I'm doing it your way, McCune. If a camera's running I'm going to completely lose confidence. My wife will be helping me to remind me what an f-ing moron I am throughout every step.

Shh...I'm on vacation in Florida.

Decals, silkscreening, etc. going on next weekend.

I hope.

But there's Allentown...

I agree, Neo...I thought that looked awesome. But it was only on one side. The cabinet would have looked like the bastard love child of Rudy and a Pittsburgh Steelers helmet.

I won't be that slow. This will be done by the summer.

A question in preparation for Allentown:

I think a lot of guys replace EVERY switch during a full restoration. Is this the case? And how do you know how many of which types to buy? Or can you just tell Marco or PBL that you need all the switches for a certain game and they'll put a kit together for you?

Or should I just keep the switches I have because they all work? Seems silly not to replace them when I have it all apart.

Just a quick update. I can't do everything...Allentown took up a good chunk of my weekend and I had to get caught up around the house. But I was able to do just a couple things.

Used Matt's silkscreen from Merf's pins to put the patent on the back of the cab:

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The thread about this stuff can be found here if anybody is interested: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-williams-wpc-backbox-warningpatent-silk-screens

Built a coin door spacer and used the McCune method of bracing it in position. Say what you want about Jim's taste in WOZ, but this is absolutely brilliant:

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Applied the front decal and trimmed (but forgot the start hole because I started sugar crashing!), and got to this point when I ran out of time:

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I just want to say this: Unless you're a real pro like some of the guys on here, it's nearly impossible to have an absolutely perfectly flat decaled side and front. EVERY imperfection shows up, and for an anal bastard like me, it was pretty depressing. But I went into this with one goal - to make this machine nicer than when it left the Williams factory...nicer than new. In that I think I've succeeded so far, but it's not nearly up to the standards I have for myself.

I can see how this stuff takes a lot of practice, and my respect for you pro restorers out there has no bounds.

Next weekend, it'll begin to look like a pinball machine again. But I have to redo the backbox for the THIRD time because I'm still not happy with it. Back to the Bondo...

Oh...two more things:

I used this decal applicator. Seven bucks on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I4CLY6A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

And it's interesting how the pictures can show some things and hide others. The front of the cabinet looks wonderful in that picture--the few small imperfections can't be seen.

On the other hand, I didn't even see those two small stains on the bottom of the cabinet until the sun hit it and I looked at that picture. Going to have to hit it with the detail sander a bit more...

Thanks. No big air bubbles. My wife was there helping spot any irregularities. (She spotted me pretty quickly!) I think the imperfections are on the cab itself. I sanded and primed many times and did everything in my power to get it perfect. Not good enough. Live and learn. (It's still really nice though!)

Don't cough up on my restore, man. That's disgusting.

And the cab is looking like it does in the last pic. Waiting for next weekend...

Thanks. It's amazing what distance will do when taking a pic. I AM that anal. I cut the decal a millimeter off from the line I intended and that drives me nuts. The imperfections I'm talking about are likely a small particle of dust here and there that didn't get picked up by the tack cloth. Really minor stuff that you'd have to look for, but for me, it's ALL I look at. (You should see what a nut I am about crown moldings...)

If you're confident enough to attempt a restoration, you should be confident enough to admit your errors. There's ALWAYS somebody out there that's better than you and knows more than you do. In order to elevate your game you need to be humble enough to know when to shut your mouth and listen.

Thanks for the kind words!

Shh...

Don't tell this guy. He added some blue and I think it came out a shade too dark:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/funhouse-restore-chrome-and-mustard#post-2422322

But his machine still looks incredible! I'll take darker over lighter any day.

I think the general--GENERAL--consensus is semi-gloss. A lot of people like to gloss their machines up, though. It's your machine. Make it look like an f-ing Christmas tree if you want to.

Well, I think the machines started out semigloss from the factory. But 20+ years have a way of making everything look flat.

There's a joke here about wives, but I'm not going near it.

Chapter Six: She's Got Legs (She Knows How to Use Them!)

Sorry for the long delay in updating this thread (as if anybody really cares!). Sometimes life happens. So I did a lot of work this weekend on the machine. As I said before, I wasn't happy with the backbox, so I'm redoing it for a third time. It's painted and looks great now...I'll repopulate it while I wait for it to be ready for decals.

I painted a bunch of parts. The paint on the hinges kept bunching up when it dried no matter whatI did, so I just chucked them and ordered new ones. Please notice I used Bryan Kelly's patented BoltHolder technology to paint the bolt heads! (Does anybody know what happened to Bryan? He's been AWOL for a while now. Hope he's okay!)

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Then I used McCune's dry install method to put the side decals on. Thanks for that video, Jim! You gave me the confidence to do it right the first time, and you also reminded me of another reason why it's great to have a wife.

Shiny!...

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Installed the cabinet protectors from Pinball Life...(and you can see some minor imperfections which look way worse in the picture)

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Then got 'er up on legs and installed the ground braids using the upholstery stapler and staples from Pinrestore.com:

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The damn gun left some oil spots which I had to sand out after braiding (and shooting these photos). They look much worse in the photo than in person. Some you can't even see with the naked eye - I don't know why the camera picks it up.

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So the cabinet exterior is completed and ready to be repopulated (which it almost already is). More pics by the weekend when I finish the cab and work on the backbox. And hey...how about that nice color match on the back and sides???

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Yeah...that's McCune that did that, I think. But I haven't seen enough evidence that those things destroy decals to carve around them like that. It feels counterintuitive to me after all the effort to put the decals on. If anybody wants to chime in here about the necessity of that, I'm all ears. But why design a protector that makes you have to destroy the very thing you're trying to protect?

And I forgot to tell McCune that I would have been happy to film the decaling process, but I literally didn't have anybody to hold the iphone. By the second side, I had enough confidence to do it on film...just no cameraman!

Okay...I'll cut the decals out beneath the leg protectors...but I'm not going to enjoy doing it! It really feels like I'm destroying the machine doing that. If I ever sell the machine and someone wants to take them off, they've got ugly cabinet exposed underneath.

Answer: Just trying to keep as many original parts as possible. If it was designed that way, I kept it that way...unless there was a good reason for changing it up. Thanks for the kind words.

(PS - that's an easy thing to change out if I decide to...I just see no reason to right now.)

Okay...point taken. I'll look into getting the updated brackets. Thanks for all the tips, guys!

QUESTION 'O' THE DAY!!!

So I just noticed that the new lockdown receiver I got from Pinball Life doesn't work in Funhouse because of the two shooters. Does anybody know where to get one? And if not, how the hell do I polish it (as well as the playfield prop bar, etc., that don't fit in the tumbler?). I tried Flitz but it sucks for those pieces. I'd hate to have a restored machine with a crapped up lockdown receiver.

Any ideas?

Quick update...

I repopulated the cabinet, with the exception of the coin door (the paint was still drying!) and the lockdown receiver, the problems with which I detailed above. Thanks, terryb, for the tip! I didn't know such a thing existed.

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You'll see in the pics that the original leg brackets are still in the machine. (You'll also see small stains in the coin compartment which aren't visible in person...really pisses me off that they show up in photos.) I removed the decals underneath the cabinet protectors (thanks, Jim...the decal was indeed starting to wrinkle!). But when I removed the first bracket--breaking a nail off, which is a pain in the ass--I installed the upgraded bracket and it didn't sit flush with the sides of the machine, as if the corner pieces of the machine were wider than the center section of the bracket. And this was with it sitting under the ground braid. And with the sides floating 1/8th of an inch off the sides it looked like dick and gave no support whatsoever. So I put the old ones back in. The machine's going in my basement where it will stay...if I sell it, somebody else can struggle with putting the updated ones in.

In addition to getting the wrong lockdown receiver, I also got the wrong corner brackets for the backbox...right one on the top, wrong one on the bottom:

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Oops! So that held me up from repopulating the backbox, but...

AWESOME WIFE ALERT!!! My wife saw the paint job on the back of my backbox and said (and I quote), "You suck balls." So while I was at work, she resanded and repainted it and now it looks perfect. (She also helped with fixing some areas of the coin door that weren't great.)

I'm a lucky guy...

Next week, the backbox will be decaled, silk screened, reassembled, and joined to the cabinet. And then I'll turn it on and blow it up just for shits and giggles.

Thanks so much to all the people who have offered tips and help. Can't say it enough!

I know you're (half?) kidding about this, but my own personal taste doesn't go for chrome anything...especially when it's INSIDE the cabinet. It's great for the guys that do automotive shine on their paint jobs and make sure everything sparkles, but I'm really happy with my machine just looking like a brand new game.

I actually can't believe how good it looks so far. I was pretty sure it would have been in splinters by now.