This guy had been on CL for the last few days and a few of the local fellows said they were heading out to grab it. I hadn't seen any victory posts so on a whim I decide to write the seller yesterday to see if it was still around. He wrote me back at 6:45 this am to say that it was. I tried asking about the boards, the PF etc, but he knew nothing about the machine. He didn't have many details about the cab, just that others had looked at it and said the inside was rough. He had found it in a house that he was renovating that had been foreclosed on and was just hoping to make a few bucks. Normally I would have walked away, but I had worked through the weekend so I was looking for a little adventure, I decided what the hell, got in my car and made the 2 1/2 hour drive to take a look.

When I walked in you could tell the cab had been sitting in a damp basement, there was some mildew showing on the cab, it had the tried and true odor of funk, and some of the wood was separating. Oy, what did I get myself into? The cab had an adjust failure, so I knew the batteries were shot, but just how shot was the question. I asked for the key to open up the head to take a look at the boards, but he didn't have it (face palm). I took off the glass, lifted the PF and was met with a fairly horrific sight, mold and mildew all around. You could feel the dampness in the body of the cab. I quickly assessed the cab, the PF was in great shape and the back glass was solid, and all the displays worked. I didn't feel comfortable with his asking price of $350 and asked he was negotiable, he was so we agreed on $250 and loaded it up.

All in all not a bad pickup, I'm pretty excited about it. If I can get it up and running for another few hundred it will be a win. Really the cab is the worst of it and that is 90% odor so any and all odor removing tips would be greatly appreciated. I had some time to strip it down today and let it sit in the sun for a few hours and I am hoping to repeat that again tomorrow. I am hoping to get a fiberglass pencil to try and clean up the legs of the various bits that puke has hit and give it a test fire this weekend. Worst case scenario I have to send the MPU off to my board guru.

Link to full album: http://s1209.photobucket.com/user/nerdygrrl/library/Rollergames

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I hope so, I have purchased a few other project machines in the past year and the costs of bringing them back to life have far exceeded their worth, but at least they are alive. It will be great to get this one up and running. and into the lineup.

WB, he said quite a few folks were either a no show or balked when they looked at it. I guess I owe you and your drinking buddies one.

tb0ne, oh man that sucks. From what he told me he had multiple people cancel on him Fri, Sat, and Sun and others who just walked away. When I wrote him Sun I did not expect it to still be around. I was shocked when he responded at 6:30 am on Monday.

The board damage was worse than I originally thought. There is foil lifting off of the board and a great deal of the transistors, resistors and chips have corrosion on the legs/solder points. I'll post some detailed photos later so I can get some opinions, but it looks as though 1/2 of the components would need to be removed and cleaned.

Thanks for the tip on the Malodor, someone else also recommended it. I am going to try and hunt down a can and give it a try.

The PF is in really good shape. The only real "flaw" is that the mylar is starting to come up off of the inserts. Once I sort out the board issue and get everything tested I will work o stripping and cleaning the PF>

This was a rare deal. The guys do demolition/construction and they found it in a house that had been foreclosed on. They didn't really care and enough people came and saw it and passed that he came down on his price. The inside was pretty fuzzy, it looked like someone slayed a Yeti in there and you couldn't get into the back box to look at the boards so most of the local guys passed.

I started a new thread concerning the PCB. I'm not sure it I should just neutralize and clean, send out for replacement or get a repro. Pics and thread can be viewed here https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rollergames-pcb-clean-repair-or-repro#post-1924568

The weather out here this weekend was stunning so I decided to try and get as much done on the cab as possible. After a few days of airing out, the cab was still funktastic. So yesterday I decided to strip it entirely as there was just too much funk hiding in the nooks and crannies. I gave it a couple of serious sprays with a bleach/H2O combo. This tx seemed to have the best effect, but it still smelled like a swimming pool with a hint of mildew. Given the nice weather I decided to go ahead and seal the aroma in and painted the interior of the cab.

I also gave the wiring harnesses a good scrubbing and attacked the rusted hardware with a wire wheel and finished up with a coat of paint. It's not ideal an ideal situation, but I felt like this was the best method for now. Hopefully, down the road I can find a nice donor cab. I still have to address the mounting plate for the boards as it is practically rusted through. Does anyone know if these are universal or do I have to find a RG specific plate?

I have a nice clean replacement CPU en route from the good doctor pinball and hope to have this all fired up shortly.

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Eh, to really clean and attack the odor the cab had to be stripped and since I had everything out I figured I might as well have at it. Leaving all of that rust untreated just seemed silly. The cab strip and clean is fairly straight forward.

I'm more terrified to start on the PF. The topside will need a full tear down and deep clean. I am still debating if I should remove the mylar then as it is started to come up. As per the underneath every single socket is rusted to heck and will have to be replaced. Fun, fun, fun.

Woah, thanks for the generous offer. I'll toss mine on a scale on Tuesday and get some shipping rates to see if it's doable.

Kind of sick last week, but got the cab painted, bits painted and tumbled. Today I reran the ground braiding and harness and got most of the cab hardware back in. I was hoping to test fire today, but that is definitely not going to happen. Hopefully I can at least get the PF back in (though my back is screaming nooooooo).

Before and after cab body.

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Thanks guys. This will definitely be a long haul kind of thing. I think the cab body may be salvageable, but the part the head rests on and the back are delaminating like crazy. I'm not sure if it's something that can be recut and replaced or not. As for the head it's pretty shot, lots of rot and delamination. I'll keep an eye out for a donor cab-rumor has it PPC will have decals coming out on the horizon. It's sad the machine prior to being folded up and stored was kept in really nice shape.

I managed to get the PF installed and everything rewired. I fired it up and she was speaking Swedish. WTH?! I disconnected J1 (left display) and the right is displaying properly, but if I disconnect the right display the left is still all harble garble. When I picked up the cab, both displays were reading properly. So it's more than likely something I did during the tear down.

It's not going into attract and it's blowing the F3 fuse on the driver at start up. My new CPU isn't here yet so I will try and sort out what I can. It's hard to say if the problems are the result of battery pukeage or something else. Thankfully I have tomorrow off to try and diagnose. For now it's time for some wine and going through this here Rollergames manual.

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So my buddy came by the weekend before last to give me a hand with the game. After some tinkering, we (he) got the game to boot up and go into attract mode, but F3 on the driver would blow instantly. Tracked that down to a seized diverter (Thanks Mike). Popped in a new fuse and gave it another go and the pop bumpers and top flipper were machine gunning. Mike suggested that there was nothing more that we could do until my new MPU arrived. So sadly I had to wait. Saturday I got the notice that my MPU from ARAKISSUN had arrived and was waiting for me at the USPS, but I couldn't pick it up until Monday. Thankfully I had a Taxi pickup scheduled for Sunday so it wasn't as painful of a wait as it could have been.

First thing Monday am I rushed out to the USPS, picked up my goods. Popped that baby in and BAM, fully booting, no fuse blowing, no machine gunning Rollergames! Thanks ARAKISSUN!!!! So with the machine booting I started to clean the top of the PF. Everything is coming off pretty easily with simple green. I haven't had to break out the N2 or magic eraser yet. I plan on attacking the top of the PF this weekend and hope to fire up my first game. It's kind of sad, you can tell up until it was folded up and stored the machine was well taken care of. The only real damage was from the moisture and batteries, everything else was pretty darn clean.

After I get all of the kinks started I will start addressing the cosmetics. I hear a certain powder coater is taking orders again so I guess I'll be looking for some color suggestions for the rails, hinges and lock down bar.

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Yeah the mylar did its job. As I mentioned the cab had been broken don, folded up and resting on its back on a basement floor. The bulk of the damage are the areas that were on the floor and as you creep up the cab there is little to no damage. The top of the PF with the exception of some rusty bits made it out unscathed.

So I started breaking down the top of the PF last night. I managed to remove all of the ramps, habitrails, etc. You can tell this hadn't been shopped out in a while (the black bits are activated charcoal) This is probably as far as I will go with the PF for now. In a couple of months I'll pick up new plastics, and LED's and then do a more aggressive shop job.

I'm hoping to repin the GI either tonight or tomorrow and get this all gussied up. I have some bits in simple green, others in the tumbler and a can of wax waiting here. I'm not sure what to do for the mylar that has started to come up. I am leaning towards just leaving it be for now.

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Thanks!

Wow, that looks stellar! Thanks for the tip. I actually have that kit already. I use the sponge bit when buffing the PF

I changed the title a bit as this is turning more into a restoration thread than a story about my Monday am pickup. I'm also going to have some questions moving along so I thought "restore" might attract some interested parties.

Much to my dog's dismay I dedicated the entire weekend to getting this cleaned, up waxed, and test fired. It took a little longer than I had hoped, but it's all back together now. I fired it up to a couple of kinks that I hope to work out over the week. My trough switches are acting up and my lower lockout doesn't seem to want to fire. I still haven't dealt with the GI input/harness. I decided that was best left to someone with more exp.

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It's ALIVE and playable!!!!!

I am having some weird issues with the ball lock, but nothing serious. I also managed to score a donor cab today. Hopefully I will be picking that up this week and prepping it for PPS's RG decal release.

Last week I took care of the last bit of board work and had the GI input and harness repinned. So as they say, "let there be light". After hooking up the GI, I realized I have a bad ground somewhere so I will need to recheck how I ran the ground braiding and my soldering on the AC cord. If anyone has any photos of the ground braid route they could share that would be greatly appreciated. I must have missed a stop somewhere.

I also managed to score a donor cab from a local cab builder/restorer. Sadly the PF pivot bolt is an inch farther towards the front of the cab than the pivot point in the RG cab. I'm guessing I can just move the brackets on the PF up an inch, but would love to hear feedback on that option.

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Hey Ed, after looking at the PF, there is too much in the way. Some of the NEACF guys also suggested moving the pivot bolts. I wanted as near a perfect cab as possible so drilling new holes/filling old ones is not ideal. It can be done, but it's not really what I was hoping/going for. This certainly does complicate things...

True, I was just rereading Jim's High Speed and Taxi restores and he did a pretty amazing job filling the lock down bar holes, etc. They are not noticeable under the decal which was my concern. That being said Jim is a ninja when it comes to this stuff. I would just hate to attempt to mod this cab and make it unusable. I am sure someone has a need for a solid WPC cab with the dimensions.

My other option is the guys from Virtual Pins offer various restore packages including painting and decaling. So I may go with them and save myself a ton of headaches as after I get the cab sanded, filled and primed I will still need to find someone local to spray the base coat.

OK, long time no updates. The 4th quarter keeps me pretty busy so I did not have a ton of time to mess with this. I had some longer term issues that I finally sorted out last night. It was amazing to see the last of the non firing coils finally fire. Now that the weather is warming up I am hoping to plow through the rest of this restoration. In the next few weeks I will be sending the habitrails off to Back Alley, ordering up my decals and plastics and finishing up the LED's (GI). For right now I am finally going to enjoy a few games error free.

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I really want to do the prototype drop targets on the left side. I am hoping to source the parts eventually. It's a great game, definitely one of my favorites from the System 11 era. I can't wait to finish it up.

Thanks! I am happy with how it has come along. The weather is starting to get a bit nicer so I am looking forward to stripping/prepping the donor cab. I can't wait to see everything installed in a minty cab.