I'm currently shopping Volley for a buddy. I like to keep him updated on the progress, and text messages were getting cumbersome, so I'll try posting here instead.

Today I started work on the top side of the playfield. There are no major issues, it's just been a long time since it was cleaned properly.
Playfield Before

First layer of parts removed, reveals a bit of paint damage behind the blue targets, but nothing too serious.
Playfield Strip 1

All parts removed. Underneath the plastic posts, all of the colors are much brighter. I hope cleaning and waxing can restore some of that to the rest of the artwork. Most of the playfield is in decent condition, exceptions being the ball arch track, and some wear around the pop bumpers with low quality touchups.
Playfield Strip 2

Mylar under the pop bumpers is completely detached from the playfield. Not sure that's helping much...
Mylar Lifted

Pop bumper caps in fair condition, not great. Tabs are broken off two of them, they were secured to the body with some kind of putty.
Pop Bumper Caps

The plastics are in okay condition, no major damage, I think they can be refreshed fairly well.
Plastics

Lane guides are intact and will probably clean up fine.
Lane Guides

Lots of parts to clean and polish.
Dirty Parts

The original post caps (left) are brittle and discolored. I am thinking replace with Stern style rubber post caps (center), but Williams style nylon nuts are also an option, I have both styles in stock.
Post Caps

A short review of major items already done over the past few weeks.

Front and rear leg bolt plates replaced with heavy duty version. The originals were badly mangled, all 8 leg bolts were cross-threaded and went into the garbage.
Leg Bolt Plates - Front
Leg Bolt Plates - Rear

The plywood lip at the rear bottom edge of the cabinet is completely broken away, allowing the bottom panel to sag, and there was a lot of flex in the cabinet.
Missing Lip

A generous bead of carpenter's glue applied to the inside of the cabinet (dried overnight), and some screws from the outside, dramatically improved the rigidity of the cabinet.
Glued and Screwed

Mutilated power plug replaced.
Power Plugs

Jones plugs before and after. I used a rotary tool with small brass wire wheel.
Jones Dirty
Jones Clean

Tilt mech before and after. It was not aligned side-to-side, maybe never was since it left the factory. I used a couple of washers to center it properly.
Tilt Before
Tilt After

Lockdown bar and receiver were a mess of rust. The locking mechanism could barely move at all, and required a lot of force.
Lockdown Receiver
Lockdown Before

I heard good things about Evaporust so decided to give it a try. Managed to find a tray of just the right size, allowing a minimum of solution to be used. The self-starting siphon hose was good for filling the tray but not for emptying it, had to use a funnel and it was very awkward. Dirty solution was recovered to a second container because it can be re-used, but I didn't want to contaminate the remainder of the jug.
Evaporust Supplies

I let the receiver soak overnight, occasionally working the locking mechanism to ensure all parts would get exposure. Plastic wrap used to reduce evaporation loss.
Lockdown Soak

Results were totally amazing, complete removal of all the rust, and lever action like new.
Lockdown After

Quick and easily reversible free play hack.
Free Play Hack

Almost every game that visits here needs work on the shooter rod. I like to have the user-facing parts look nice, and the user-touching parts feel nice. This one failed on both counts.
Shooter Before

Fortunately this is one of the easier parts to refresh. Usually it's enough to just chuck it into a drill, grab with a piece of steel wool, and spin for a minute or two. In this case I had to use some sandpaper too.
Shooter After

The playfield is now all clean and waxed, forgot to take any intermediate photos. Will post tomorrow after buffing it. I left the standup switches in place, but the switch actuators and the kicker had to come out. They are all grungy, and the kicker has nasty burrs on it.
Actuators Before

The cleaning was pretty successful, especially in the heavy dirt areas such as ball arch track, shooter lane, and under the apron. I'm less happy with the results of waxing, some areas are still a bit dull. I will make another pass tomorrow.
Playfield Waxed

Compare with before:
Playfield Dirty

Plastics cleaned, polished, and flattened. One has a small crack but otherwise they look pretty good.
Plastics After

New arrival. Maybe set it up tomorrow.
New Arrival

Well Atlantis looks to be in much nicer cosmetic condition than Volley, but it's already a project. Can't even get the legs on, all of the leg bolt plates and bolts are ruined. I hope this game won't be needing its own thread...

Some thread damage can be repaired with tap and die kit, but in this case you can see the thread cylinder is split in half from deformation of the plate.
Leg Bolt Plate - Ruined

One of the playfield Jones plugs is also broken in half. Disappointing but doesn't seem like it will be a big problem.
Jones - Broken

With Atlantis out of the way, I finally finished refreshing most of the Volley parts, and reassembly is in progress.

The ball kicker had large burrs, now filed down and polished smooth. Before:
Kicker Before
After:
Kicker After

Under apron parts clean and ready for action. Before:
Under Apron Before
After:
Under Apron After

Reassembly complete.
Playfield Unlit

Warm white frosted LED bulbs look great in any classic game.
Playfield Lit

Everything is clean and shiny. The posts are not great, but I tried to place the ugliest parts out of sight.
Apron View

There will probably be a few more tweaks but the job is pretty much done.
Shop Job Complete

Originally this game included a spring steel retaining clip for the tilt. But the clip was missing on Atlantis, so I moved that over and had to come up with another solution for Volley.
Retaining Clip

After thinking about it for a couple of days, and rooting around in random parts bins, this plastic ring looked just about perfect for the job. It was easy to drill a hole and tap threads for a set screw.
Retaining Ring

Tilt now installed.
Tilt Installed

A few weeks of play testing is great for revealing pesky intermittent problems. I fixed a few small items not really worth mentioning, but one in particular seemed like a good candidate for another post.

First I noticed that occasionally, the score would not reset completely when starting a new game. Pressing Start a second time always cleared it though.

Then I noticed that the error was always on the hundreds reel. Here is an example - 6360 reset to 700.
Score 6360Score 0700

Being able to reproduce a problem, is really key to understanding it and fixing it properly. And this would only happen something like one game in fifty. But eventually by experimenting with specific score values achieved by finger activation of playfield switches, it became apparent that it would always occur in very specific conditions:

- hundreds reel value 1-5
- all other reels set to zero, or 6-9

This seemed pretty mysterious until I figured out the reset sequence with the help of schematic:
AX Reset

What this is trying to say, is that each score reel has a zero-position switch connected in series. And when all of these switches are closed, it stops the score reset sequence. In conclusion - the hundreds reel must have a problem with this switch being closed when it is not at the zero position.

The specific switch could be identified by the wire colors indicated on the schematic. So let's look at the thousands reel which was working properly. This stack of three switches is influenced by a plastic actuator which follows cams on the score reel, with the bottom switch used for zero position. Here the reel is at the zero position, and the switch is closed.
1000s - Zero Position

Moving the reel to position one lifts the actuator a bit to open the zero position switch, and close the next one. It stays like this until position eight - there is also a nine position which closes the top switch as well, but it's not relevant to this problem.
1000s - One Position

Finally looking at the one position for the hundreds reel it can be seen that the conclusion is correct. The bottom switch remained closed. Bending it open slightly solved the problem.
100s - One Position