I was recently given this neglected Miss Annabelle which spent the last 40 years in family game room out of the sun but never got any service. After 4 hours sorting out some issues and removing duct tape from the gobble hole I have managed to bring her back to life now its onto full restoration. Figured I'd share a few pix.

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A little dirty!

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But a quick once over, a few bulbs and she is beautiful!

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Maybe all the grime protected that playfield

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Nice color for a 55 year old lady!

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The backglass is broken but mostly intact.

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Any suggestions how to flatten out 55 year old plastic?

Yeah I am a bit skeptical about trying to flatten out that plastic, I can buy a new one fairly cheap and I may go that route instead. I'm more concerned about getting a couple of the bumber caps that are broken in this machine. Oh here's one more photo I forgot to post, I'm sure we all have run across this.....

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I was wondering what happened to all the paper on every single coil!

@ JBK any suggestions on a good source for backglass repro?

Never mind you included a link. Thanks!

I scraped all the old scotch tape off the backglass today, it turns out that somebody in the past not only taped the front of the glass but the backside to and they sealed the backglass as well, they went to great detail to mask off the transparent parts so I'm going to leave it as is. I don't think I can justify $300 for a backglass at this point as this will be a keeper/player machine and its easy to look past the cracks. I hand sanded all the bare wood today, installed the rubber kit that arrived in the mail, got all three bells working and fixed the match circuit. I'm having a lot of fun working on this machine, they sure knew how to build them back in the day and she plays really good now.

Note: I used razor blade to scrape down the duct tape residue on the play field and used a small amount of clear camp fuel on a rag to remove the rest from the playfield and it worked like a champ! I was a little worried that it was not going to come off.

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Progress is moving right along and Miss Annabelle shines up real nice! I have started a new thread as I am looking for pictures of labels inside this machine as the mice made off with all the labels in this one, the thread is here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/a-shout-out-to-miss-annabelle-owners

Here is my progress thus far.

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I filled in the divots around the gobble hole last night and started touch up today, of all the items on my punch list this one was the one that bugged me the most..... Why must people put duct tape on playfields I'm not quite sure why the flower in the top left doesn't have an outline like all the others and it just looked out of place to me so I added the outline while touching up the gobble hole.

Divots filled

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Touch up first stage

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Here's a few cringe worthy pictures of the flattening of the Miss Annabelle window plastic. After a good 15 to 20 minutes of slow heating with a hairdryer the plastic was pliable enough to flatten out between two pieces of heated glass. 15 minutes later once everything cooled the plastic was flat enough for my liking, I didn't want to push my luck any further with 55 year old plastic so I'll call this good.

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Mine has metal legs and they are red, not sure that red was the color from the factory as I'm seeing white on all the pictures I pull up on the net. The next big restore will be the cabinet artwork, not sure I'm quite ready for that yet so looks like I'll get the door hardware and cigarette holder chromed first. I look forward to your restoration thread when you get going Steve!

Sanded the old red paint and repainted the legs the correct color yesterday, now the cabinet is begging for some attention. I always put off the hardest till last, the sides don't look half bad but the front is missing most of the paint.

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Lots of progress today. I got the coin door sanded and painted as well as sanding all the rust off and polishing all the metal hardware. I also experimented making a replacement Annabelle window transparency using a vectorized version of Annabelle and printing on velum and bond paper then fixing both together. Only scrap carpet was harmed in processes pictured below.

Door bolt before
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Door bolt after 40 seconds of drill and 220 grit sandpaper
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Cabinet protectors before and after sanding prior to tumbling
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Coin door repainted and hardware reattached.
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Cabinet protectors tumbled, re sanded and attached
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Annabelle replacement transparency fan closed and open
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Well she passed the test and made her way out of the garage and into her new home next to her younger Gottlieb brothers.

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I don't get the reference but I'd so hang that doll in my game room, she's the stuff nightmares are made of!