EDIT 5/2/2017: HE LIVES! Played the first game on the reassembled machine yesterday - see post https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/poor-frank-this-big-hurt-is-aptly-named-what-should-i-do/page/2#post-3744998

EDIT 5/26/2016: Well looks like I'm committed now, may as well turn this into a restoration thread... changed title to reflect this.

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Poor Frank! This Big Hurt is aptly named; what should I do?

Rename it to Big MRSA and be done?

Picked up two games as a package yesterday. Way I see it, the one functioning and mostly clean game was a good deal so the second was essentially free. And looks salvageable... or is it?

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Obviously this game was stored in a damp area as there's trace surface rust in lots of places. But the boards are spotless and it boots (to a battery error) and seems intact enough that I'd might try getting it going. I've fixed and restored worse...!

But the brown filth on the playfield concerns me... I'm pretty sure it's mold. Ain't nobody got time for an infection.

The good news is it does not appear to have eaten into the paint or the wood.... it's surface gunk, I was able to scrape it off as a test.

The bad news is it's pretty dense stuff... I had to scrape it off. So how should I remove it, really? I don't DARE try to air blast it since #1, I'm not sure I have that kind of pressure and #2, I don't want that crap going airborne to contaminate the surroundings. I'm not sure about liquid disinfectants and scrubbing assistants since I don't want to ruin the pf any further or feed latent spores by getting things wet...

...so whats the best way to remove the mold and salvage this?

(and BTW, WTF did Gottlieb make these pfs with? Ironwood? Holy heck is this playfield heavy!)

Had some time this morning to do some basic cleaning and better evaluate what I might be in for. I have to say it seems pretty conflicting, so here goes:

The good news is, the cabinet is not as bad as I thought. In fact, the surface contaminants wiped off pretty easy with anti-bac wipes and what was crusty looking inside, was mostly just dirt. I spritzed a dusting of Lysol just to kill off any latency and it's now in a dry and dehumidifer-equipped environment. So the cab is solid and clean, as is the head (obviously needs more, but as I said this is just a start).

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Vid's advice is unassailable but I just loaned my rotisserie to a friend and I don't have good outdoor storage. But I didn't want this think nastifying my indoor area. So I had to carefully address the pf for risk/reward and reasonable mitigation meanwhile, ASAP. So I used respiratory protection and gloves, and careful, gentle, non-agressive motions to pre-clean the pf for better inspection.

The good news is, when I removed the apron, instead of the slaughterhouse horror show I was expecting, it was clean underneath.

The playfield has factory mylar so I decided to wipe that part down with antibac wipes just for a gentle inpection cleaning. While doing so I discovered that the brown crud in the flipper area wiped really easy with those.

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The underside of the pf should wipe as easily once all the mechs are out of the way... and I would do that in more accordance to vid's advice above. But I'm not sure I should go that far. Because with the mylar cleaned up, there are some concerning tell-tales:

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Issue #1 is some heavy planking visible on the right side. The mylar is protecting this but it's absolutely obvious that a mylar-removal restoration is NOT in this game's future. The pf below the mylar is not perfect as evidenced by the insert edging, but removing the mylar would destroy the art and pf surface. Which is fine. This can be a good player, but...

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...Issue #2 is spotting between the mylar and pf that looks suspiciously like mild mildew. It's not air bubbling. It's smooth, and really only visible in contrast with the black, but... if it got between the mylar and wood, that can't be good. But even this isn't the worst part. That would be

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Issue #3: discoloration of the art contrasting between the plastic inserts and the wood (look at the script "Shoot" words in the outfield). There is also a ring around a couple of the inserts. I can't imagine this could be from anything other than moisture / mold getting into the space between the insert and wood... or deeper into the wood itself (oh no).

This will never clean perfectly, but in all honesty I'm fine with a nice player's machine (it was free!) and as far as baseball goes: when you think about comfy leather mitts, threaded rawhide balls, wood bats, warm dirt and grass, and trusty uniforms, there's a textured aesthetic that goes with the game so the wood grain clear crazing and minor insert edging actually fits the theme to me. Worn and trusty like an old glove.

But that discoloration... ugh. Is it worth pursuing a strip-down cleaning or is this already too far gone to ever be "safe"?

Did some more investigative cleaning tonight. Removed the flipper, sling, and apron mechs to for a more thorough look topside. Then unscrewed all the stuff in the same area of the underside...

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^ Mold is fascinating stuff. I mean, it grew on the wood all around and on the staples fastening but NOT on that paper fuse ID card!

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So at first glance it seems like it cleaned reasonably well. BUT, consider the plys in the wood: growing on the edges exposed around mech, bulb, and insert holes. Cleaning this would suck. I don't THINK it's gone too deep to be concerned about but is there any way to be sure? Is a Lysol dusting after removing the visible enough, or would it come back?

Would like some ideas before I rip the rest of the stuff off, as there's more lurking toward the back of the pf too. But at this point I'd say 85% of it has been removed.

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Topside, things are a little better, but not without concerns:

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That crazing is heavy AND tactile, so the original clearcoat is cracking. Cleaning this is going to be tricky lest it turn disastrous! I have some thoughts there, but first I did a little experimenting with a light ME+alcohol rub and Novus 2, primarily between the left flipper and the center drain insert:

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It seems to clean reasonably enough given a light touch against its filthy condition. To my own taste, I don't mind a little lacquer crazing in the center area since it almost looks like ground surrounding home plate. And the red smoothed out nicely!

I'm not sure how well the colors will come back to match in the mylar / bare areas though. They probably never will...

But it might not matter?

And speaking of mylar, I'm kind of surprised the factory mylar left so much of the flipper area exposed. Given the crazing approaching planking in that area, I'm thinking my only option is to custom cut a lower mylar section to seal and protect the area once it's cleaned.

Provided this is still even worth bringing to that point?

What sayeth ye wiser salts re: the mold and other damage?

At least the pallet I salvaged had blocking that perfectly fits the rear cabinet rails... I almost look like I know what I'm doing now LOL

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Wait, ColorDMD does GTB games? I thought they were only doing WMS and Sterns? Gotta admit, the thought of doing the coloring for a game has captivated me for quite some time, given all my experience doing raster graphics and custom bitmaps dot-by-dot back in the day. But most of the "in demand" WMS/Stern titles will be long done before I ever own any of them.

Back to Big Hurt, I think mechanically this game can be saved. And ff anyone's dumb enough to save a forlorn GTB Sys3 it would be me, on this title specifically since I'm born-raised South Sider (still have '05 memorabilia on my walls) and remember Frank Thomas' heyday well.

Not sure it's a keeper for me, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it for a while before passing it along. But my conscience won't let me pass a time-bomb to someone else, you know?

But man, the overall build quality on this impresses the hell out of me. It's a shame Gottlieb went under, they sure didn't seem to be cutting too many corners. You can see they knew what they were doing and maintained some pride in it.

Agreed; I played one at Louisville Expo this year. Can't say I had any expectations but I was surprised at how much fun it was. Cheesy 90's graphics, some pretty nice shots and the sounds were very engaging, they really had that stadium electric atmosphere down. The only thing that bugged me was all the "_(something something)_ Frank Thomas (something else)_!!!!!" messianics seemed a bit overdone and repetitive. Still, it was one of the smaller list of games I returned to a few times. I might have played it more if the machine I ended up buying hadn't been a few feet away.

I wasn't looking for one but here it is, so I'm hoping to patch it up and get it going. Not sure it's a keeper but it deserves to live and could make excellent trade-up material.

Guilty The whole setup of that deal had me worried all along until load-up, but it worked out favorably and for a good bit less than the posting. The Cue Ball Wizard is MUCH nicer with a pristine playfield; some mechs / plastics need TLC but it played a demo game. I figure it alone was worth the price paid so Big Hurt is a labor of love right now.

Cue Ball Wizard was very nice! Just finished the preliminary fixup and played a few games today, everything works. Needs a standard shop and a few cosmetic replacements / improvements; the removed coin door is worst part but it was blanked cleanly and the playfield looks fantastic. I'll be ordering the parts to fully shop it soon. The timing on this was crazy, he was motivated to be rid of them and I'd negotiated a lower offer on the pair before driving... when I arrived and saw the sorry condition of Big Hurt I negotiated down further still. Cannot complain because the drive was wonderful and Cue Ball alone turns out well worth the price. I'll leave it set up easy for my kids until I decide to work a trade or upsell. If I get Big Hurt going that will be further icing on the cake.

Tonight I removed the wiring harness and most of the rest of the underside mechs...

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With everything out of the way, I could see a lot of growth and fuzz in the holes and slots, on the edges of the wood. So I took some Lysol concentrate and a 1/2" Harbor Freight bottle brush and scrubbed them...

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After that I sprayed areo-can Lysol again then wiped everything dry. That strikes me as a reasonable effort, given the sorry as-yet-to-be evaluated topside state of the game.

But I think it he can live again...

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...Provided I can untangle that rainbow spaghetti vomit nest and remember where everything went...

Arrgh! You're probably right. Thing is, the wiring actually looks really nice, and so to save time and avoid breaking stuff and/or making more work for myself, I left everything soldered to the harness including bulb sockets and coils.

OTOH I went this far so I may as well earn "harness washing" experience points. But I'm presuming I can't leave the coils and stuff attached. Or can I? If I desolder them, what's the best water-proof way to tag the wires?

What kind of detergent is safe?

This will sound stupid, but should I remove the paper wrappers first, or do those normally survive OK?

Good for you snagging that pair in Lawrenceburg two days later! I was 30 minutes too late. Would have gladly taken the "300" as my first EM!

But I'm surprised how much sleuthing attention this pin and listing has gotten... I've even had PM's about the BH specifically. So I got the pair for $800. I figured that wasn't too bad for a working Cue Ball Wizard... that leaves some overhead for shopping costs and I could still possibly come out ahead at sale or trade. Big Hurt was the gamble but for free I can't go wrong; I love this kind of tinkering with my time. I got it to boot before teardown and at worst it has good parts value, in fact I already used boards from BH to troubleshoot CBW so that alone made it worth the hassle.

So with the kids out of school and at the in-laws' for the past week and on through the next you'd think I'd have plenty of time to work on this, but nope! Too much othery to attend to so not much to report.

Actually my 11yo daughter insists she wants to help with the shop and spiff job for Cue Ball Wizard (the other, playable game I got with this), so I spent some time investigating its needs and putting an order for Steve Young together. That oughta be here by the time she gets back. I'm looking forward to working on it with her, should be a lot of good teaching moments in there.

But I did manage to do some stuff for Big Hurt. I washed the harness in the dishwasher (see Vid's new guide) and that came out OK...

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... but I'm not convinced putting it back on will be simple! The wires have some "memory" but they've also been twisted, looped, snagged, crossed, and who knows what else just moving around. Also I lost some labels, so I'll need to get the manual to double-check which coil, etc goes where.

In bigger news, last night I discovered that the pf is a good 6 inches longer than the last pin I restored (Firepower), so I had to modify my Rotezel (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-awesome-50-diy-rotisserie-or-rotezel) to fit. Thankfully, swapping the pipe nipples for the "close" (that's actually what they're called!) size worked fine.

So tonight I started taking apart the pf topside:

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Ugh, this game must have been a nightmare to shop on route. Gottlieb sure didn't do anyone any favors - that scoreboard area is a major PITA to get apart, and there must be nearly a dozen bulbs in there. I'm only halfway through at the moment. Have a weekend hiking trip planned, so further work will have to wait until next week.

Still, progress is progress, and there's no crying in pinball...

Tonight I finished the topside teardown. Enough to clean everything up anyway...

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This game actually had a really nice pf glass which I swapped into another game for now... and after finding yet more glass shards buried under the ramps and such, I have a working theory that maybe a dropped beer was responsible for sparking the mold growth in spots. That kind of moisture would have run down the the pf and of course dripped through all the places where the mold was most prevalent. Might even explain the specific kind of mold too... now I wish I was more knowledgeable about that sort of thing.

A few other telltales emerge too:

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This game was obviously stored in an unfavorable location. Now the Firepower I restored looked like it came out of an industrial whorehouse, but even with that and being 15 years older it wasn't even half as yellowed! But I'm almost relieved to see the yellowing in the back of the pf. Relative to my earlier concerns about the basepath inserts being inconsistently discolored due to mold, it would instead seem that wood is simply a better thermal conductor than plastic. The wooden coatings have all yellowed with relative consistency.

Anyway, I'm very intrigued to see how well (or not) this might clean up.

It's also interesting to see all the color and art Gottlieb put in the back of the pf, especially near the rear orbits. You can't see ANY of it with the scoreboard in the way....

Glad some folks are interested. I'll update when I get stuff done, but I'll probably not have too much time in the next few days. Actually, we are trying to close on a new house so this might get *really* sidetracked for an extended bit!

Meanwhile, I posted a want ad for a new playfield, on the long-shot chance there's a "better than this one" lurking out there somewhere, no better time to find out. I mean, this existing pf is really in pretty bad shape: Look at the way bulb heat alone burned the surrounding wood and cracked the clear!

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Now I'm a reasonably competent hobbyist and might even do respectable work beyond that, but I'm no miracle worker. There is no reasonably economic way for me to restore this thing to anything better than "clean player's condition". Which is fine by me for this situation. But while the whole thing is apart, if anyone has something better lying around, let me know....!

You know, looking at the last photos I posted, I noticed that where posts, brackets, and such were attached to the pf, the clear did not crack at all. The clamping pressure of those objects deflected the fracture stress and kept the clear adhered to the wood. Interesting

I've looked for that before, but seems the strongest I can find is 91%. Does the extra percentage bump make enough difference? I know 70 to 91 was sure worth it, ha ha.

Heh, I've fixed so much random stuff that could only be charitably described as opuses of misplaced affection over the years, this is almost nothing. I only wish I'd plunged into this hobby 10 or more years ago. Better late than never I guess...?

Spent a couple hours cleaning the pf as best as reasonable for now, so here's where we're at:

I used a combination of ME+91% (still haven't found 95, even beauty and hardware stores don't have it) to scrub the whole pf. Then removed the residue and applied Novus 3 then Novus 2. I was not happy with the results... still a lot of grime in the mylar and it felt rough where nicked and scratched, etc.

So I used naptha to remove as much residue grime as possible. Then took some 1500 grit paper I had on hand and blocked it down, especially in the mylared area. Followed up with more naptha, then Novus3, then Novus2 again.

The results are MUCH better given what I started with!

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That being said, there are still some unrecoverable areas. The worst is the left half of the pop bumper area which crazed and yellowed horribly! But the good news is this area is almost invisible when the game is assembled, so it's not as bad as it seems.

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The red area near the flippers needs touch-up in spots, but it looks to be pretty easy.

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For all the stout construction in this game, I'm surprised so little had factory mylar. Would it have killed them to extend the sheet into the pop area, or lower into the flipper zone? Anyway I could do more to enhance the shine and such of what exists, but this is still early on and at any rate I'm not sure how best to proceed there.

Regardless, I plan to cut mylar to patch in those areas, but the metal ball guide wires concern me. The one that I removed is barbed at the ends, so the pf gets torn up when I pull them out. Ugh, friggin' Gottlieb. What's the best way to remove those?