Welcome to the addiction/obsession.

you'll be satisfied when it is all back together and looking pretty

It's f**king difficult, but even more f**king rewarding.

My wife cried...literally cried...when I bought a beater Funhouse. Didn't matter that I told her it had potential for a full restore and would be more valuable down the road.

Only when I finished the cabinet did she walk around it with a smile on her face. And that made all the work even more worthwhile.

Hang in there, buddy!

Signs your hobby takes up too much time for $200, Alex.

The restoration part of this hobby certainly has moved to a higher level. Hell, I saw a thread where they guy CHROME PLATED the leg bolt plate on his game. More power to him, whatever floats his boat.

Let me know if you have any questions or need pics when reassembling. I've torn my BSD down a couple of times in the past 2 months and will do it again when my plastic set arrives. I never seem to take quite enough but I may have a useful picture if you're missing something.

I started "cleaning" an Indy. I was only going to partially strip and wax the PF. But the problem was, once I did that, the PF looked so good, that the parts I hadn't stripped and cleaned looked worse, so I had to also strip and clean those parts. Then some of the upper PF parts merged with the lower PF, then the lower PF looked awful compared to the upper PF and so on.....4 months later and all I have is a completely bare cabinet (it looks better than new) and parts all over my shed and house. My wife also thinks Im crazy....and she is 100% correct. Its addictive but so rewarding.

I've gone down so many paths on the EM I'm working on that the whole trail is flat. I think I found the best way for me to move forward and actually finish this thing. Just keep chugging.

took me about 40 hours to do a full tear down and clean up job on my t2. luckily the cab and playfield was nice, but the machine was very dirty. i polished a bit of metal myself.

I agree. It's a *ton* of work. Especially when you start doing cabinet decals, touching up and clearing playfields, sanding, buffing and flaming ramps, re-graining ball guides, tumbling all the hardware, rebuilding all the mechs, fixing hacks, rebuilding boards, etc, etc..

It's easy to have 200 hours into a game. If you figure you work 5 days a week and have to spend one of your days off doing family stuff, You get to spend maybe 20 hours a week working on it. That means it's going to take 2-3 months to get it done at the minimum. And don't forget the cost of all the tools and equipment that is needed to do that type of work. Restoring games is definitely a commitment. Then there is the cost of parts.......

It makes the cost of having a "professional" do it start to look reasonable!

But... The results are very much worth it. I love stepping back and taking a look at what I have accomplished.

Ok.. Not to take this post off topic, but I totally agree with this. While I am not sexist and this is not meant to be a sexist comment, I can only relate to my prior experiences and I can say that *every* woman I have ever been with cannot see far enough ahead to see the diamond emerge from the rough. It's only after it's done that they see it. At least in my experiences it doesn't matter how many times they have seen the transformation, they still have a cow every time I bring home a game in need of restoration. Drives me nuts.

Michael

Just spent a good 25 hours tearing down and polishing every inch, metal ball returns included, of a T2. Led'd the entire thing as well. A quick shop job and a few repairs I thought was going to take a few hours... not so much. Love the outcome though.

That is a costly and time consuming part of restoring the first machine. Once you have all the right tools, it gets infinitely easier.

I think they see competition for your time, I don't think they look at it from a value perspective. Every restore you begin, they see less time with them/the family.

This is OT, but how did you do that? Polishing different metals has been the hardest part of my indy restore. They all react so differently.

Polished flipper assembly
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Playfield Swap
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Yeah, it gets overwhelming in a hurry. I picked up a project Firepower and I knew I'd have my work cut out just to get it presentable and playable. But it's funny how the scope keeps expanding...

Just for the cab alone, I had to: remove the contents, clean inside and out, repair the damaged floor, relaminate the neck, rebuild the backbox corners, fill-and-sand the sides, reattach the plys, etc etc etc... then mask, paint, touchup.... but the result is worth it even if it's not HEP perfection.

Oh, the playfield, of course: Strip it (always a job, and FP doesn't even have ramps!). Clean it. Remove inserts. Buy new inserts. Realize the new inserts are a shave too gib, so bore the holes. That means new decals are needed too, which means I need to clear it... which means I need ____.... and so that goes... better make sure I do a bang-up job touching up the paint first, so at what point do I finally say "enough"?!

And what about all those parts off the pf? Clean and touchup and de-yellow the plastics. Polish the metal bits. Oh so that's just two steps but they're so time-consuming! Hey wait a minute, these metal parts, there's trim on the cabinet too... oops...

Mechs? Yeah, I know they need attention. The blown transistors on the driver boards yield some clues toward problem areas, but of course there's always more. And adjusting switches, cleaning targets, rebuilding coils all adds up.

Oh wait, back to the boards: Bulletproofing 101 at minimum, you either fork over more $ or time. And never a guarantee until you plug it in for the moment of truth - the definition of a leap of faith.

Compared to all of that, sealing and touching up the flaking backglass will be "easy"!

Yet bit by bit, it comes together and when one aspect gets overwhelming, I can turn to the next for a diversion. It's a labor of love with a tinge of obsession toward overcoming a combined challenge, that doesn't get near the respect it deserves.

"It's a pin thing, you wouldn't understand..."

I have a love/hate relationship with working on pins. One on hand it's satisfying. On the other hand it's VERY time consuming. At this point I prefer to spend a little more and get pins in nice condition.

Absolutely. I learned long ago to buy the right tools for the job at hand. Even if it's just one time. That way I have it the next time the situation arises.

It sounds counterintuitive but I sanded it since the mounting plate is rough. 400, 800, 1000 and then 1500. From there it was buffing with an angle grinder and rouge.

And parts too. I am so tired of having a machine nearly done and it turns out I am missing one thing. I am almost done restoring my T2 and the other day one of the flipper buttons was causing problems. Turns out the Capacitor 0.1 uF 500 v disc fell off and needs to be replaced. That's not something I have laying around so I have to order it and wait for it to arrive before I can play the game properly.

One of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in ANY hobby is my WCS94 restore. It's not easy, it takes a lot of work, TONS of questions and leaning on the community for help, but the end results are something to be proud of. The most amazing thing is when you can say, "This machine looked like hell when I got it."

It's so amazing to turn it on and be able to play the fruits of your labor!

Enjoy mate.

Hey that's cool, I cleaned mine on my Pinball Magic too. Didn't polish it though. We are all sick though.

Tedious, time consuming and expensive (right tools and parts). But, I wouldn't say difficult, imo.

You think that's bad? My house is for sale because I want a separate workshop building for working on pins.

I don't play them at all anymore, It just not fun.... However, building them, AWESOME SAUCE!!!

You need a tumbler and an ultrasonic cleaner in the mix.

But the best investment BY FAR was an electric driver. Cant even imagine where you would begin without one.

Damn you guys are making me feel so much better. I'm a relative Noob and my wife thinks I'm nuts. She needs to meet some of you.

and i thought i was crazy... ok... now i'm gonna have to try this...

God bless you man, more power to you, but this is the reason I pay more for fully restored machines. It's bad enough how much I play my pins, but my wife would literally freak out if I was spending more time working on them.

Good luck man, I am sure you will be stoked once it's all done.

Absolutely! I've torn down my GTB Surf Champ and throwing bits in my cleaner then the tumbler is way easier than hand polishing them!

My wife has threatened to start lining up non-pinball stuff in the garage in the hope I'll start cleaning them too...

Setting expectations is important for me to stay content. At best, I'm good for 7 hours a week at pinball restoration.
When I have a 45 shop job ahead of me, I know it can take me 9 weeks. I think that's a hard pill to swallow for most of us on here who could power through 45 hours in 5 days if we had the time blocked off. Waiting 9 weeks to accomplish something you know you could do in 5 days, is quite a stretch for my brain, but I'm trying to adjust my expectations for it.
I don't think of restoration as difficult. I think of it as a slow motion grind. One foot in front of the other... you'll get there.
And sometimes -- you have to just turn up the music, turn down the lights, and play a pin for a few hours and fall back in love with it, and put off work for another day...
-mof

Damn you @Skins. I was ready to put the backbox PCB mounting board back in the backbox after a quick wipe down, but now I have no choice but to polish it. Otherwise I will know its in there unpolished, taunting me.

I think the most extreme restore purchase for me was getting a backbox warning message screen and then going to all the trouble of finding the exact original screen paint and colour from an obscure screen paint specialist. Had to buy 1kg of the paint and so far have used all of about 5 grams on my Indy. Anyone in Sydney region Australia want to redo the warning sign on their backbox pm me.

Looks awesome though.

You guys give me hope. I am looking my very first restore/rebuild square in the eye and quavering at the amount of work involved.

Tools make it easier as mentioned. One thing that really cuts time is a friend helping you out. One person on one side of the cab and the other on the opposite makes it fly by not having to walk back and forth in alot of cases and 2 eyes during tear down makes it alot easier figuring it out when putting it back together.

Polished crap under the apron nobody sees anyway...

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Oh wait.....they DO see it! Yeah, this hobby makes people nutty.

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I've been plugging away slowly on one of my pins for over a full year. I'm doing a very though cleaning & restoration and ended up tearing everything down to bare wood. I tend to step away from it for weeks at a time to work on other pins or projects, but, I keep at it in fits and starts. The cabinet body is back together, and I'm finishing the backbox--just have to disassemble and clean the light board. Then it's onto rebuilding the power supply, and finally finishing the playfield.

"5 hours"...lol

I usually put in 10 hours during the week during the course of 2-3 evenings, and maybe 6-12 hours every other weekend. If I happen to pick up a game at some point during the week, most of those hours go into cleaning up the new game for the first time in 20 years. Then I make note of the major problems, make note of any hard-to-find parts to keep an eye out for that need replacing, then set it aside and jump back to my other projects.

It's basically a part-time job, but doesn't earn me any money!

Looks great! I don't actually polish the stuff under the apron, but I do clean it and run it under the wire wheel on my grinder. Before and after pics...

Rob Bell
Robsgameroom.com

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I never saw anywhere it would be easy. I say you only make it hard as you want it to be. If your the type that has to have mint showroom new and chromed hardware cool but be ready to put a ton of time and money in to it.

Haha that's funny.

How about a transformer bracket

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Some other bits...

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Nah best part. Just hard to remember how to put it back together lol

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You find interesting things.

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Tools I got so sick of having a car garage to work on pins that I built and furnished a complete climate controlled pin shop with upstairs storage . It has a large garage door but trust me no car has ever been in this shop .

Tools are a ton of cash but they make me happy when I have the right tool for the job .

Pinball restoration is not hard but it takes a certain discipline to accomplish a outstanding product . You won't get there on your first or second. Doing pins over and over is the only way to becoming a pro, most people burn out after one or two but one or two is still very rewarding.

Jim

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How are you polishing these parts?

Well said, Jim. None of what we do is really difficult. Time consuming and a pain in the ass is what a lot of it is.

Tools....buy the good shit and you'll never have to buy them again.

Bench buffer, angle grinder with buffing pad, dremel with buffing attachments and high grit sand paper.

+1

I will, because I'll still find a way to f**k it up.

Sometimes it's hard to be willing to just let something be acceptable. Particularly after you see people post immaculate restorations. Right now I'm going through the motorboard on Stardust, disassembling and cleaning each piece. It's already taken days and I'm only halfway done, but I'm still not going as far as I could, disassembling every switch stack, sonic cleaning every piece, etc. I have to be satisfied with shiny, if a little bit spotty, and move on if I ever want to finish the game. I like things to be clean, but sometimes the enemy of good is better.

That's just a catchy phrase lazy people have latched onto. Now get those switch stacks into the sonic cleaner!!