So I picked up this DE Batman in pretty sad shape a few months ago. The playfield was absolutely trashed. This seems to be a common theme for DE Batman machines. I don't know what their 'Stealth Coating' was, but it seems to have dissipated rapidly, and done little to no good.

I would have passed on this machines, but for one detail, the deal included a reproduction playfield. There have been a few brave souls who have banded together to take old playfields, sand the down, and then print new artwork on the playfields. The process is not perfect, and there are some issues with alignment of some of the inserts, but it looks a hell of a lot better than the typical sanded down DE Batman you find in the wild. You can find out more about the DE Batman playfield project here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/batman-de-pf/page/4
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The new playfield was not clear coated when I got it. Ive clear coated one playfield before this one, so I decided to take it to my local custom car show, and find out if they would shoot the clear for me. They agreed (I provided the materials) and about $100 later I had a cleared playfield. They put enough clear on it that I was able to wet sanded with 1500/2500/3000 grit paper, and followed it up with a good polishing. The results are pretty nice! A special thanks goes out to acitti for helping me get it polished up.

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It was only after I got the clear on the playfield I noticed a few alignment issues I could have fixed around the middle of the playfield. Oh well, it still will look better than the sand blasted original.

So this weekend, my kids and wife have all gone to see my inlaws, leaving me a lone in the house with the cats and dogs. So ive decided to make swapping in the new playfield into my Batman my 4th of July project. Ive got until Sunday to get the old playfield out, and the new playfield in.

This is not my typical restoration type of playfield swap. I am not going to be rebuidling every mech along the way like I typically do in a restoration. In fact, I don't even have LEDs to put in to this machine.

So this evening I got started...

It didn't take me long to strip down the top side of the playfield. The only real issue was trying to figure out how to remove the main ramp. It turned out you have to take out the plastic museum in front of it at the same time, which can be a pain in the ass.

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After the topside was cleared, I managed to lift the playfield up and out of the machine, and set it on a couple of sawhorses. Next to the playfield, I put another set of saw horses with a partical board top on it. The idea here is that I am going to remove all the screws from the existing playfield, and side all the mechs and wiring harness over onto the partical board.

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A hour or so later, I had the wiring harness moved over. I did have to clip all the GI connections, as DE used old Bally style sockets in their GI. The GI is a weak point in my plan. I have enough wire to put in new sockets, but I don't have the sockets on hand. I am going to have to try to figure out how to salvage as many of the old sockets as possible. I may end up cutting the existing bare wire, and then de-soldering.

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Another think I noticed, DE sure did love to use 6/32 tee nuts. I have some on hand, but I will have to salvage some of the existing nuts to finish out the new playfield.
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Tomorrow, I will have to deal with the GI, and start putting the tee nuts in the new playfield.

This morning I got a bit of a late start, but I did make significant progress.

Pulling the old GI sockets out of the old playfield was not difficult. I cut the staples, and then used a soldering iron to heat up the solder holding the wire in place. After I got the sockets out, I cleaned the extra solder off them by heating them up, and then smacking the against the work bench. The hot solder will come off the sockets easily.
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Then it was finally time to start in on the new playfield. First thing I did was to hammer in all the tee-nuts. I used a regular hammer because I was not worried about the clear coat cracking. This playfield was done with Omni Automotive clear, and it's a lot tougher than what they are currently using on repo playfields.
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The next step was to install the GI sockets. I had some bare wire from a previous restoration, and using my soldering iron and stapler, I got it all installed in short order. I had to be stingy with the wire, and in the end I think I had less than a foot left.

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The last bit of hammering that had to be done was installing the ball guides. I hate installing these, as they always want to bend. The best technique I have found is to place an old piece of side rail under the rails as you hammer them in with a rubber mallet. Don't use a regular hammer as it will leave marks in the guides. If the rail won't go all they way in, don't force it. Its better to leave it a little high than to bend it.

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Even after having done a few playfield, I still bend ball guides....

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I did pick up a set of Reese's Rails for this machine. When I bought it, the deal included an extra set of rails. Reese didn't have DE Batman in his pattern set, so I sent him the extra set of rails, and he produced me a nice set of rails.

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This afternoon I am going to clean up a few of things on the wireing harness, and start moving it over to the new playfield.

The afternoon went well. There were not too many surprises with moving the wiring harness over to the new playfield.

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It took about 2 hours to get everything secured to the new playfield. I did have one surprise when I discovered that some of the screw holes for the flippers were stripped out. I used some scrap wood and wood glue to fill in the holes, and let them setup. Then I put the screws back in and they held tight. What took the longest was re-connecting the GI to the harness. It was hard working around all the other wiring to get to the soldering iron at an angle where it could work correctly.
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By early this evening, I had fixed the one broken pop-bumper, and the playfield was ready to re-mount.
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The playfield is a lot lighter than some the WPC games I have done, so getting it back into the cabinet with only one person was not a big deal. After I double checked the coils and flashers to make sure nothing was crossing over to the lamp or switch matrix, I hooked it up and ran a power test. Success! I had power at the playfield, and the game went into attract mode.

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So tomorrow will be a lot of cleaning ramps, and taking care of the topside of the playfield.

Yeah, I don't have the time this summer to do a cabinet repaint on this one. My TZ restoration got that treatment. The cabinet doesn't look bad, it's not new either.

So I finished up today.

One thing I always seem to forget, it always takes twice as long to put a playfield together as it does to take it apart.IMG_1333 (resized).JPG

At this point is is more like a shop job than anything else. You clean everything up the best you can, and put it all back together from the pictures you took tearing it down (94).

I decided since I had it apart, I should try to at least try to add some LEDs, to at least the GI circuit, as some of those bulbs are hard to get to. I was a little shy on #47 socket LEDs, but the backbox in my Rollergames graciously donated a few. They will get replaced with my next bulb order.

I also discovered that the incandecent insert lamps were really dim. To get the inserts to stand out the game really needs LEDs. I had enough 555 bulbs to do the insert boards, but the #47s will have to wait for my next parts order. If you own a DE Batman, LEDs make a HUGE difference.

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I got the game back together just after lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon tweaking things. Lots of switches had to be adjusted, and a few coils throws adjusted.

The end result looks pretty nice, and plays like a DE Batman: Loud and Flashy. This game really is one of those 'just one more game' kind of machines. The closest thing to it in my current collection is Firepower. The game will shut you down a couple of balls in a row, and then you find the groove and it is lots of fun.

I did have one issue crop up with the sound board. About 1 time out of 3 when you get multiball going, it will reset (you hear the 'I am Batman' callout followed by silence until you hit a switch). I suspect it is a power supply issue because the beginning of multiball is when the machine uses the most power. I looked at the voltages to the sound board and they are running 11.4, -14, and 4.95. I am betting either the 12 volt or 5 volt is browning out during multiball, causing the resets. Looking the power supply board over, there are lots of caps on it that are now over 30 years old. I think a re-build is in order.

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In all, I think it took me about 20 hours to do the swap, and I would consider this a simple game compared to WPC games. I am going to call this one complete for now.

Well being something of a parts hoarder has paid off. I had the caps on hand to rebuild the +12v power supply, and now it’s running at about +14v. The resets have become less of an issue, but it still does occasionally reset. I am going to replace the 40 inch ribbon cable next.

Well I fix the sound board reset issue. It turned out to be a bad cap on the board that had puked its guts all over the power connection to the sound board. Once I recapped the board and replaced the power connection, the sound board stopped resetting.