I have been restoring a Meteor that I pulled out of shed just over a year ago, actually shed is too nice of word. It had been sitting in a shack, just a corrugated iron roof with two sides covered by canvas since 1986, in a town called Landsborough, Queensland. Not quite the tropics but very lush and lots of rain, so not a great place to leave pins exposed to the elements for 30+ years. So the story is that this guy bought a Firepower, Flash and a Meteor for around about $20-$30 each at auction and put them in this shack until he built his house. The first pic below is from June 2016, the shack is being held up by the Meteor but it looked in surprisingly good shape compared to the other two. Since then the Meteor has had more water damage and the backbox is collapsing, and the Firepower has caved in itself.

After 2 and a half years of talking to the guy I finally got the call that I could grab the pins. It took a couple of car jacks, props and $400 AUD to get them out. The Firepower was lucky to make it back so it was stripped/demolished on the trailer. It was a literal rats' nest! The Flash was worse so had the bin ready for this one. All electronic parts were shot but sold off the playfields, looms and some metal parts that more than covered the initial cost.

The Meteor was a hell of a lot worse in the light. Backbox was f$@#ed, cab has bad rot at the front and the lockdown mech was rusted shut …. As much as I like bring home non working projects, I think I have reached my limit with this one. There a few more posts to come to catch up where I am with this restore which will follow soon.

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I skipped that and just went straight to sandblasting!

It took a mallet, jimmy bar and a truck load of WD40 to get the lock bar open. Playfield was mylared, no wear but looked faded, mechs looked OK, MPU stuffed, rectifier hacked, everything else rusted as! Checked voltages on the dodgy rectifier, was all good, so put in an Altek MPU from my SI and booted it up.
Think the left flipper didn't fire but everything else was sweet. Most lights were out but that was to be expected.

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OK as bad as the Meteor looks, I'm glad I had the Flash and Firepower to make it look OK. The playfield was pulled out and underside stripped. Mylar removed really slowly but didn't have to many issues. I am lucky to have @savage just down the road to send the playfield to touch up and clear.

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Fast forward a few months and the playfield is transformed.

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I knew the backbox would need to be remade but the cabinet was in way worse condition than I hoped. There was a lot of rot at the front right around the flipper and leg, as well as below the coin door. The part of the cab that the backbox sits would also needs to be replaced. If I was to do this again I would have just made the cabinet from scratch as well, it would have been easier. Before I got onto this I did some colour matching on the cab. Gouged out all the rot and soaked the areas with wood hardener, and soaked and soaked. Put some larger bracing inside and used long screws to criss cross the voids so the bog will have something to key into. I also put some oak trim around the base as most of the ply had come apart. The backbox was fairly easy to recreate as I I had the old one to measure off.

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Project pins are getting harder to come across here in Australia. I was more than happy to pay that, more so when the parts off the Flash and Firepower more than covered it. Hey and I also got a cool story as well.

Same here, pity the Pinball Pimp stencils I used are based off the US cab.

Its the LAI version, you can read up on it a bit here and there is also a link to a scan at the end. The Aussie CPO is also a bit different .

https://www.aussiearcade.com/forum/arcade/video-and-electromechanical-arcade-restoration-forum/aussie-arcade-artwork-resource/35274-tmnt-lai-artwork-resource

I got the legs, coindoor, coin bezel and some internal coin door parts sandblasted. Primed straight way and then a few coats of silver hammertone, everything came up good except the bezel. It was so rusted I had blast it, painted looks bad, so I will send it off to the platers with the rest of the parts from the cab, backbox and the topside of the playfield, and see how it turns out.

After a lot of sanding I got the cabinet primed. All by spray can, next time I will get myself a compressor and spray kit. When nearly done I found a thin bit of rot down the right side of the cab, it was only the top layer of ply and no more the 1cm wide. There wasn't any visible damege and only saw it when at a certain angle as well or else I would have missed it. So now to test fit everthing to make sure it all fits. Using WPC leg plates to strengthen the cab, especially around that front left corner. Side rails were reproduced by local here in Oz, shiny BA with no holes.
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Got the parts back from the zinc plater, it sure beats polishing! Coin door reassembled. I never really cared much about the internals of coin doors until now, they look amazing when shiny. The coin bezel looks OK, but if I can find one in original condition I will swap it out down the track. Planning to do up some custom coin inserts as well.

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All the boards were sent off for repair but knew I would be finding replacements for the MPU and rectifier board. I went with a Weebly MPU as it has a number of different roms for Meteor and got the replacement sound cables a well. I got the rectifier from Tangles Pin Parts as well as set of his 6 digit LED displys in brilliant white. You can get the displays as a kit for much cheaper but went with the assembled ones.

One of the lugs on the transformer had come unglued, which I didn't noticed until I started to clean the loom, and then it broke the wire. Those wires from the lugs are so fine. Luckily tracked someone willing to fix it, so glad that I didn't have track another these down. Once fixed it was cleaned, painted and reassembled. I replaced the based board of the transformer as it was warped. The light board got a coat of paint to the front only, dremelled the light socket and reinstalled the newly plated parts.

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Onto the painting and stenciling. First time stenciling and not fan of painting in general. Next time I rebuild a backbox/cab I will sand/prep the timber before cutting it out, it would save a lot of time. When I first chose the paint it was all acrylic, once I started on the base coat the black wasn't great so changed to an oil based. I did some test sprays with acrylic on some separate pieces and didn't seem to have an issue. I started on the backbox first, it had been sitting for 7 weeks, but the acrylic turned out to be big issue. Thinking the back box had a lot more coats than the pieces I test sprayed on so probably needed a lot longer to cure. So will be adhering to like on like paints in future. I couldn't lose that first red layer so gave it light sand and sprayed a clear over the top and got the yellow down.

For the cabinet I went a got some colour matched enamel spray cans. to finish the job. There were 2 areas where some of the ply came off with the stencil, the one near the right flipper and the other under the coin door. Managed to get them filled and feathered the black in well. Will touch up the red below the coin later.

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Hopefully this is the worst game I restore. It helps that I love the game.

Left the cab for a couple of weeks before fitting it out. Once I stared it didn't take long to get it back together. I was fun putting it together so quickly after the all hard work had been done.
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Completed the cabinet, then put the loom and boards into the backbox, and got the pin into the house. I have caught up to where I am now with this restore. It's taken a year to get to stage since pulling it out of the shack, but it feels at longer than that. Looking forward to getting onto the playfield.

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The bevel was originally there and without it the lockdown bar wouldn't sit flush. It would be all the same hardware, so at a guess the ply used in Australian games may have been slightly thicker than US cabs.

Got onto cleaning up some of the mechs. All the drop targets were original apart from two, so I got some used original tombstone targets instead of buying repro one. I much prefer the original to the ones with a ledge on top. The targets were really yellowed, did try bleaching without much improvement, so went onto sanding the targets clean. The decals I have are on solid white so just had to focus on the edges of the targets.

With the cleaning of the metal parts I started on the first mech with metal polish. Didn't clean up well and it took ages. Settled on putting the parts straight in a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water to soak for a day even though the parts weren't rusty. Dried and then given a a hand polish and 90% came out great. Replaced the springs and coil sleeves on the drop targets mechs. I'll be leaving the METEOR bank till last

The knocker, sling shots and ball trough eject are also done. One of the kickers of the sling shot were broken so will be replacing both with a WPC part. Compared it with my Fish Tales and they look like it will work well.
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Nearly finished rebuilding all of the mechs, just waiting on order to finish off the flippers with new coil and bushings. The 6 drop target bank wasn't as much as a chore than expected.

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New Blue CPR backglass fitted with new trim. I will have to reuse the original top trim as it has the tabs on it to lock the glass in place. And finished of the bab internals with a new speaker and knocker installed.

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