In November 2021 my buddy calls me out of the blue “Hey a guy I work with has a pin he wants to get rid of before he sells his house you want it?”

I mean, for $250 I figure I can dump $3000 into it and sell it for $1500 so why not!!!

The game is extremely dirty as are all the game I end up with, but the backglass is nearly flawless.
The playfield needs some loving. The cab has a few bruises. Should be a fun project!

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Dirty dirty dirty

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Wait… you’re not supposed to do that?!!

I need to adjust my strategy

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This is going to be my 3rd EM project, it’s the sister to the Strato-Flite in this thread:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-dy-no-mite-strato-flite

You’ll see this space mission photo bombing the background in my work shop throughout the Strato Flite thread.

The difference in approach with this game is I’m going into it with the intention of clearing the playfield. My other 2 EMs I didn’t want to go that route but I think it’s time to retrain my way of thinking with cleared EMs. Plus I know how you kids like everything SUPER SHINY.

I have a few things on standby for the game. One big help was a plastic set from AlexF

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I did a few spot-cleanings and tried to do a few color matches to see how close I can get the paint. I’m going to be in good shape paint wise. Decided I was getting too excited about the painting part and stripped it down so I can properly clean it.

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Froze the mylar off with no issues and I wet sanded all of the inserts with 600 grit so the new clear will have something to grab on to when the time comes.
I’ll scrub this sucker through the weekend and post more as I go.

Yes that alcohol and flour method will be put to use. For the most part everything I do is Vid reverberations.
After I touch up the worn areas I’m going to lay down a can of SprayMax. Then I’ll level the inserts using a dropper, with some 2-part that I have left over from my Firepower project. Once I get the dips filled I’ll put 2 more cans of SprayMax down then go through the sanding and polishing process.

I’ll probably pull the Strato Flite PF and do it at the same time as this one.

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That’s great looking game man. Mine won’t look that good.

So mean green, alcohol and magic eraser, then a wet sand of the entire playfield with 600 grit was needed to clean the thing.

After I cleaned it I penciled in the key lines for the inserts and used a super fine acrylic paint pen to fill in the black.
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Some text was worn off in a couple places so I decided to add it back by hand.
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Thing that sucks about acrylics is they’re too thick, if I were to use ink I could probably make this thing look printed but whatever. I’ll just go for that slightly out of focus look. I did my best with a blade.
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I ended up touching it up even further after this pic. I noticed the color match of the yellow was a little off.
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Now color matching this teal took 7-8 years off my life.
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I was about to give up then my little lady bug friend came along and told me to quit being a cry baby and add some orange to mute the vibrancy.
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Then that brings the fun to this monstrosity…
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I repainted all the teal to even it out then I traced the 5 from the other side.
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I eye balled where I thought it would look right and then took my exacto knife and pushed through the tracing paper to score the outline of the text.
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You can see where the paint will go
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So I got the magnifying glass set up and did my thing. C8BC020D-254A-4FDE-9DA6-54E17D2721D3 (resized).jpeg
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Yes I know I could’ve just air brushed the whole area and then used water slide decals. I practice that method on Solid State games. I’d rather do things by hand on EMs.

Now that the colors are in a good spot it was time to touch up the off white!
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I wanted to keep the vintage warm white look in the areas under the plastics so here’s what I did:
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First start off with a dime size of Buttermilk
-add a drop of light mocha to dirty it up
-Add a drop of camel to give it some body
-now Add 2 drops of bleached sand to bring it back a little
-it needs some yellow but not too much so the butt end of a tooth picks worth of golden straw
-same amount of Banana cream and sunny day to find a nice yellowish aged off white

Now that you have that mixed and its still not right, POUR THAT CRAP DOWN THE DRAIN

and go back to using Buttermilk right out of the bottle because you’re frustrated and this hobby is stupid and it’s just freaking off white so who effing cares!
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I’m happy with the colors so all that’s left of the playfield before I clear coat it is to sand the shooter lane.
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I gotta say color matching craft paints is mind bending. Especially if the sheen is different. Take this red for instance.
It was messing with me because when it was wet it was basically a dead on match but when it dried the matte catches the light funny and looks off.
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But when I wipe naphtha on it, it’s perfect.
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Little things like that will drive you nuts!

See that’s what I thought too but the production team here said it keeps viewers on the edge of their seats if I go off script

Hopefully I won’t have any issues but yeah would’ve been better off doing that before I scrubbed it down.

Perfect thanks man!

I dropped the pics in my image editor and I’m cleaning them up and recoloring. I’ll post the pdf when I’m done if anyone else wants to make a replacement decal for your spinner.

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Typical playfield parts clean up routine.
Everything gets the ultrasonic but the metal also soaks in Evaporust and then tumbled over night.

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I think my recreation of the spinner looks pretty good.
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I print it on photo paper then I mylar and apply a double sided adhesive before I cut it out.
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Thanks I posted the pdf in the club thread

I’ve been cleaning up this shooter lane. The area of ball impact out of the trough drove me nuts. The more I would sand the more dirt revealed itself and the lane is actually getting misshapen so I either would have to stop with these 2 dirt spots and live with it or paint the lane.
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Well the thought of color matching wood and trying to paint the shooter lane and make it actually look good is as appealing to me and getting a spinal tap so I decided to cheat in a sense.

I matched paint close as I could to a dark tone of the grain and painted just the trouble area.
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Then I immediately tried to wipe away as much as I could with naphtha so it would grind the paint into the wood allowing the grain to show and cover the dirty areas enough so it’s not too obvious that it’s painted but clean enough to not be such an eye sore.
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Ended up looking pretty good in my opinion!
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Plus from way back here you can’t even tell!!!
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While the weather here continues to go through it’s manic depressive episodes of 70 and sunny to crippling blizzard every other day I’m going to tackle the underside of the playfield.
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For those that have followed my other projects, you know the routine.
Few references pics…
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Then I take all mechs and relays apart so I can clean everything. I’m starting up front with the flippers and sling-kicker set up.
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One cool thing I got to do was use a secret weapon of sorts with these pliers. I’ll create a separate post for that later.
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I use the ultrasonic with Formula 88. I just add enough to cover the bottom and then fill with hot water.
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2 cycles and the water is mud…
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After the ultrasonic I soak any metal in Evaporust.
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Then everything gets tossed in the tumbler. I use corn cob bedding from the pet store and add a swirl of polish to help it out.
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I’ll do this same process with EVERY. SINGLE. PIECE. Then I’ll create new coil wrappers, labels, decals, etc.
I really should consider actually wearing the gloves that I bought for working on pins…
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The other night Amazon shows up when I wasn’t expecting anything. I open the package to this??? I didn’t buy these…
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My mortal enemy Deez texts me immediately “hey did you get my Amazon package? I saw vid1900 raving about those being the best for removing side rail nails”
I run down stairs and I kid you not, Literally in 3 seconds I pulled out the nail-screw!
These things are amazing!!!

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Coil wrappers tallied and Playfield Coils printed

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I like me some shiny hardware! Moving down the rest of the playfield…
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Artoo is concerned about the amount of filth and mouse droppings in the cab.

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That piece was a pain! Basically from the bottom side I used a punch and hammered out the bolts little by little until I was able to pop it out. Once it was out I drilled the holes slightly wider in diameter so I can pop it back later with out so much tension.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/thruster-i-just-met-her-xenon-restoration-#post-5997460

Kind of lost place on where I was with this game while I’ve been working on the Strato Flite at the same time.
I finished clean and polishing all mechs under the playfield and decided to clear coat today.
Once I finish the clear coating I’ll post pics of the under side and do a bit of back tracking to catch up on the progress.

I love how easy SprayMax works, tomorrow I will block/wet sand the clear level so I can drip the low spots.

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Sanded with 600 grit and dropped clear into the inserts. In a couple of days I’ll sand and get it ready for 2 more cans of SprayMax.
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Figured I’d spruce up the arch while I give the drips time to dry
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Only needed 1 can today.

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I hit all the holes with my rotary tool
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Wet sanded 1000-1500-2000-2500 then I polished with compound then glaze all by hand.
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I think next week I’ll hit it with the compound again with my orbital then do another pass by hand with the prewax glaze.

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I’m excited about how this arch is going to look. Tooting my own horn here but I think I nailed it with the white speckles for the stars.

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Since I’m in the home stretch with my Strato Flite cab I decided to breakdown the cab for this game so I can keep pressing on with spray painting. I made short work of the rails with my beloved stripped screw remover. Easily my favorite tool now.
This cab is disgusting, smells like mouse pee so bad…

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Taking a stab at using resin to fix the under side where some of the particle board chipped off. I put some nails in a few inches apart to help anchor it. Hopefully this works out.

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