting if there was extra thickness.

I may test out trimming the edges with a hand plane, but i'm not sure I feel like putting the effort in. I'll try it out with the scrap that I have and a piece of wood and see how the material handles a plane. But i think the front edges would benefit from a good 45 degree bevel cut.

I think that this will happen as the surface is now flexible. It's not overly tight and the square was cut in. Any pressure on the surface will result in some distortion. I'll have to test out loosening it to see how the surface flexes.

The reflection screws with pictures so it's hard to see reality without seeing it in person. I'm happy with it.

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Coin door cleaned up, reassembled and reinstalled. I never thought of how gross an area where people would stick there fingers and drop in their gross coins would be. Anywhere that the coins touched was a trail of oily muck. I bet some of it was pizza and chicken wing grease,

This was the plunger that came on the machine, anyone know the original color?
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Next up new speakers.

For as cheap as you can get some speakers, there's no reason not to upgrade what's in there. Besides, the old ones have that old smoke funk and I'm not attempting to clean them.
The original speakers are a 6" in the cabinet and a 6" in the head with an odd tweeter. I'm replacing them with a pair of 4" Pyle speakers for the head and a 6" Pyle subwoofer in the cabinet.

Going from a 6" bolt pattern to a 4" speaker just needs a little flange around it. 5.75" square in this case.
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The toughest part here is having the right equipment. In this case it's the fly cutter. Just for cutting any size hole with a drill press. The key here is to go slow, make sure everything is very secure and keep your fingers away. This can mess you up quick.
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Once that's cut, it's just a few bolts and done. New speaker that should sound better, bit will definitely smell better.
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I think I've managed to remove the remnants of that bar from the machine

All of the wiring harnesses were thrown in the dishwasher. They came out beautifully. Boards would have gone through the dishwasher if they didn't have relays on them. They just got a good scrubbing with simple green and water.

Flipper rebuild

The flipper son this machine weren't bad, but I can't go through the entire machine without rebuilding them. I just used the standard rebuild kit from pinball life: Williams/Bally Flipper Rebuild Kit - 02/1988 to 08/1991 https://www.pinballlife.com/williamsbally-flipper-rebuild-kit-021988-to-081991.html
But then to upgrade the flippers I also purchased some extension springs https://www.pinballlife.com/williamsbally-flipper-extension-spring.html
3 flippers and three piles of parts
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When i was taking the flipper mechs apart, I noticed that all of the links already had wings on them with holes for the extension spring. This wasn't normally included, so i reused these.
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I drilled a small hole in the vertical bracket to accept the return spring.
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New vs old
You can see that I also added a molex connection while I had everything off. This will come in handy later.
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A little lunch time welding

Upon pulling my cellars out, I noticed that one of the tabs was cracked.
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I've got a flux core welder in the garage, so why not try? I really hate flux core welders, but i got this one for $40. I really want a tig welder, but that's out of my price range right now, so I'll use what I have. Flux core is really messy. So there are no such thing as pretty welds. It gets the job done though.

First thing was to hold the crack together with something that won't melt, like copper wire.
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Then a few quick shots with the welder and then a huge spattery mess.
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A few touches with the angle grinder at 80 grit and then a re-grain and viola!
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I did have to chip some spatter out of the inside, but i think i got it all. Not perfect, but with the tools that I have, it worked out well and should hold up.

According to my dad, the fan assembly has lung cancer.
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This thing was sticky with tar. Desperate for a cleaning.
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All of the gross removed and tape replaced.
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And back in his home.
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Reterminating connectors

Some of you will see this next step as a complete waste of time and excessive, but after tracking down loose wires in this machine, I decided to swap out every insulation displacement connector (IDC) with a nicely crimped molex connector using trifurcon crimp terminals. There's never any question that trifurcon terminals make contact, since they do it on three sides of the pins. I also put a locking molex connector on each solenoid. That way I can remove a solenoid without soldering anything. Necessary? No. But it's something that I like doing to a machine.

Terminal source: https://www.Newark.com
08-50-0189 - Contact, KK 396 Trifurcon 6838 Series, Socket, Crimp, 18 AWG, Tin Plated Contacts
https://www.newark.com/molex/08-50-0189/contact-socket-18awg-crimp/dp/89C2628
At a quantity over 50, you're down to 6.2 cents each. This is the kind of pricing that you're not going to see from the pinball part stores. Marco will be 33% higher, as will pinball life. And when you're ordering 600 of these or more, that adds up.

Molex : https://www.alliedelec.com
I was able to purchase most sizes here. The 18 conductor was unavailable, so I used a 16 + a 2. I also purchased the connectors and terminals for the solenoids here. Note that you need both male and female terminals for the locking connectors.
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So, now I have a few of these left over.
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But now i don't have to worry about any of these having a bad connection as each one was tested as it was assembled. Every wire was yanked on. When done correctly, you'll nearly break the wire before the terminal comes off the end. Each terminal took about 25 seconds to do. That's about 4 hours of doing nothing but crimping terminals. I'd sit at my desk and crimp a few connectors while watching a movie. Do a few here or there. But there's no way I could just sit down and do all 500+ in one sitting.

I'm happy with the result.
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New playfield

I bought a new playfield from Mirco. When I received it, it had a very strong smell from the clear coat. I let it sit for about 6 months to cure. We'll see if that was long enough.
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It's absolutely beautiful compared to its 30 year old counterpart.
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But it's been challenging. I was extremely naive to think that i could just slap all of the parts from the old playfield onto this new one. No, that was not going to work. It could have, but I'll say this, the execution of this playfield was a mess. None of the dimples could be trusted, because they were ALL IN THE WRONG PLACES!!!!

Think about that for a second. There are dimples all over the back of the playfield. You use them to put all of the parts on in easy to find locations. But then you're making the assumption that they're right.

I started with the ball trough. Naive as i was, I attached the parts using the dimples. I was forcing parts in place. The ejector hit the ball guide. The switch was under the guide. What the hell? Around the same time, I received a PM from another Pinsider, warning me that I may have some issues with the dimples, and I'd be better off doing a transfer from the old playfield.

I used contact paper to find the existing holes and then laid that onto the new playfield. My suspicions were correct. EVERY DIMPLE WAS WRONG.
Oh sure, it's only a few mm. But that means that nothing fits. Nothing lines up right. Every hole has to be pre-drilled. Yeah, this was a hell of a lot more work than I bargained for.
The black dots are the locations on the old playfield.
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Besides drilling the holes in the right places, you'll also want to countersink the nail holes. The current depth will leave the nails above the surface and ready to make a mess of the ball.
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Do NOT put any ball guides into the playfield until you countersink the holes that they go in. The threads on the screws will ride on the edge of the hole and WILL CHIP your playfield. Fortunately where mine chipped ended up being mostly removed where I countersunk the hole.
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Besides, the ball guides have a tapered top edge that will not fit in the hole as it drilled.
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so, start countersinking.
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You may also assume that at least all of the through holes would be on the playfield. Well you'd be wrong. I did find one missing.
One of these things is not like the other.
Old:
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New:
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I did a tracing from the old playfield to locate the hole.
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While we're on the topic of things missing. How about this? I was told by Mirco that all of them have this issue and there's nothing he could do.
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I've conveyed every one of these items to Mirco, hoping that he'd fix his process, so everyone else wouldn't have to go through this same mess. Mirco will answer any question you have and work with you until the second that you send payment. After that, you'll get delayed or no responses. I was hoping that he make my transaction right with him, considering I ended up as a guinea pig, debugging his semi defective playfield.

When spending over 800 on a playfield, you have some expectation that what you're receiving will be correct. That's not really the case here. If you think the process will go smoothly, it will not with this playfield in the current state from Mirco. I would hold off buying one from him until he can confirm that he's fixed all of these issues.

Can we get proper targets anymore? This is pretty pathetic. New one on the left, and an old one I found on the right. The orange one is even smaller.
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Here's a high res old version in case anyone wants it.

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Ball guide rehab:

30 years of pinballs rubbing on the ball guides will take a toll. In this case it was a solid line everywhere with a bunch of little dots where the ball struck. I had come across a post showing how a 3m finishing sander sander could make the job pretty easy.

Here's the item on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004Z4DK

I mounted it in my drill press, slightly below the surface of the plywood base, but still high enough that it would get the entire guide in one pass.
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I ran it at high speed. You can see the difference in this one that I half completed.
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And completed
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It was a lot easier to complete on the longer guides
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Along the top, there's a spot where two ball guides meet with a post in between them. The rubber on that post is impossible to change out. In fact, you can't even pull the post out when the guides are in place.

First I tried a notch to go around the post base.
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But that wasn't enough. I still couldn't lower the guide in place with the post there. It was just too long. I don't know if this is due to a hole location error in the playfield or something else. So i trimmed the end as well.
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At that point, the guide would fit in place with the post, however, the ball would hit the post rubber as it passed, which is not what you want to happen as you do an inner loop shot. I ended up expanding the hole towards the back of the playfield to combat this and it turned out quite well. You can see the slight edge of the hole, but it will not affect game play.

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Testing my wiring Job

Another step of overkill here. But seeing as though the playfield is extremely accessible on the bike stands, why not?

I decided to test out every light and switch connection. I didn't label a whole lot of the the harness as I was removing it. I took plenty of pictures as I went, but still not enough and I relied on some other pinsiders pictures at times during reassembly. I became very familiar with the lamp, switch and solenoid matrices and diagrams.

I had picked up a DC voltage generator on prime day this year. I figured it would come in handy at some point.
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I just set it to 6.3V and using 2 pins that I took from a scrap board, I fed a voltage through each combination of wires in the lamp matrix and confirmed that the lamps came on.
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SW lamp
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10 tolls lamp
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Lower GI
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At that point I had a couple of lamps to adjust, mainly the ones that were on the small boards. The leds that i'm using are a very tight fit under those and have required that the boards be loosened just a touch before the light makes a good connection. I also confirmed that the #2 and #4 in the toll counter still have bad connections with their boards. I'll re-flow the solder on there, which should fix the issue.

I was also able to test all of the switches and diodes in a similar manner. I set the multi-meter to test the diodes and then checked the voltage drop across each switch as it was actuated. The proper value should be about 0.7.

The third ball lock switch was reporting as no continuity initially. And the switch was pretty flakey. It turned out the diode was bad as well.
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A new switch and new diode were installed then the expected value was displayed as the the switch was actuated. I like to test the switches with a ball, and not using my fingers. That way i can be sure that the ball will actuate the switch during game play.
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I'm using a variable speed hand drill so i'm not going fast (<100rpm). Even then, it would take an epic screw up and failure to mess up a countersink.

I am intrigued though. I didn't know this existed. I'm going to add this to my list of tools that i need.

Thanks!