I'm going to start this like a Quentin Tarantino movie and give you most of the ending first. Here it is: I put Mylar over the whole playfield.
I can hear everyone screaming 'why didn't you just get a hardtop, you idiot'. Well, there are few reasons and that is always a possibility in the future. I purchased this Mata Hari playfield from friend and fellow Pinsider, tomdrum. Tom is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Bally SS machines and Gottlieb EMs. Tom also knows my budget and we do quite a bit of horse trading. He picked up this almost complete playfield when he purchased a very nice original MH machine a few months ago.
This playfield is missing some items like a flipper assembly and wire guides. More to come on this later. The biggest issue is this playfield was in damp basement for many years and every metal piece is rusty and the playfield paint is super flakey. So flakey, if you breath on it, paint comes off. So I looked at my options and the rust is just a major factor for the metal lane guides attached to the side rails. I did some work to clean them up, but they need completely replaced at some point. Also, the shooter lane groove has an alignment issue. I noticed the right rail had ball marks / groove the whole way up. After looking at this for a bit, I realized the groove is cut with a serious right drift. I'll show photos of that later. And the strangest thing is the Mylar someone installed long ago. I think there was some serious drinking involved when someone cut and installed the Mylar. See the pics below.
I did quite a bit of paint touchup. I am far from an artist, but I did my best to hide bare wood and make this presentable. I then covered it with Mylar and cutout around the existing Mylar so it was a level playing surface.
My end goal is dropping this into my Supersonic cabinet so we have another machine to play without taking up any more space. I have 5 machines and I'm out of space at the moment. So this gives us some variety. I do have chimes to install for the MH and I hope to eventually find a MH backglass to swap in with the playfield.
I watch many members here do great work. I feel like this is a bit of a quick fix, but not long term. And, the hardtop is still doable, but not at this point.
For those of you who watch Roadkill, you know they are not so much about the cosmetics. They are more about the function. That is how I am treating this. Doing the best with the cosmetics for now, but make this playfield function and play well.
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