The flat plastics covering the rubber ring areas are known as light shields. Obviously, you need to remove them to clean them properly. For me, the best way to clean plastics is with toothpaste. Get the plastic wet using tepid water (not too hot) from the faucet, dab on a bit of toothpaste, and use your fingers to rub the toothpaste over the surface of the plastic, which will remove all of the soot and grime. This works best if the plastic is wet enough to thin down the toothpaste as you work it over the plastic. This technique works on the printed side of the light shield as well. As long as you only use your fingers to work the toothpaste mixture, and the artwork is not already damaged (see below), you will not remove or harm the artwork. Repeat the process until all the grime and soot are removed, then rinse the plastic and dry it off.

Side note: You can clean virtually all of your playfield plastics with toothpaste, even those with artwork, without harming the printing. The only exceptions are the parts with hot-stamped printing, such as the point score legend stamped onto the center of bumper caps. You need to be very careful cleaning around that type of printing. I generally don't use any cleaning agents at all on hot-stamped printing. If I do decide to clean that area at all, I will only wipe very gently with a dry cloth.

Another important note on cleaning printed plastics: If the printing is already damaged (flaking or lifting off) then ANY type of cleaning will remove the printing. So you'll want to check the condition of your printing before cleaning. If it looks like the artwork has detached from the surface of the plastic and is flaking off, then to preserve the artwork, do not clean it.

The broken switch is a standard slingshot stand-up switch, with large contact points.

The white lane guides with the Bally art on them are very hard to find these days, which is why you often see them replaced with plain lane guides. The only place I know to get guides with the original art is to take them off of a salvage playfield.

Most of the time, you can tell if a #455 blinker lamp was supposed to be installed in a socket in the head because there will either be a concave dish-style counter-sink around the socket to accomodate the round glass bulb, or the top part of the socket will be sticking out of its mounting hole so that the round part of the glass bulb is above the panel face. If a socket is mounted below the face of the panel, and the panel around the socket is not dished out, then it's very likely that the factory did not intend for a #455 blinker lamp to be installed in that position.

- TimMe