Phoenix, AZ
My Firepower has been a long 5 years in the making. I picked up this firepower approximately 7 years ago. The previous owner had it in his bar and after the bar closed it sat on his patio, half covered. It was in miserable shape when i brought it home. The cabinet and head were falling apart from water damage. The circuit boards were in decent shape. I relocated the batteries, replaced the 40 pin connector, along with some other circuitry components. I fixed it up to get it working, tried to sell it but after a while thought 'Hey, this is the perfect candidate for a restore!' It needed a new cabinet and backglass, but the playfield could be saved.
I thought "Oh, how hard can it be to build a box and head, its just two boxes and I like wood working". Big mistake is an understatement. Turns out making two large boxes out of plywood was a more of a challenge than I ever expected, from cutting large sheets of plywood, to making all the different cuts required, the router bits, and keeping everything square. After the box was assembled, painting it was another nightmare. 2 coats of auto primer, 5 coats of black (due to various screwups, runs and other issues). The stencil wasn't too bad, but it wasn't my first one either. I felt bad covering up the beautiful birch wood grain, so i left the bottom of the cabinet and back of the head box open and clear coated them.
After the cabinet was finished it was onto the playfield. It was in pretty decent shape to start, but I have never done any playfield work before. I wanted to convert the machine to drop targets and it took some time to find the assemblies and a bit of time to wire them up. After that was completed I studied Vid's guide, popping out half of the inserts and re-gluing them, and reinforcing the rest. Touch-ups included all new white and red areas(air brush), a couple spots on the planet, and other various areas. I used water slide decals for the numbers and one of the pop bumper decals that partially came off with the mylar.
I was initially setup to use my compressor and gun to shoot automotive clear, but at the last second decided to try out the 2k spray in a can. Overall I was very happy with it and the results. The biggest pain was when I needed some clear to drop into low inserts etc. I had to spray it into a jar and use an eye dropper to suck it out. I had to shoot the playfield 5 or 6 times due to various problems. And then of course i burned through it with the sander one time and and to fix some touch-ups. On the final shoot everything came together and I am pleased with the results.
After the playfield was done, I reassembled everything and bought new parts as needed: Backglass, LEDs, pop bumper assemblies and caps, etc.
A big thanks to Vid for all of his guides, and all the various people i messaged for questions and parts. Also a big thanks to everyone on here who takes the time to post their projects, progress, and mistakes. I intended to make a restoration thread about this, but it took so long (6 years) start to finish that i have misplaced most of the before pictures.
I learned a lot along the way, but i doubt i'll do anything this in depth again -- but it is done, looks and plays great. Onto the next project...
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tuned up pop bumpers and a flipper rebuild kit really brought some extra snappiness to the game. I really like the pop bumpers, I think it really adds to the game.
