Bought this on our first trip to Pinfest (may of 2015) along with a Taxi and Indy 500. Those are both long gone. I fixed it, dolled it up a tiny bit and put it in the game room. It quickly became one of our favorites. This was my second classic Stern (meteor was first) and the game that turned me into a classic Stern-head. Once I found out Greatwich was making playfields I knew I was going to restore it one day so into my storage room it went to make room in the rotation, about 65 games ago. Got one of the irregulars from John a few months ago and started getting pressure from my Gal to get my ass in gear, clean up the disaster area that is my shop and get to work on her favorite game. I figured I would start a thread on the restoration. This wont be on par with some of the other guys who post such amazing work but I wanted to establish a start date so I can keep motivated and keep track of how long it takes. I have a bunch of games in the queue after this so it will be interesting to me to see what type of time savings each experience brings. My plan on this one is to do as much as I can on the old playfield so I can confirm proper operation after each step is complete. This will not be very efficient but it should keep my confidence high during the process.
Start Date: 6/17/21-Initial damage assessment
Intermittent boot up
Half the GI is out
Half feature lights stuck on, other half not working
PF hardware all oxidized
Plenty of rust on the plungers
Pop ring/rod broken
All pop bases are destroyed. I'm surprised they worked at all.
Coin door nasty but workable
Lock bar receiver not receiving and locking properly
Light coating of mold spots everywhere due to humidity in my storage room. That is fixed now.
Nice assortment of parts in the cabinet
Again, this thread will not be as well documented and the final results will not be as amazing as the superstar-restorer guys but I will put in a solid effort in hopes that it may help encourage some of the guys/gals with less experience to take the plunge.
I have already done a bunch of work and forgotten to take pics along the way. That being said I did manage to get a few and will try to remember to get images of the important stuff from now on. Let's start with these that were taken in the initial phases of assessment and disassembly.
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