Hi All,

This has been a project for a long time (Pretty much like most of my projects) but with the Covid19 isolation restrictions going on i'm finally getting some spare time to start on it again.

I bought a JD cabinet with a partially populated playfield years ago when i stupidly jumped on ebay after being at the pub for a while

It was in solid but average condition and missing legs and all boards. I really enjoy the game and as someone who read a lot of 2000AD while in my teens it was a pinball i always had to have. Over the years i purchased bit and pieces as they came up and eventually picked up everything (I think) that i needed to rebuild it.

The cabinet was completely stripped, painted and new decals were applied. I've never been a big fan of the way they mixed gold, silver and black for the various trim so decided the legs, lockdown bar, siderails and hinges should be all one colour. I was tempted to go with brass and clear coat over the top due to another one i saw here but in the end decided to go with all black. I also painted the transformer with heat proof black paint. I think it turned out pretty well.

i picked up a spare playfield and had that restored and clear coated by a very skilled local. Very happy with the results.

While stripping the playfield i did unfortunately find a couple of broken metal guides and a small wireform. I also discovered that the deadworld motor is not sealed properly so it will be interesting to see what needs to happen there.

I also picked up the art blades, stainless steel crane, reproduction eagle topper as well as the cooling tower mod from ragefactory. The plastics vary in condition from ok to crap. I did pick up a set of the pinball center plastics but they quality is not very good. Images lack detail and the colours are wrong. So i may need to give it a shot at making my own. That will definitely be further down the track.

I still have a way to go to get it done in between kids, work and study but it's moving in the right direction.

Cheers,
Andy

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Thanks mate. i'll touch base with him. Cheers

No worries at all. Here are some plans for the rotisserie. As i'm in oz it's all metric. I designed it specifically so it could be taken apart and rolled under a pin when not in use to save space. When you take it apart you can place all pieces in the bottom shelf and flip the top shelf over for a lid. As it's on castors it can also be rolled out of the way when not working on it. I needed this because for some strange reason my wife still expects to be able to park her car in the garage I will be upgrading the actual playfield support brackets. The wood was from a previous rotisserie build but i will be changing it to metal. The shelves come in very handy for keeping everything in one place mid build as well as catching any screws that drop. Also gives you somewhere close to put your beer

Obviously they don't include the castors but you need to ensure that at least two have a locking mechanism. To drill the holes for the castors i placed them in the corners on the upper side of the bottom shelf. This ensures that they are as far as possible towards the edges and will provide the most stability.

The wood i used is:

1 sheet of 17mm ply - 2400 x 1200
4 lengths pine - 19 x 64 x 1800
2 pieces pine - 35 x 70 x 400
4 pieces pine - 30 x 12 x 650
2 pieces 22mm dowel ( The thicker the better)

The sheet of ply will do both shelf bases and side panels. There is also enough left to do some small brace pieces for the sides and a number of 100 x 100 pieces as a guide for the playfield bracket shaft.

The 19 x 64 pine is for the walls on the shelves.

The remaining wood makes the brackets to support the playfield. Personally i will most likely be changing this to use metal but if wood glue and pre-drilling is done to prevent cracking this will suffice for most playfields.

I used two 100 x 100 pieces of ply on the outside of each side piece with a hole drilled through the centre the same size as the dowel. This should be a snug fit to prevent sagging in the centre of the rotisserie. It is also very important that you ensure the hole is completely straight through the wood. If it is on an angle it won't turn properly. These pieces were glued and scewed together but can be removed from the side to ensure all pieces can be packed away easily. More pieces can be made and used on the inner side if there is too much space between the inner side and the ends of the playfield. The centre of the hole is drilled 100 from the top. If a thick piece of dowel is used (Which it should be) you can also drill a smaller hole through it as well as small holes in a broader circle in the 100 x 100 piece filled with narrow dowel. This will allow you to peg the position of the playfield at a number of different angles by inserting the peg through the centre of the shaft when the playfield is in the right location. I will upload another drawing later to show what i mean.

m6 bolts attach all pieces that are meant to come apart when dismantling. The only other pieces i needed to screw together were the shelves.

The dowel should go 30mm into the 35 x 70 pine and should be glued and screwed or nailed.

If you want to make it pretty you can route the edges

Obviously varnish if you want to protect the finish
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I did consider it but it just didn't do it for me. I like that even though the eagle topper doesn't specifically look like the eagle on the grand hall of justice the simplicity of the pure gold eagle does tie in with how it's represented in the comics.

I do like that idea. I'll definitely give that a shot. A bit like the DE Jurassic Park topper

So I decided to build a temporary paint shed out of pvc pipe and plastic drop sheets. Where I live it can get quite windy so outside is difficult to spray paint and my driveway is very steep so can't setup there. I wanted a modular one that I could fit an entire cab into for when I restore my sorcerer but also small enough to paint single items.

The first two shots are it being setup in the garage. The next two are a smaller version being setup in the yard after I stunk the house out with paint smell
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That looks great. Will definitely be doing it. Thanks

Well as I mentioned in my initial post my projects take a long time. Work combined with family and study means limited time for me to work on projects. Plus I'm a bit hopeless once I've finished work and just switch off a bit

I haven't gotten anywhere near as much completed as I would have liked. A lot of cleaning parts chasing up other parts I hadn't realised were broken or bent. The main ramp has a hairline crack in it which I will try to fix with bondic. One of the pursuit light brackets had a dodgy fix. A guide was bent at the end. Thankfully I've been able to find replacement parts locally. Still need to look properly at the deadworld motor. had to get one wireform repaired but now I can't find the picture of where it goes No matter how many pictures you take it is never enough.

I'll be trying to spend more time working on it in the near future but family and study do take priority over personal time with pins. I'm still trying to convince my wife that she doesn't need to park inside so I can leave the work area setup and be able to do a few minutes here and there. She's not buying it

I've also just bought a bench grinder to make the rest of the cleaning and polishing of parts a bit easier.

I was also fortunate enough to receive the plastics and crane from @davi. I'm very happy with how good they look.

The few things I have managed to get done are:

- Cleaning lots of parts. My tumbler was going non-stop for a couple of weeks.
- Painted the mounting plate for the PCBs black and really like how it came out. Only the actual nuts show as silver.
- Started assembling the playfield again
- A little bit of painting of other parts
- Had to fill and drill new holes for one of the wooden rails for the playfield as they didn't line up with my new playfield

It's nothing too impressive in the grand scheme of things but definitely, if very slowly, going in the right direction.

I promise the next updated will be a lot quicker
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Well it's finally starting to look like a pinball again. I've made a bit of progress with the wiring and the top of the playfield. But the more I put together the more little bits and pieces I find are missing.

Very happy with how the cooling tower mod and the new plastics look.

Hopefully won't be too much longer before it's up and running.
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Thanks mate.

It's mainly been little pieces that I picked up pretty easily but one of the trough 7 led pcbs was missing so had to pick up a new pair. Seeing the playfield was only partially populated when I bought it I had to buy parts along the way. I just hadn't noticed some things that were missing initially. It was clearly used as a parts playfield and bits of wiring were also missing. A couple of wires even seemed to have been cut for no apparent reason.

The current annoyance is I've realised I'm missing one opto support for the wire forms which is why I haven't put the top one on yet. I'll make something in its place for now.

Plus I need to make a new deadworld motor power cable.

I do sometimes look at the black trim and wonder whether I should have gone with gold. The picture will be complete once it's all back together and I'll know for sure but I'm not unhappy with the black trim.

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That's pretty schmick. I don't feel too bad that mine will look like a poor cousin to a HEP restore. The translite is very cool.

I do wish the nicer artblades were available when I bought mine. Much more detailed.

I don't but I'm just going to 3d print one.

Thanks mate

Printed it today and it did the trick. But when I put the top wireform on and tested the flow of the ball from the ramps I realised that what should be a 1.5" spacer supporting the stake out ramp is actually a 1.25" spacer. But it's a minor hiccup.

I'm going to get my deadworld motor serviced and sealed and then it'll go back in too.

Until then I'll try to get the rest of the wiring cleaned up

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So time for the next update on my very drawn out restoration. I did actually side line it for a while again due to picking up a mold infested Demolition Man with a few issues. I figured cleaning that took priority. What an unpleasant job that was. Heaps of vinegar. But it's all cleaned up now and playing pretty well with the exception of the Cryo Claw and fitting the handles back on (need to wire in new Angel Eye switches). But they're issues for another day.

I got all of the wiring sorted (I believe) to the backbox and it now powers up with no real issues other than a few lights not working. I believe that's the LEDs rather than switches and will go through them in the next couple of days. I did get a couple of optos in the wrong place (Should definitely label connectors before you disconnect them) but that is all sorted out now. One little issue is the right hand flipper opto magnet keeps sticking to the plunger. I'm thinking of sticking something to the outside of the magnet to prevent it attaching if I can't find an alternate solution. I also need to confirm if it is indeed the correct plunger.

The main ramp parts transfer is done. Most of the parts were easy but the two after market ramp protectors were a pita as they rivet from the side. I tried to do the drill press process for riveting them but my drill press platform pivots to allow you to drill on an angle. Unfortunately you also can't lock it which made it impossible to put any real pressure on it. So I ended up having to go hammer and anvil but it worked out ok.

I haven't been able to test game play because I wanted to service the deadworld motor while it was still out of the pin. I took it to a machine shop but they quoted me 400 AUD to service it which didn't make sense to me so I decided to do it myself. I'm glad I did because while you couldn't see any stripped cogs the main problematic cog did have a few buggered teeth. The other interesting thing was there was a decent size chunk of glass inside the motor. it was too thick for globe glass so I have no idea how it ended up inside. So I'll now be tracking down a replacement cog and drilling and pinning the two cogs together. Although there is one troublesome nut that doesn't want to come off so I've given it a blast of inox to try to loosen it up. That's preventing me from getting all of the cogs off to finish cleaning and also replace the big one. If I can't find any cogs to suit locally I'll reach out to Steve Young to see if he will sell the cog individually.

I also still need to sort out a LED strip under the eagle.

But the light is certainly visible at the end of the tunnel and I'm pretty happy with how the line-up is coming together. It's nice to have two super pins side by side

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So the deadworld gearbox seems to run nice and smooth now with the limited testing I've done with it.

And I can kind of play a game

The issues I now have to work out are:

- Balls keep launching from the trough and into play. I'm not starting a super game. It just keeps sending the balls straight back into play. The trough opto boards are brand new

- Some flippers keep activating on their own. I've swapped the fliptronics board over with a known good working one and the issue still occurs.

- The drop targets don't reset even at the start of the game. Haven't really looked into this one yet.

But it's almost there. A little bit more tinkering and it should be 100%