(Topic ID: 300957)

Gottlieb Pioneer restored

By paulace

2 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 12 posts
  • 6 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 2 years ago by paulace
  • Topic is favorited by 3 Pinsiders

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shooter rod (resized).jpg
side view (resized).jpg
front view (resized).jpg
done1 (resized).jpg
blue trim shiny legs (resized).jpg
lockdown bar closeup (resized).jpg
side rail closeup (resized).jpg
head on top (resized).jpg
head sprayed (resized).jpg
spraying red (resized).jpg
spraying blue (resized).jpg
flecking (resized).jpg
scraping paint off (resized).jpg
wood cleaned (resized).jpg
tracing stencils (resized).jpg
front before (resized).jpg

#1 2 years ago

A few months ago, I bought a 1976 Gottlieb Pioneer (the 2-player version of Spirit of '76). I like 2-players at home rather than 4-player machines, because there are half the number of score reels to futz with and they're just generally a little bit simpler. So I found this one a few hours away in Baltimore. It wasn't that bad really - the cabinet was a little bit beat up, but the playfield and backglass looked pretty good. It mostly played the first time I hooked it up, so I was feeling good about it. Most of the inserts were loose in the playfield, but were only slightly cupped, so I just knocked them out and re-glued them back in. There were some nicks and spots of missing paint on the pf, but in general, after cleaning it with magic eraser and naptha, and then polishing it a bit with Novus 2, it was pretty good - except for the yellows. They were faded and kind of translucent. So I wanted to re-paint the yellow areas - a couple big circular areas in front of the drops, a place just in front of the kickout hole, and around the pop bumpers. So I depopulated the pf, covered everything else with frisket and sprayed yellow on it. There was quite a bit of text on the yellow areas in front of the drops, so I got some clear water-slide decal printer paper, and took a photo of the text I wanted to reproduce. I used the 1-inch graph paper technique around the text to get rid of camera distortion and size it correctly. This is the area right in front of the kickout hole:

1000 pt kickout decal (resized).jpg1000 pt kickout decal (resized).jpg

I touched up the files in Photoshop and printed decals for all the black text on the yellow areas I had just painted:

drop target decals (resized).jpgdrop target decals (resized).jpg

I went through with a small brush and touched up all the keylines, a few spots of missing paint here and there, and that mess where the ball always lands when it gets kicked out of that center kickout hole. That always takes some hours. When the areas I wasn't happy with were repainted, and the decals were on, the middle looked like this:

mid with decals (resized).jpgmid with decals (resized).jpg

Next, I cleared the whole thing with Polycrylic. I filled the cupped inserts first, then brushed coats onto the whole playfield, sanding a bit between coats to level those inserts. That clear really made the colors pop! This is with new plastics and the metal parts all shined up.

kickout hole (resized).jpgkickout hole (resized).jpg

It's not glass-smooth, like I see some folks get with auto-clear, but it looks great in person:

center closeup (resized).jpgcenter closeup (resized).jpg

I know this drives some of the purists nuts, but I like new plastics on the thing - new pop bumper bodies and skirts, lane guides, drop targets, flippers, posts, etc. The only original plastic pieces I kept were the pop bumper caps. I make Steve Young happy, at least. I like to use Titan rubbers too, so I went with red, white and blue, of course:

lower pf (resized).jpglower pf (resized).jpg
upper pf from side (resized).jpgupper pf from side (resized).jpg

After shining up all the acorn nuts and putting them on, I thought it looked pretty sharp. There is a large green insert just below the kickout hole that was bugging me because it was way more transparent than the original. Nobody has a more opaque green insert that size, so I cut a couple wax paper circles the size of the insert, pushed them up on the underside of the plastic and it diffuses the light similarly to what the original plastic did. It's close enough.

On to the cabinet.

#2 2 years ago

Here are some shots of the cabinet as I received it:

cab before (resized).jpgcab before (resized).jpg
front before (resized).jpgfront before (resized).jpg

Not terrible, but just kind of dinged-up. I wanted it to be better, of course. So I got a roll of 4-mil mylar and laid it on the side of the cab to start. My wife and I started tracing out the outlines of the different colors. Then we cut along the lines with a razor knife.

tracing stencils (resized).jpgtracing stencils (resized).jpg

Once the stencils are cut, I can clean off cabinet. This is the first time I used a liquid paint stripper and scraper. It worked pretty well....certainly saved me a lot of sandpaper discs. I filled cracks and divots with filler, then sanded the whole thing down with an orbital sander:

scraping paint off (resized).jpgscraping paint off (resized).jpg
wood cleaned (resized).jpgwood cleaned (resized).jpg

Once the cabinet and head are down to bare wood, I put a coat or two of primer on, sanded it down and sprayed it with rattle cans from Lowes. Tried Heirloom White at first, but I realized that was going to be too beige for this particular machine - it isn't Red, Beige and Blue after all. I wanted a brighter white, so I just went with your basic white spray paint...Krylon, I think.

After the cabinet and head were white, my wife helped (well, who am I kidding?, she did it all) me put all those little black spots all over the cabinet. She used black craft paint - the cheap stuff - mixed it with a little water, and put some on a pretty stiff-bristled paintbrush. Then used her fingers to just "flick" it on to the cabinet from about 10 inches away....just trying for a light random pattern of dots. Worked great!

flecking (resized).jpgflecking (resized).jpg

Now for the fun part! Once the cab and head are dry, we sprayed a little spray-adhesive on the back side of each stencil and laid it on the cabinet side where we needed it to be. Then you pray and spray! There were only 2 colors of spray paint we needed. For this machine, I chose Montana gold paints - Shock Red and Shock Dark Blue. They're expensive, but they cover well.

spraying blue (resized).jpgspraying blue (resized).jpg

spraying red (resized).jpgspraying red (resized).jpg

Of course, you do the same thing to the backbox:

head sprayed (resized).jpghead sprayed (resized).jpg

And when you're done with them all, you get to stand back and take a look. It's pretty rewarding when it's done! If I had 2 more wheels and a seat, I could have made a go-cart out of this thing. I cleared the cabinet with some Krylon clear semi-gloss after all the stenciling was done.

head on top (resized).jpghead on top (resized).jpg

I was working on the legs while we were doing the cabinet. I used Evapo-rust for the first time - great stuff! I just got a 4-inch wide PVC tube and capped the end, then filled it with about a gallon of Evapo-rust, and dunked the legs 2 at a time for a couple days. Then took them to the basement and polished with Mother's and 0000 steel wool, and then buffed them out with a cloth wheel. Got new levelers from PBR.

A local guy does powder-coating, so he did the lockdown bar and siderails (I know, some people hate that) and shooter end in a lovely metallic blue. New flipper buttons of course.

lockdown bar closeup (resized).jpglockdown bar closeup (resized).jpg
side rail closeup (resized).jpgside rail closeup (resized).jpg

Then comes more fun - putting it all back together. This part really is fun as you watch it come together for the first time.

done1 (resized).jpgdone1 (resized).jpg
blue trim shiny legs (resized).jpgblue trim shiny legs (resized).jpg
front view (resized).jpgfront view (resized).jpg
side view (resized).jpgside view (resized).jpg

When I got it all together, of course, I had to play-test it and get the kinks out. Found a few problems: the bonus wouldn't count up during play, the extra ball function wouldn't stop giving extra balls, a few other things. The bonus problem was a coil stop in the bonus unit add bonus coil that had broken and was flopping around in the sleeve and not letting the stepper step forward, and the extra ball problem was just the runway switch not gapped correctly. A couple wires need to be resoldered - nothing super serious or expensive to fix, and I've been tweaking since - cleaning pop bumper switches, getting gaps correct on various switches. It's a blast to play! Haven't made that double-double bonus yet, but I'm still trying.

Anyway, I don't have room for it here at home, so the game's going to Decades Arcade in Charlottesville, VA for a while (thanks Paul), so if you're in the area and want to play it - come on! In addition to newer pins, we have a nice line-up of EM's there: Slick Chick, Magic City, Silver, Jungle Queen, Royal Flush, Friendship 7, Fast Draw...and now Pioneer!

#3 2 years ago
Quoted from paulace:

A few months ago, I bought a 1976 Gottlieb Pioneer (the 2-player version of Spirit of '76). I like 2-players at home rather than 4-player machines, because there are half the number of score reels to futz with and they're just generally a little bit simpler. So I found this one a few hours away in Baltimore. It wasn't that bad really - the cabinet was a little bit beat up, but the playfield and backglass looked pretty good. It mostly played the first time I hooked it up, so I was feeling good about it. Most of the inserts were loose in the playfield, but were only slightly cupped, so I just knocked them out and re-glued them back in. There were some nicks and spots of missing paint on the pf, but in general, after cleaning it with magic eraser and naptha, and then polishing it a bit with Novus 2, it was pretty good - except for the yellows. They were faded and kind of translucent. So I wanted to re-paint the yellow areas - a couple big circular areas in front of the drops, a place just in front of the kickout hole, and around the pop bumpers. So I depopulated the pf, covered everything else with frisket and sprayed yellow on it. There was quite a bit of text on the yellow areas in front of the drops, so I got some clear water-slide decal printer paper, and took a photo of the text I wanted to reproduce. I used the 1-inch graph paper technique around the text to get rid of camera distortion and size it correctly. This is the area right in front of the kickout hole:
[quoted image]
I touched up the files in Photoshop and printed decals for all the black text on the yellow areas I had just painted:
[quoted image]
I went through with a small brush and touched up all the keylines, a few spots of missing paint here and there, and that mess where the ball always lands when it gets kicked out of that center kickout hole. That always takes some hours. When the areas I wasn't happy with were repainted, and the decals were on, the middle looked like this:
[quoted image]
Next, I cleared the whole thing with Polycrylic. I filled the cupped inserts first, then brushed coats onto the whole playfield, sanding a bit between coats to level those inserts. That clear really made the colors pop! This is with new plastics and the metal parts all shined up.
[quoted image]
It's not glass-smooth, like I see some folks get with auto-clear, but it looks great in person:
[quoted image]
I know this drives some of the purists nuts, but I like new plastics on the thing - new pop bumper bodies and skirts, lane guides, drop targets, flippers, posts, etc. The only original plastic pieces I kept were the pop bumper caps. I make Steve Young happy, at least. I like to use Titan rubbers too, so I went with red, white and blue, of course:
[quoted image]
[quoted image]
After shining up all the acorn nuts and putting them on, I thought it looked pretty sharp. There is a large green insert just below the kickout hole that was bugging me because it was way more transparent than the original. Nobody has a more opaque green insert that size, so I cut a couple wax paper circles the size of the insert, pushed them up on the underside of the plastic and it diffuses the light similarly to what the original plastic did. It's close enough.
On to the cabinet.

WOW!@ Beautiful work!

#4 2 years ago

Thanks cd - do you like those blue siderails, or do you prefer the original brushed metal look?

#5 2 years ago

That turned out great! I love that it is getting back out there for others to enjoy. Really nice work.

#6 2 years ago

Thanks bigguybbr - I love knowing that people are going to get to play it as well - it's really a fun game. I have it set pretty steep, so it's not too easy...it won't bore the good players that way.

#7 2 years ago

Last touch - my powder-coating guy did the end of the shooter rod. I like it! Put a new grounded power cord on it - now it's done!

shooter rod (resized).jpgshooter rod (resized).jpg

#8 2 years ago

I like it! It's bright and shiny with a couple of interesting mods that make it pop even more.

If that were me (I should be so lucky), I'd probably loan out one of my existing machines to the arcade and keep Pioneer home for a few months. Last machine in is usually the heaviest played in my house.

#9 2 years ago

Thanks DaMoib - luckily, I have a key to the arcade, so I can play it pretty much any time I want. I'll enjoy watching other folks play it!

#10 2 years ago

Wow Pioneer was my first game I purchased 30 years ago and is still part of my collection. Yours blows mine away - very cool.

#11 2 years ago

paulace looks great. Love seeing the step by step pics. I have a pioneer that needs a paint job

#12 2 years ago

Cutting stencils for this one wasn't that hard - my wife and I did a Quick Draw a couple summers ago that was much harder....more detailed stencils.

I was playing it last night and got that 4X bonus - it's very satisfying when you do that...fun game!

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