I really really want to have this thing playable at TPF, really pushing my luck at this point, but if I can make it happen...it's going to happen. I only have a few gaps in my knowledge on what I need to order from PBR at this point.

Most critical is I have absolutely no clue at all what the leg length for this era game is. The legs I have are crap, I won't have time to un-stick the rusted levelers before TPF. Don't want to pay for new legs at this point, but I have little choice, so I do want to make sure I get the "correct" ones for the game.

Next is the flipper shafts. I need to order parts probably ASAP, I may not be able to get the game pulled out for a few days, anyone know offhand if this game uses the thick or thin flipper shafts? Frankly, I could probably get away with not even replacing these, but I figure it would just be easier to bulletproof mechs now while doing the playfield swap. Flipper seemed plenty strong when I fired it up to test but you know how it goes.. I never trust anything to work 6 months later, much less in a show environment.

Last is the side rails and flipper buttons.. this is really non-critical, I'm not doing this before TPF. There's just not time to get into cabinet/coin door restoration work with everything else I have going on. I tried to measure the bottom of the flipper button hole to the bottom of the rail, but I don't have calipers, I can't tell if there's a difference or not. If someone knows if these are supposed to be symmetrical or the non-symmetrical (one side with a slightly lower flipper button?) would appreciate the info so I don't end up ordering a 90$ incorrect part at some point.

Been wanting to try the PVC tube and CLR for a long time, but without a garage and kids around....I don't really want a 3 foot long pipe full of chemicals sitting around in my living room. =\

I could probably bust the levelers loose with WD and the heatgun and like you said whacking on a wrench, but really...this game is going the full restoration route anyways.. I'm never getting my money out of it. Might as well have the new legs.

I will probably talk to Ken about the same time I am ready to get the cabinet done, Dan. I can't imagine having anyone else do it as long as Ken is an option for me. If he can clean up the side rails, great, if not....80 bucks isn't horri-bad when I will already have about 1500 in a Crescendo.

Where?

I have no garage, no yard, and my patio, which is my only "private" outside area to my condo is behind five pins to get to the door. =P

Anyways...siderails are the least of my concern right now. The cabinet is gonna be ugly for TPF if it shows up at all, no biggie.

If you don't like it then don't buy it.

Oh wait, it's not for sale, and won't be.

Did you see my playfield thread?

Yes, when you have no space, no EM parts stash to rob, and have to pay everyone to do things like clearing a playfield and restoring the cabinet, it gets spendy fast. A lot of parts out of my game are going to go back out into the community for other people to restore, simply because I do not have the space to polish coindoors, redo rails, etc etc...

Roughly:

150 for the core game.
60 for the spare playfield we repainted
150 Harbor Freight parts for airbrush and compressor
100 Paint supplies and frisket
150 to have the PF cleared
20 Playfield glass
600 PBR parts, on the list I have so far... full rebuilds for pops, flippers, score reels and restoration parts.

That's 1280 right there, and that's not even touching the cabinet repaint, and assuming a very cheap 50 bucks shipping for the PBR parts, which isn't realistic most likely considering siderails and legs in there...

No worries. I know some of my projects are outside what people consider practical occasionally.

I did check around to see if I could buy a parts game, but honestly, this game and it's sibilings are so rare at this point, spending 400 plus another 400 shipping just wasn't practical, neither was spending 600 to buy the NOS playfield. Frankly, we bought the game for the backglass, and for me to have a playfield to learn frisket+airbrush repairs with. But as we got more and more done, I just love the cheesiness of the retro-flower-hippie thing, and having it be UV-reactive was just the over-the-top part that really got me in the "okay, we're gonna keep this thing" mood.

I liked the two EM's we've had before, but it's either relatively rare or people are not letting them go (seems that most of these have been destroyed at this point....took us two years just to find this game, and we were really only looking for a backglass..), it meets my minimum criteria for keeping an EM (drop targets OR spinners, 2" flippers, and shots that require skill not luck), it's stuff I know how to work on (Gottlieb, lol...), and it fits my wife's art criteria (since she wanted it for the backglass and playfield in the first place!).

I also like the fact it's the first drop target game for Gottlieb, so I think just on a historical level, it's worth restoring for that reason too. If I could do it any cheaper and still have it come out looking like a new game, I would... I'm a cheapskate, after all. At the end of the day, I want to end up with four or five REALLY super-clean games. This, Metallica, Tron....those are all staying. I don't know about the rest yet.

Fair enough. To be honest I'm more worried about my kids opening it up when we aren't looking and making a god-awful mess than the actual chemicals themselves... wood parquet floor tiles means that any kind of liquid really goes right through it to the base where you can't get at it. It was great flooring when I lived alone and had no pins. Now....not so much.

I dunno. I gotta look and see if we even have all four legs. Kinda at the point though where it's like...you spend 25+cost of the PVC parts, and the time to make the cleaner setup, or 54 bucks and shipping for brand new legs? Kind of a wash to me.

I'm with you on this, however, the legs I have are pretty yuck, I don't even know IF I have *four* of them (we didn't look that hard the other night ), and they are just legs the guy picked up..he basically had a huge barn full of games. I wouldn't say it was mis-managed the way he was storing stuff, but you could tell that to him, legs did not go with a specific game, neither did stuff like leg bolts or other generic hardware. He just picked up some legs the same size, and gave them to us.

I still don't even know if 31" is the right size for this game or not. If Steve doesn't know, just going to assume it is. PBR site says legs on multiplayer games varies. Doubt anyone would know unless they have the parts manual/loadout book or whatever you call that thing for that era of games.

With what I did for the playfield, this game couldn't ever be billed as an "original" anyways.