Any chance that the HT or Playfield was under 70*F when you applied it?

The 3M 300LSE adhesive has a pretty narrow installation temp of 70-100*F

I don't think so. My shop maintains a pretty stable temp (for the most part) barring huge temp shifts and I simply don't go out there if it's colder than snot. So if it were cold outside, I wouldn't have been out there. Otherwise, it's generally been pretty warm this year.

I was going to ask if the games are in a garage or something similar. The only thing that really seems like it would cause this issues short of physical influence would be rapid temperature or humidity changes or both

I've got my working area for pinballs set up in my 30x50 shop. While it's certainly possible there may be more temperature swings than I think..I just don't see it. I think it holds temp pretty well as long as I don't open both garage doors and just leave them open to either rapidly heat or cool (depending on the outside temp). When it's closed up during weather pattern shifts, it seems to hold pretty well from all I can discern.

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I just did a mousin around and the trap brackets did not allow the trap to flush with the hardtop playfield so the adjustment slots in the brackets had to be made longer to flush the trap to the surface of the playfield.

Um, I'm jealous. My goals in life have changed to wanting a pole building / garage for some of my bigger toys. Two car garage is nice, but wife and boat are always parked in there.

All I had to do was compleeeeeetely screw up my finances to buy this place last year lol

The shop was a very, very big plus for me.

Sometimes I look back at the "empty" picture from moving day and muse about just HOW many pins would have fit if I had just lined all the walls with them lol. Oh well..it's full of crap now, and most of it isn't even mine! At least the area I carved off for pinball activities seems to work pretty well as such, without interfering with the 3 garage bays. I'm also still trying to finish organizing this thing, a full year later. Maybe someday.

I really need to find my motivation and get back to my hardtops before the weather turns for good this year. I really don't want to be out sanding in the snow or anything stupid like that.. ugh.

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Less than $15 and you can know for sure what you're dealing with.

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Do you really need to disassemble and break down a cab to do decals or is this just a pinball restorer ocd thing?
I would think you could remove legs (put it on saw horses), remove the coin door, rails and any of the bolts and do the work.
I'd guess you could even remove one head bracket at a time for doing each side.
I have a set for AFM, not sure the brand, i don't think they are radcals.
But out of all the projects i enjoy doing, i'm not thinking the decals will be one of them.
So the easier the better (if these are indeed easier).

Depends. If you want it to look ok to good, you need to dissassemble the cabinet, strip off the old decals, plaster and sand etc.
If you are happy with a bad to mediocre result, you can put the decals on top of the old ones - but everything (and I mean everything) will show through.
Tears in the old decals, scrapes, screwholes, nicks, dents ... everything.
The decals themselves will do nothing to hide blemishes.

The one time I did decals, I already had the rest of the game apart from necessity (boards and pf were already being reworked) so breaking down the cab the rest of the way was no big deal. And that turned out to be required: the whole time while doing the cab, being able to flip / tip / angle it - without an attached head or other hardware in the way - proved incredibly valuable. There's no way I would do another cab decal without breaking it down.

But honestly, it's not that difficult: pulling out the pf and removing the head are easy, and 90% of the requirement. The rest is basically coin door, flipper buttons, and side rails... the side rails are always the worst part. You don't need to go "all OCD in" and remove the tilt panel, transformer, and other interior bits unless you're doing a full repaint and even then, you can probably work around them if desired.

Agreed that decals will do NOTHING to hide any blemishes. The real work is in the cab prep. Stripping the parts is stupid easy, takes less than an hour (EDIT: well maybe the siderails take that much on their own, too many variables in play). Replacing said parts isn't much more difficult. But the sanding / filling / repairing / painting / touchup / cure-time waiting / etc etc etc is what consumes the time and creates the mess.

Those are the ugliest side rails I’ve ever seen

I just ordered a HardTop to put on my Firepower. I have read through Vid's guides for hardtops and playfield restoration and most of this thread. My inserts are scratched but not cracked or cloudy. The triangle inserts are banana'd enough to effect gameplay and some of the round inserts are cupped but they aren't horrible.

I was going to replace all the inserts and clear the whole thing, but after reading through everything and considering the necessary prepwork for installing the hardtop, the additional work required, the lack of available original style inserts, and the possibility of ghosting on the inserts it doesn't seem like the most logical idea to me.

Based on what I am reading it seems like all I should have to do is sand the playfield down smooth (which will knock down the banana'd triangle inserts), wetsand/polish the inserts, and then shoot clear over the shooter lane.

Am I missing something here? I understand that some people like to go overboard on projects, but I don't see the cost/benefit analysis of doing anything else.

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That's pretty much what I did on my Space Shuttle machine and it turned out great. Good luck with your project, I'm sure it will look amazing!

Mine came out awesome...

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The triangle inserts have been banana’s on all three early ss Williams hardtops I’ve done. Not that anyone needs to but I took the longer route and replaced inserts(swapping a few colors), stand ups, eject shields and pop bumper hardware. I guess I enjoy the resto-mod aspect of it. I used a couple of color changing leds under clear inserts and eject shields, in a few cases. However you do it, have fun with it and enjoy your pristine playfield when you are done! Also, mind your shooter lane alignment before you stick it down. It’s much easier to trim before it’s adhered.

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I think you are misunderstanding what i'm asking.
I'm not suggesting to leave the old decals and not fill and smooth.
I'm just asking why the machine needs to come apart to do it.

I need this ball eater mech to sit higher when at rest (down position) because of the hard top thickness. There is no adjustment like a drop target. Any ideas? I was thinking maybe a thicker rubber nub?

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Just a thought. Remove the stock rubber there. Use a bolt with two nylock nuts. Add some washers if your nuts are small enough to go through the hole. That way you could tighten the nuts to either side of the bracket and adjust the lower limit of the plunger. You could also use a stick on rubber, on the top of the bolt, to absorb the energy of the plunger as it returns to it's home position.

I came up with a hardbody version of the ball eater bracket and looks like your bracket has had a tough life

https://www.shapeways.com/product/YC3Z7HRL5/ball-eater-bracket-v3u-hardtop-wico-15-988200?optionId=279594970&li=marketplace

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The field repair looks rough, but is actually structurally sound. I’d love to pick up your redesigned bracket, but I already maxed out the budget for this one. Once I get through the board work I will see what I have to spend.

Some good ideas here. Your idea sparked a new thought, replace that rubber nub with a nylon bolt (lock nutted in place). The nylon bolt itself might be enough to absorb the shock. This mech isn’t heavy, so the downward dropping force isn’t that much.

I had to elongate the slots and slide the bracket up on new ones . It may work on the old ones as well . The new bracket came out after I notified him of the problem with his bracket and hardtop.

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You also have to notch the bottom to let the stew in the bracket slide up also

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Finished my Flash Gordon hardtop install and playfield swap (don’t ask!).
I’ve included photos below of some before and after. Plays great! Looks great!
Nothing much to report. Took my time installing the Star rollovers and that turned out to be more daunting than difficult. Really was much simpler than I had anticipated.
I chose to clear my playfield sans the inserts. I added them afterwards since I know not what I do when it comes to clear coating things. I ordered all new inserts and sanded them in place on the PF with 80 grit and the I removed them and went through a couple of finer grits, ending with 1200 wet and a buffing with my Dremel and some compound. I glued them in so they were a hair below flush and added the Hardtop.
I rehabilitate the arrows since I couldn’t find new ones. Just used a chisel to scrape off the junk and sanded them back to almost like new. Helped that they were opaque.
I also worried about the ramps, but followed the lead of others, adding a shim from the strip of plastic with the adhesive supplied with the Hardtop, and it worked brilliantly.
When I did the PF swap (still don’t ask) I put in yopsicles under all of the inserts and rollovers.
Between the Hardtop, the upgraded sound board, and the cabinet repaint, I think I am good to go.
I bought stickers for the spinners, but left in my old battered ones. I kind of like the look. I’d consider installing remakes, but the stickers just didn’t move me.
Oh well, that’s my story

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Didn't see a reply, forgive if I missed it.

They did do F-14, its on their store.

http://www.outsideedgeproducts.com/store/p75/Pinball_Playfield_Hardtop.html

Finally have a free moment to work on the Black Knight.

Hoping to get both hard tops applied today.

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Happy with how this is turning out. Looking forward to getting parts reinstalled. I need to cut some new rails next.

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Any chance you guys will do:

Earthshaker
Bally Pool Sharks

Yes very good chance

Continuing working one my Black Knight. I'm finding there are areas that don't have hard top that need them.

Without this section having the hardtop the rail is going to not sit level.

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And without a strip for the right side of the shooter lane under the right rail that means that rail is going to sit lower than the left rail. Since the upper playfield mounts to the outer rails the upper playfield is going to slant to the right..

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What have other BK hardtop installers done to solve those? The little upper section I could get a piece of .030" plastic to put under it, but the right side of the shooter lane should have a strip of clear HT the whole length so it looks like the left side of the shooter lane...

I bought this 24"x24" sheet of PETG 3 years ago to use as leveling shims for situations like this. Shows as "unavailable" now but I'm sure there are others out there. It's been 3 years and I've used less than half of it so far:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015H2UMS

Did you shim under the right rail side of the shooter lane on yours?

To the best of my recollection, I did not (I did this many months ago and was restoring 3 pins at the same time). I'm leaning towards no. I looked thru my resto pix but I don't have any good shots of that part of the build.

My digital level shows 6.5 for slope, and 0.0 left/right for both the bottom and upper playfields. That doesn't mean the potential of not having a shim there isn't evident....I just may not have noticed. I have to custom dial-in each of my 8 pins' leg levelers as my rec room finished basement floor is not 100% level...it's got some peaks and valleys here and there as the foundation settled on our new house build in 2016.

I'm almost wanting to take the upper playfield off now and put in a shim!

Rotating my playfield on the rotisserie and this crap just showed up. WTF?!? It was completely clean. Completely clear coated. Is this from the adhesive? Of course it right in the middle close to the player.

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Captain Fantastic?!?

I still have no idea WTF the white powder is. The playfield was blown off and vacuumed before 3 coats of clear coat, black paint around all inserts then 2 more coats of clear to seal the black.

I'm considering how to get rid of it. I'm either going to drill two small holes in the edges of the insert under the art to use compressed air to try to blow the crap out or, I'm thinking about using a forstner bit to drill out the playfield under the insert so it can be removed from the bottom and then that shit cleaned out. The odds of getting it out in one piece are slim. I'd have to see if I could find one jeweled insert to replace it with (not holding breath) or I'd have to replace it with a piece of red sheet acrylic cut to a circle (which would stink but would be way better than a starbust in BK)

I have a Flash Gordon hardtop with sanded playfield available, pm if interested

Had the same issue with a high speed hardtop. Infuriating. Ended up using a tiny medical needle to fish it out inbetween the hardtop and the wood.

Sucks but you've gotta think about making the situation worse. Is there adhesive between the insert and the cealr hardtop? If so drilling under might just add debris and make it worse. I'd probably live with it for a while. If a couple months go by and it stills stands out then go after it.

Does it really look that bad in person? Pics look like close ups, but for me it doesn't look bad.
It's a hard top (which i am a fan of), so does it really need perfection?

I noticed some of this happen on my Xenon, I think its the edge of the mask and when you peel it little fragments of masking paper dust from where it was cut kind of releases and gets trapped in the window for the insert. What happened with mine is they started moving around from static and after a few plays the static moved the tiny fragments to the edge of the window where the adhesive is on the edge under the art and they began sticking and now theres no trace of them. When you peel the backing off and go to lay it down, peel slowly and watch the clear area for the inserts to see if anything floated up and stuck. This only happened on one insert with me and now its gone.

Yes it does.

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Having had a similar issue on my BK, and having obsessed over doing a "perfect" restoration, here I am 3 years later, enjoying/playing the game on a 99% perfect restoration with the benefits of the hardtop which are undeniable. The small flaw I have (similar to yours) that I was freaking out over and I still see it - well, I have made peace with it. I am also finding that other folks that come and see my BK don't even see the flaw (the design of the playfield is so complex). I would compare it to the first time I get a door ding on a new car (although those can be fixed fairly easily).

I would also agree that the fixes you are proposing might be worse than the cure.

Have you considered (I am sure you have) placing your playfield sideways at a 90 deg angle and shaking/taping and using vibrations to nudge the dirt out of the way? I'll admit that residual static electricity might not allow you to do that.

For anyone else reading this: I had even used a q-tip with alcohol to clean the backside of every transparent area for the lights on the hardtop, and despite that, I did have one piece of crud that showed up afterwards.

Recently acquired an Eight Ball Deluxe with a hardtop that is lifting badly in several places. One area is so bad that someone drilled screws down into the playfield to hold it down
Any tips on removing a terribly installed hardtop? Didn’t find much searching “hardtop removal” in the forum search. Not sure if I want tackle the job or just sell the machine as is.

Use heat and pull slow. It’s not that bad, sucks but not a show stopper.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/thruster-i-just-met-her-xenon-restoration-/page/4#post-6087209

Actually, it does suck. At least in my experience. Pulling off, no problem. Cleaning up the residue left behind? Sucks.
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This showed up when the playfield was on a rotisserie, its coming from both sides so putting it on its side isn't going to help.

Awesome thread there! Thanks for the info.