Backstory: My now six-year-old daughter seemed to be losing interest in playing pinball. She overheard me say this to a friend, and so piped up, "When are we going to get another BROKEN pinball? I want to FIX them!" (She's helped me work on all our other machines, e.g. replace rubbers, change lights, test & troubleshoot, etc.)

Fast forward a few weeks and I finally snagged a "project" machine (not too intensive to restore, she's only six!) within my budget: this 1976 Gottlieb Surfer:

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As you can see, the cabinet's been painted over, but I figure she'll enjoy repainting it. Then I wondered, what if the original paint is still underneath? Pinside to the rescue, where I became enlightened about Motsenbocker's Lift Off. So, we gave it a shot:

Before:
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We started on the right side of the backbox. What's this? I see appropriate colors peeking through!
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Sure enough...
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Go kid go!
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Progress...
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Cowabunga!
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Really, the toughest parts about the Lift Off are:
1) Patience required; gotta give it time to soak in and break the bond before you scrub it off and repeat (many times); I even dared try a non-metallic scraper, which helped in some instances but hurt in others.
2) Residue. As you scrub, latex paint residue can haze over areas you've already stripped, forcing you to re-do it. Unfortunately, I'm finding repeated cycles are softening up and lifting some of the original paint on my rags.

Anyway, here's where we're at, gonna take a break for now. I'll post additional pics in the coming weeks as we slowly but surely continue the "unpaint" process!
In the meantime, any suggestions/tips for using this method are welcome, especially here at the "nearing section completion" phase with residue / small stuck flakes left to deal with.

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Now that I'm taking a break, I did a little more digging and came across Xerico's Four Million BC thread here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-four-million-bc-cabinet ... I think I may try this method. Giving it a good long soak with the rags looks like it may work better than the spray/soak/scrub/repeat method I'm working with.

Update:

After finding Xerico's thread, I gave it a shot his way. (Ref https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-four-million-bc-cabinet )

We laid the cabinet down and soaked the rags, and let them soak for about 10 minutes or so. Results were similar to how it played out on the backbox -- some areas rippled and scraped off fairly easily (used some fresh plastic scrapers per Xerico's recommendation), but much stayed intact, so we resoaked and did it again. Here is as far as we got on that side:

Cabinet - Right Side - Before

Cabinet - Right Side - After Soak & Scrape 1

Cabinet - Right Side - After Soak & Scrape 2

I could tell that the problem was there just wasn't enough paint-bond-breaking going on ... it seemed like it needed longer to soak. I decided to do an experiment on the other side of the cabinet -- I was going to let it soak for a few HOURS.

So, we flipped it over to work on the left side. Soaked up the rags, laid em on there, and left. We came back about five hours later and found almost all the latex paint had rippled and was coming off VERY easily. See pics below:

Cabinet - Left Side - After 5 Hour Soak, super ripply!

Cabinet - Left Side - After 5 Hour Soak, paint coming off easily with scraper strokes

Cabinet - Left Side - After 5 Hour Soak then scrape

Note the white in the last picture is glare from the flash, not lost paint. The original paint is in AMAZING condition and we didn't lose much. We'll still need to do another soak & clean to get a bunch of the little flakes off, but most of the latex is off that side.

As such, I repeated the process for the left side of the backbox, and ran a six hour soak (since I was going to bed):

Backbox - Left Side - Soaking!

Backbox - Right Side - After 6 Hour Soak then Scrape

Again, pretty successful. Still some residual specks to get off of there, but I'd imagine another soak & scrape session should easily knock those off.

If you're wondering, after the 5 & 6 hour soaks, the parts were basically all dry. I'm thinking this might be better, since I've seen some of the blue original paint come off with the scrubbing rags and scrapers when wet.

May not got to any more this weekend, but I'll post again next time I have an update.

Another update: I flipped the cabinet back over to try and re-address the right side. I gave it the overnight-soak method (about 8 hours this time, as I slept later than I'd intended).
This time around:
-A liiiiittle bit of color came up on some parts of the rags, where it'd already been exposed
-Some part of the blue had a strange 'turtling' where the latex scraped off
-I scraped a little more aggressively, to try to minimize the remaining "spotty"; this worked for the most part
-Still will require another wipedown to remove the remaining residue, but will clean up pretty nicely I think

Wish it'd all come off as cleanly as Xerico's, but even as it is, it's a vast improvement over the plain latex!

Cabinet - Right Side - After initial attempt at Xerico's method (~10 min soak time)20170709_082623 (resized).jpg

Cabinet - Right Side - Soaking again20170709_082451 (resized).jpg

Cabinet - Right Side - Removing rags after long soak; some minor color pull (only in a few spots)20170709_082519 (resized).jpg

Cabinet - Right Side - Good rippling of latex after long soak20170709_082628 (resized).jpg

Cabinet - Right Side - A bit of "turtling" of the blue in some (not all) places20170709_083554 (resized).jpg

Cabinet - Right Side - After scraping (still a little left to do, plus residue wipedown)20170709_085228 (resized).jpg

Thanks Chris! We got our first machines just after she turned 4; one worked & one didn't. So the functional one helped her learn about pinball & how to play (and she got VERY good), and the non-working one helped her learn the excitement of bringing one back to life, and troubleshoot & test. Other machines I've brought home have been in various states of health, so she loves helping with the "simple" stuff -- replacing rubbers, finding broken lights, testing all the switches, etc. Now that she's a little stronger, I'm having her step up into "bigger" jobs, like removing playfield pieces, cleaning, adjusting switches, etc. That's why this Surfer is the perfect level machine for her right now -- it doesn't need too much mechanical work, just mostly needs the stuff she can handle.

That being said, she did lose interest in the soak/scrub/scrape latex paint removal process. (She's 6, after all, lol.) So while she contributed to the backbox, I ended up doing the rest without her. (A friend who stopped over helped a bit too.)

So, I'd better get the parts we need ordered up, so she can get back on it!

Another update: I ran a soak & scrape cycle on the front face of the backbox and the front face of the cabinet. I see wanted to try another long soak, but didn't want to run as long as my previous ones. I think perhaps those were a liiiiittle to dry.

As such, I let this soak run for 3 hours and then attacked it with the plastic scraper, and the paint came off much better than the others. It still had a little moistness to it, but it was dry enough where it wasn't wanting to pull up any of the original paint below it, it seemed.

I wish I'd done it this way on the other sections!

I then went back and hit the other sections (which still had some flaky sections of latex), and was actually able to remove a lot of it with a razor blade (eek!) ... with just the right angle and just the right pressure, it scraped away fairly well.

There was still a fair amount of residue left on there, but a light scrubbing with Mean Green helped take a lot of that off.

All in all, I learned a lot through trial and error. Here's a shot of the sides which came out the best!
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Thanks, folks. My only regret was how much trial & error it took to get the soak timing right -- which, I would imagine, may vary based on the specific paint and/or application thickness. The left side of the cabinet turned out the worst (looks better than it does in post #6, as I've removed more & cleaned it up a lot since that photo), and -- figures -- that side will be the most visible based on where I'm putting it in the lineup. Oh well. I've learned a lot, hopefully you have too, and I'll feel more confident if I have do it again in the future.

Just wish I could've had results like Xerico, his 4MBC cleanup was amazing. Still, even though it's not perfect & pristine, it's 1000x better than it was!