Bad Cats
Williams, 1989
Black Knight
Williams, 1980
Blackout
Williams, 1980
Comet
Williams, 1985
Eight Ball Deluxe
Bally, 1981
Evel Knievel
Bally, 1977
Fireball II
Bally, 1981
Firepower
Williams, 1980You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider Zigzagzag.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
Quoted from KSUWildcatFan:I'd imagine they'd be clear. AFAIK inserts are always clear so the underlying (actual) insert shows through..just with plastic over it.
You can find a picture of the F14 hardtop in the topic gallery here : https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/players-f-14-tomcat-refresh
Soooo I f***ed up my Blackout hardtop install.
I should have vacuumed around the inserts before putting down the hardtop.
Now there's very visible dust and stuff stuck in the middle ...
Can't massage it out, can't blow it out.
I guess I can dremel out the inserts from below and put in new ones, but not sure about the results then.
Is it an option to remove the hardtop and put a new in place, or is the 3m tape too sticky for that and will take out the wood ?
Quoted from RGarriott:Pretty sure once the hard top is down thats it, pulling it up will destroy the graphics.
I'm not worried about the graphics - a new hardtop has all that is needed 
To be clear I am considering buying a 2nd hardtop, take off the old one and put on #2 instead (after sanding etc. of course).
But I'm not sure if the 3m tape will take with it (a lot of) wood or not ?
Quoted from Mathazar:It's possible to remove a hardtop, but it is NOT FUN AT ALL. If ya'll remember a couple years ago OE had that infamous run of hardtops with the bad batch of adhesive (their print vendor changed an ingredient in OE's adhesive formula without notifying OE). The result was many customers experienced bubbling, lifting, and damaged artwork on their hardtops within days of installation. I was one of those customers - mine was Eight Ball Deluxe. OE did us right by replacing the hardtop with a free one, but wow was it labor intensive to get the old one off. Setting aside the time and effort to pull out the playfield and teardown the topside again, it took me about 15 hours (across multiple days) to get every bit of glue remnants off of the playfield and ready for a new hardtop.
The bad hardtop itself came off ok with some muscle. The glue and artwork it left behind....yikes. 15 hours of GooGone and scraper work. And it's not like all of the pieces came off in big chunks....there were tons and tons of little pieces to get off (my hands hurt for days). But, in the end, the replacement hardtop with the corrected adhesive formula worked great and still looks/plays like new 100's of games later.[quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image]
Ouch .. OK, I see this is gonna take time and effort.
Hope I have learned my lesson now ...
Thanks for all the responses and help !
Quoted from jcar302: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.
You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider Zigzagzag.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/official-hardtops-thread?tu=Zigzagzag and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.
Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.
Stavanger
Berkeley Springs, WV