(Topic ID: 299806)
Linked Games
Spring Break
Gottlieb, 1987
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Last coat of clear is on. Tomorrow I will sand it down and let it sit to harden up for polishing.
I had a good old central Florida love bug land in the clear while spraying. I got it mostly out of the clear, but there is a leg that will forever be under the side rail.
I’m also happy with how the area around the pops turned out.
01C90E35-5C4A-410E-877B-CCA2E78EE29B (resized).jpeg31F73411-BC47-4BC3-9834-D0B1CA3DF43C (resized).jpeg3C40D931-B1ED-499B-8B00-7DBECA3D0EFE (resized).jpegEB1051A4-5702-4755-838B-56016408C110 (resized).jpegThat last coat turned out really well. Nice work What did you do. Light medium heavy? 6 inches ? Curious your technique
Windermere, FL
Quoted from topkat:That last coat turned out really well. Nice work What did you do. Light medium heavy? 6 inches ? Curious your technique
I pick and choose advice from the Spray2k thread (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-spraymax-2k-auto-clear-in-a-can-club). Being in Florida where it's always hot and humid my dry times and re-coat times are very different from some of the folks who post a lot on there from dessert climates with low humidity or from far northern climates with much lower temperatures. You'll find a lot of deeply held opinions on process there, but you can take some best practices and not be afraid break with others to go with what works for you.
The heat (always in the 80's and 90's) here doesn't allow for the Spray2k to flow as nicely as it would in the 70's and you get some orange peel texture in your coats. I end up putting on an extra coat or two and do more final sanding than most to get a good finish. That's okay though because I refuse to waste my time block sanding by hand, and use a random orbital sander with wet/dry paper to wet sand between coats and for the final sanding stages from 600-10000 grit before buffing.
The good part about Florida is that the heat helps reduce cure times quite a bit. My last playfield passed the hardness test (finger nail, ball drop, etc. I wish I had access to my old school engineering lab to use a Rockwell indenter and get a real hardness test number) in 6 weeks, where I see others waiting a full 10 weeks.
Quoted from roffels:I'm digging the zebra pattern, reminds me of Zubaz.
That's what I was going for! I'm glad someone else likes it. I thought it fit in with the theme.
I guess I'm lucky that there aren't too many Spring Break purists or they would be lining up outside with their torches and pitch forks to take me to task for changing the art in any way. 
Flattening my plastics. I gave them a wash in warm water and dish soap to remove dirt and crud from them. To flatten them I use 2 old sheets of playfield glass and let it sit in the bed of my truck for a day. I learned my lesson and use a sheet of wax paper on the back. The coating on the back of the plastic can stick to the glass and will rip off the art if you aren’t careful.
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Sanded down the final coat of clear. You can see the shine really start to develop as you move to finer and finer grits.
Now it is ready to sit and harden up.
600 gritIMG_2652 (resized).JPG
800 gritIMG_2653 (resized).JPG
1000 gritIMG_2654 (resized).JPG
1500 gritIMG_2655 (resized).JPG
2000 gritIMG_2656 (resized).JPG
3000 gritIMG_2657 (resized).JPG
4000 gritIMG_2658 (resized).JPG
5000 gritIMG_2659 (resized).JPG
7000 gritIMG_2660 (resized).JPG
10000 gritIMG_2661 (resized).JPG
All done: 6E7756E5-B9EE-4E9B-9088-27C00847AC8A (resized).jpeg49C43E16-415C-46FE-80E8-5680D2FD85ED (resized).jpeg
I’m excited to try evaporust for the first time. I tossed the legs, lock down bar and receiver into a wallpaper tray and am letting it sit over night
00090F5B-D441-4BBA-9463-291D38885F59 (resized).jpeg192E5820-B6A4-4961-BE17-980F788C48A2 (resized).jpeg65833039-53D5-436F-BFC9-933AA8278841 (resized).jpeg6C8ED7AA-BBDE-4DD4-BCA0-72D95892DC3A (resized).jpeg6CCA6B0B-E1E7-4B59-9878-AE0BBBD88309 (resized).jpeg9BD2F142-9C57-4452-97B7-A27009DE2BE4 (resized).jpegThe sun did the trick and my plastics are perfectly flat again. When you do this, you need to be sure to bring the glass and plastics inside into the shade to cool down before removing the top glass. Otherwise they can curl a bit as they cool. You can also see that it got hot enough to melt the wax in the wax paper. That could have been the backing to the plastics. Always best to be careful with unobtainable plastics.
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Removing the side rails was a real PITA. A few of the spiral nails had rusted and the MDF around them swelled making it really tough to remove. The good news is that the texture on the side rails makes it easy to just bend back and dents and wrinkles without it being noticeable.
7422C709-5AA6-4AB7-B18D-B9EA6EB5B865 (resized).jpegQuoted from bigguybbr:Trying an experiment. I treated the swelled MDF edges with wood hardener and clamped them.
[quoted image][quoted image]
Good news. This worked like a champ. These edges are no longer swollen and sand beautifully.
The bottom particle board needed to be stabilized. While it is solid, rubbing your hand over the surface causes it to flake off.
To stabilize this, I’m using a wood working trick of mixing 1 : 1 water and glue (Tite Bond II or Elmer’s work well). Brush this over the whole surface letting it get soaked into the particle board. When it dries, the surface will have some roughness that can be sanded if it needed, but will no longer flake and will be stabilized..
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As a fellow Floridian I gotta give you two thumbs up for bringing this game back. Love the zebra stripe fix around the pop bumpers, its the perfect 80s touch. Cant wait to see the finished game. Following!
Quoted from Sinistarrett:As a fellow Floridian I gotta give you two thumbs up for bringing this game back. Love the zebra stripe fix around the pop bumpers, its the perfect 80s touch. Cant wait to see the finished game. Following!
Maybe once this is all together I’ll talk to Marshall at LSOG and see if he wants to bring it into the shop for league play one Thursday night and give others a chance at this one.
Had a minor accident. I was trying to move the cabinet on the saw horses, and the front one collapsed. The front corners hit the garage floor pretty hard. I used wood hardener on the banged up corners and clamped them down. They are back to being a normal shape. They will get a flood coat of resin once I strip the cabinet down to strengthen them up..
Scanning in the artwork on the cabinet. These cabinets were probably screen printed back in 1987. I’m going to have some decals created for these. It will also help to protect this cabinet in the future from any water.
9A994174-48E9-4487-BED3-73E7CD531255 (resized).jpegFF3D6E3D-9032-4132-B9A6-5A8BC5D9D96D (resized).jpegQuoted from RightNut:Do you use a paint tent or anything? Or just go for it in your garage?
It all depends on what I'm painting. For small stuff or spraying a little clear, I don't really bother and just work in the garage over a drop cloth. If I'm spraying color, or something I worry about getting dust in the coat, I either use my spray tent, or hang poly sheets to make a large enclosure.
IMG_2285 (resized).JPGAdding some wires to the score multiplier to maybe drive a topper. Not sure what I want to do just yet. Maybe just some lights, or maybe use an Arduino to drive an LED matrix with some animations. We’ll see…
822C24D4-BE2C-44DC-BDA2-37CB09D47628 (resized).jpeg9574EDB1-3B31-4DF9-8F50-B3E08D2801F0 (resized).jpegBought some 20ga 304 Stainless steel #4 finish yesterday to build new ball guides with.
I’m making some tracings of the old stuff to try and get the shapes down since I’m going to have to flatten the old ones to transfer all the holes and notches to the new steel stock.
F47479FA-884B-4B15-ACE8-1677898D49F5 (resized).jpegI used the newly flattened guides to transfer the lengths to my new stock and cut them on the sheet. These little 3 in 1 machines work great for this kind of stuff. When using the sheet, save some effort and use something to extend the lever arm (you can see I used a bar clamp).
34B86593-09FE-4EE4-94AF-8A877AEDCC29 (resized).jpeg694F5876-F1AF-4771-AAEA-AE26CCE273F6 (resized).jpegF4E71E91-BA68-4718-95D1-AC34135066F6 (resized).jpegJust got in my new old stock translite from Steve at Mayfair amusements. I know people hate these, but I think it adds to the 80s nostalgia. I think this is probably a better looking machine now than it was back when it was new. You can see how yellow and faded the old one was.
51636199-93C2-4FD4-B906-7744F60F1BD3 (resized).jpegF2E8C514-6464-413E-9BBF-AACB90D736A2 (resized).jpegFC4A3778-926F-43D6-A723-F8DFB7C05DDB (resized).jpegFinished making all the new ball guides. They turned out pretty nice and I’m happy with them. I don’t think them not being mirror finish is going to bother me (pretty sure all new Sterns are brushed finish), but if it does, I can always polish them up on the buffer.
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Quoted from bigguybbr:Just got in my new old stock translite from Steve at Mayfair amusements. I know people hate these, but I think it adds to the 80s nostalgia. You can see how yellow and faded the old one was.
[quoted image][quoted image][quoted image]
Quoted from Clnilsen:OMG thats an awesome idea!
I wish it were my idea. vid1900 has a fantastic post on making new guides https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/making-new-ball-guides-from-scratch-vids-guide
1 week later
Got some new parts in. A number of the coils seem like they got toasty and the sleeves were almost welded in place. I usually like to reuse coils when possible, but these seem like they were about end of life.
So new coils for the pop bumpers, the sling shot, and both ball eject assemblies.
0230062C-FA7D-4D5C-9418-911EE84B1A6A (resized).jpeg11AC29CF-1804-4BD6-B3E1-49380A319679 (resized).jpeg3D35DC63-7841-414E-8772-48FC9D0484E6 (resized).jpegimage (resized).jpgRebuild for all 4 flippers. New coils on 3 of them (the upper A-17875 was newer and in good condition). New plungers, coil stops, return springs, upper and lower bushings, and end of stroke switches all the way around. Should be flipping like a champ when it all goes back together.
00BAC8B1-7E0E-404E-94DD-2C196860C418 (resized).jpeg9B94144B-0382-437E-9FC9-A574440351C9 (resized).jpegMy apron (or card holder as Gottlieb calls it) has some condition issues. It looks like someone spilled solvent on it then tried to repaint it either by hand or with a paint pen (and then spilled solvent on it again).
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On top of that it is starting to rust.
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Luckily, Steve Young still has some 80B card holders. I wasn’t able to get the same purple and yellow that came with the machine. I was however able to get a red and yellow one (maybe off a Surf N’ Safari). The new one has 4 holes at the top. I was able to use some pop rivets with washers on the back to fill them nicely.
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Still working on sanding and prepping the cabinet. In the mean time the playfield is hard enough to start populating. The new guides definitely look nice. I’m glad I put in the effort to make new ones. I also really like the new purple ramp from Ramp-O-Matic. I’ve got some Purple flashers under it so I’m excited to see what it looks like in action.
55F6E7FF-7A7D-4D93-A475-ACECAF82F0BA (resized).jpegFC5AAE83-EABB-4FF9-BE9D-8269B25A24AC (resized).jpegimage (resized).jpgPromoted items from Pinside Marketplace and Pinside Shops!
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