So this project has been ongoing for a while, but I've just now gotten around to documenting it while the project itself is on pause (more on that later).
A family friend heard I was into pinball and mentioned that they had a game in their garage that they've had for just over 20 years. I went to check out the game and it was a very worn and trashed Space Invaders (sorry for the picture quality, its some of mine and some from the previous owners cell phone). This was the first thing I was able to see when they opened their garage.
Not a good first image of a project game
Just a bit worn...
just a small crackOk, so the cabinet is pretty trashed. Heavily worn all over, lots of planking and de-lamination. Chunks are missing in the front and the sides. The back of the head is super swollen and the cabinet is definitely out of square at this point (main cab and head). Definitely a bit of work here to bring this back. I'm thinking "Okay, its crap, but I can build a new cab, stencils are available, cabinet parts can be had if needed, its possible." Lol, yeah I'm an idiot.

Whats left of the playfield is covered in dirt and nasty grunge. At some point, a mouse had visited the game. It left piss stains and droppings all over. Apparently, it had a thing for both the captive ball area and the outlane areas.
Who needs artwork
Looks close enough to the original artIts heavily worn. Chunks of art are missing and were filled in with a combination of sharpie, black paint, wax and who knows what else. All plastics are super faded and warped like hell.
Well, this could be a problem. I'm not aware of any repro's and I'll pass on overlays. My best hope would to be to find a good NOS playfield. If they exist...

Okay, lets take a look inside. It can't be much worse than the outside. I mean it has a coindoor that looks pretty good, and they even had the key.
Ooooh no scratches or flakingBoth Backglasses look surprisingly good. No cracks or flaking or anything. Not sure how they survived that well in a Missouri garage for 20+ years. Yeah, they are a bit dirty, but that will cleanup without too much trouble.
Most of the manualHey Look, chewed up manuals. That's okay though, I'm not a fan of the bottom of the first 20 pages anyway...
For the record, the schematics were untouched. Apparently the paper schematics are printed on does not taste nearly as good as manual paper.
Nice displaysWe have all the original displays it appears.
yay boardsOkay, looks like all the boards are there. Good start.
looks a bit crusty to meWell this board is pretty destroyed. Less good of a start. But there are a ton of options available here. Non issue.

And the rest of my pictures from this time are lost to the abyss that is getting a new phone, or two.
It has the original transformer, transformer cage, -49 rectifier board with original diodes and bridge rectifiers with minimal hacking or burning.
It also has a mouse nest the size of a basketball and enough chewed wires on the cabinet harness to make this a bit more challenging.
The playfield has all mechs in place, not horribly rusted, no chewed wires (somehow) and only a few hacks to be seen. Plus a few more hidden ones I'll find later.
Not as exciting as the guy who found a SI full of dildo's, but a challenge none the less.

Long story short, I got it for $225. I figured the backglasses alone were worth that, not to mention the transformer and some playfield mechs.
I live 2 hours away and was driving a Pontiac G8 at the time, so my Dad and bother were able to pick it up for me at a later date and bring it up to my place a few weeks later.
Bringing it homeIt traveled 2 hours on a highway like that. They knew it came apart, but it was dark and they didn't want to disconnect all the cables. That's fine though, it made the ride just fine.
Well this should be fun. This is my FIRST pin project and only my 2nd pinball at the time.

For those that noticed the old vendor licenses on the front of the game, they are from Corpus Christi Texas and were dated 1985.
I asked about those since we were in rural Missouri and Texas is a bit of a drive from here. He had a decent story on how he got the game in the first place.
Apparently a friend of his had an uncle in Corpus Christi who owned\ran a bar. While in college, they decided to drive down on a whim to visit the uncle. The assumption was free beer at his bar over spring break.I have no clue how the beer portion of his spring break went, but the uncle told them to take it back with them as it had been abandoned by the operator and he didn't want to fix it.
They loaded it into a Ford Ranger and drove all the way back. All three of them. In the Ford Ranger. With a wide body Bally. Corpus Christi Texas to mid Missouri. That had to be a fun drive!

I was in a new house at this time, so my basement was huge, but didn't have the greatest lighting.
Rather than getting the lighting taken care of, I did the most important thing and began to break this thing down.
After getting the head off and getting it all down the stairs, I started by pulling the boards.
Lamp DriverLamp Driver looks pretty good. No damage I can see. Headers need replacement for sure.
Aux lamp driverAux lamp driver looks pretty good too. Again, headers need some replacement, but otherwise fairly clean.
Bally SoundsSound board looks clean as well. ROM legs are brittle looking and all the caps appear to be original.
SDBSDB looks good. Caps need to be replaced, along with the headers. I found the high voltage plastic cover in the bottom of the cab later on. Also the relay appears to have some issues. I later find that it got something in it and was basically stuck together with some sticky substance. There were a large amount of cold solder joints on the back of this as well.
yay, a crusty MPUAhh the MPU. Seems a bit crusty to me though...
king of crusty
ickOk, thats not so good looking. But at least I cut the battery off before it gets any worse. lol.
Ok the head is now empty except for the harness.
empty headNotice that there is more evidence of our mouse visitor here as well.
-49 Rectifier
-49 Rectifier backsideOkay so the -49 Rectifier is super dirty, but its unmolested, no burnt connectors or hacks to be seen. It even seems like the VARO devices and the bridge rectifiers are original.
Transformer Base PlateThe transformer base plate is a bit dirty as well. It feels like grease with mouse hair and coil dust.
Transformer taps 1
Transformer Taps 2Transformer is in good shape. Dirty for sure, but no other issues.

As far as the boards are concerned, I was in pretty good shape. They all need various components replaced or cleaned, but that's not a big deal. The MPU is roasted. I'm sure I could spend the time to try to save it, but it has more damage than you can see right now and its already a replacement for the original. Its missing traces and everything is coated is green crap on the bottom 1/4 of the board. Thankfully, there are plenty of alternatives out there.

Further inspection of the head shows that it has all 5 original displays included. None seem to have any burn-in nor do they have the nipples broken off the back. Hopefully they are all good.
displays are all thereThe displays and the lamp board need some cleaning for sure. The board has the typical bulb heat marks and its super rough, as it was from the factory. Needs some sanding, paint, some mild woodwork and it should be just fine.

lamp panel back sideThe back side looks pretty good. It does have a pretty weird shade of yellow going on. but the wiring is all there with nothing major to report.

As for the chase light wooden frame, nothing big to report. It was dirty as hell and every lamp socket has a decent amount of corrosion. I don't have any pictures of it at this stage other than a few close ups of the wiring on the inside.
Chase lights wooden frameLooks like some tedious wiring and soldering in my future.

So Here is what I'm left with for the head. Its dirty, wobbly and smells like crap.
head on the floor

On to the cabinet.
'mild' rustSo the cabinet was a bit rough. As you could see from the earlier pictures, this thing was worn and planked to crap on the outside. Once side had a huge crack running down the side of the cab. The rails were dented and slightly corroded. Flipper buttons and switches were pretty nasty too. The neck was surprisingly in good shape. I ended up saving the neck and cleaning it up to reuse on the new cabinet. Same goes for a few of the supports inside and the brace the playfield is pushed against.

tilt mechsSo here on the tilt panel, we can see a bit more of our mouse friends handy work. Chewed the wires up all over on this part of the cabinet harness. The loom going to the coin door was so bad I had to cut several inches off of it in the end to get to good wire.

speakerSpeaker. Its full of mouse poo and other junk. Smells like crap. Throwing this away pretty soon.

Here is a fun part, the shooter rod was so mushroomed that I had to break out the Dremel to cut the rod off so the damned thing could be taken apart.
Cut 'Er up
Missouri Mushroom

The coin door looked okay on the front, It's not beat or cut or anything. Inside is a bit of a different story.
coin doorLooks pretty decent. Not the best, but its all there and event has a SBA mech\coin insert.
full inside coin doorShe's a bit rusty. Its all there and it appears Action Amusement had this at some point.
coin door inside leftCoin Lockout is still wired in, by a few strands of wire.
coin door inside righthard to see in this photo, but the wiring harness to the coin door was eaten up pretty bad. A 2 inch section just after the connector was basically just bare wire. Glad I didn't power this thing on before I checked out. I'm sure those sparks and the mouse nest would have made for a nice fire starter.

After this we are left with an empty cabinet.
empty cabIts dirty, smells like arse and is total crap. I'll take it apart to I can get a new one made.

in piecesThere, Nice! Manageable pieces for me to get new cabinet components.

Everything else in the cab I didn't show was just dirty. The knocker was there and in pretty good shape. Original RF filter was there with a power cable (missing the ground prong, per the norm it appears for nearly every game I get). Lockdown bar was in nice shape, but the lockdown mech was super crusty and rusty. It'll need a good soak in evaporust and some scrubbing to have a chance of survival. Side rails were trash thanks to dents and deep scratches. Power switch works very well, but just needed a good clean.

For those that noticed, I magically got some lighting installed for the last photo. From now on all the pictures will have much better lighting, but now you'll get occasional glare. Sorry can't have everything.
Onto the playfield. It was pulled from the game and propped on the floor. I was still pretty new to this, so no rotisserie or anything yet.
dirty playfieldThe playfield is pretty dirty. There is mouse leftovers all over, all rubbers are obviously shot, broken flipper bats, rusty parts, faded and warped plastics, the works. The horseshoe plastic is even broken in half. It was apparently taped back together at some point, but the tape used has yellowed and is just as bad, if not worse looking than the plastic.
At this point the plastics were removed to see how much worse this could get.
plastic free playfieldWith the plastics removed, the actual amount of dirt and level of wear was apparent. there wasn't much of anything left under the horseshoe.
horseshoeThe captive ball area did not escape the wear.
captive ball area wearThe area around the pops are surprisingly in good shape. the mylar rings did their job for sure.
pops areaThe apron was removed to see what it looked like underneath. Answer, rust and dirt.
Under the apron
Under the apron rustThe shooter lane is bad as well.
shooter laneNot much left topside that is of note.

Bottom of the playfield.
I don't have an overall shot of the bottom that I was able to find. Instead I have like 500 shots including each individual switch and lamp and mech. These will definitely be needed for later.
One of the flippers apparently had a bad coil at some point. This is all that was left. At least they labeled the wires, kind of...flipper?
The other three flippers are in a slightly different shape. Coils are there, but the plunger has mushroomed and destroyed the coil stop, coil sleeve, and in two cases has cracked the coil bobbin itself. All 4 flippers need new everything basically. The base plates were in good shape and a few of the metal brackets, but the rest is destroyed. Items to add to the list of requirements to rebuild this thing.better flipper, not great though
This basically shows the state of nearly all metal under the playfield. Rust and lots of flux residue. this is the slingshot on one side, but the other was in the same shape.slingshot
The single drop target was removed from the game to inspect. Overall good. Not a heavily used mech it appears, the drop target is a bit worn, but its original. Not much rust here either. It'll be broken down, cleaned, polished and get a new drop target for sure.Single drop targetsingle drop target side
The 3 target drop bank was not spared the rust. This shows how most of it looked. Thankfully its mostly just surface rust and I was able to clean it up nicely later on.3 target drop bank
All of these little caps will be replaced as well. I'm assuming a ton of these will be bad and give me headaches if I don't just replace them.crap bally capsmore crap bally caps
So a week or so later, I finally get the harness completely removed from the game. It obviously needs to be cleaned and get new connectors. But it exists, the mouse did not destroy it and its not really hacked up at all.sexy harness
At this point, this is basically all we are left with. I eventually remove everything on the backside and move on to the fun restoration process.backside cleaned off

So at this point I need to do a little review and spell out a few things so you better understand where I was at during this time (early 2017).
1 - This was my first pin restoration.
2 - I was lacking many tools needed.
3 - I was lacking many of the skills needed (painting specifically).
4 - The game needed a large amount of parts and effort to bring back. Its not an especially sought after game to start with, so it wont be worth much. This is good as if I destroy it, not many people will want to drag me for it. This is bad as if I do bring it back, it wont be worth much (except to me maybe, this will be some serious effort to fix).
5 - My only resources at this point are Pinside (every resto thread I can find for classic bally's and all of Vid's guides), Pinwiki and google. Good resources, but no actual people I know nearby.
6 - I'm a relatively young guy. Under 30 at this point. All my friends game on computers or consoles. Pinball isn't hugely popular with my crowd. Its appreciated as I'm an electrical control systems engineer by trade working as a factory automation engineer for a large beverage company. Everyone gets how it interests me, but aren't too interested. This means I'll be doing all of this alone.

Now that we have all of that laid out, What do I do?
If we ignore the costs of tools\parts and skills issues, we still need to discuss the availability of parts for this. Some stuff is readily available, other parts are basically non-existent. So here is a quick list I was able to come up with at the time. Its not Everything, but most of the major stuff.

Available Parts:
-flipper rebuild kits
-pop bumper rebuild parts
-rubbers
-posts
-coils
-stand up target faces
-drop targets
-pop bumper caps\bodies
-dead bumper caps\bodies
-lamps\leds
-new MPU or a used one
-cabinet stencils (Pinball Pimp)
-paint
-some misc metal parts needed (shooter lane arch, etc..)
-cabinet rails
-coin door skin
-Plastics (CPR)
-cabinet grade wood (new cabinet)
-legs
-shooter rod (I had to cut my old one off)
-lamp sockets
-switches
-led adapters (playfield lights only, chase lights are staying incandescent for sure)

Not so available parts:
-playfield (not doing an overlay, waiting on CPR for a reproduction)
-Apron\shooter gauge (glorified stickers available, hard to find spare ones at all)
-back glasses
-head components (only a few used this type of head from what I can find, thanks to the chaser lights)
-shooter bushing (C-934, tricky to fiind)
-certain cabinet rubbers (knocker R-231-11, playfield support stops on cabinet R-231-7)

The main places I was looking at for parts were
-Pinball life
-Comet Pinball
-Marcos Specialties
-CPR
-PBResource
-Mantis Pinball
-Big Daddy Enterprises
-Third Coast Pinball
-Great Plains Electronics
-Ebay

As everyone can tell (since I made this thread), I decided to restore the game. I figure its a decent game to learn on since they made so many and its not highly sought after, not too complicated, single level, no ramps and needs basically everything done. So the journey begins...

Now as this was done in the past, in a rather random way, I'm just going to document this with each part grouped together to keep it a bit more cohesive. We'll see how this goes...

First task, New cabinet.
I have no hope for the original cabinet, its heavily worn, delaminating all over, missing chunks, large cracks, etc.. Not really ideal or easy to restore. Even if I did, I'm not sure I could make it look decent at all. Thankfully, some family friends have a cabinetry business. I was able to take the cabinet pieces that I needed replacements for over to their shop and get some new once made. I didn't take pictures as I was just enjoying the woodwork that day, but her are the new pieces next to the old ones.new and old
After this I put the new pieces together, and BAM, new cabinet.new cabinet 1new cabinet 2new cabinet 3
Gluing the neck board on proved a bit of a challenge. It ended up being nailed and glued and clamped to get it right. The original came off a bit rough, so it had a slight warp to it that I had to overcome with clamps.gluing the neck
Once the neck was in place, I mapped and drilled several of the holes needed on the cabinet. This was for the coin door trim, shooter, lock down bar mech ground bolt, side rail ground bolts and leg bolts.coin door trim holesleg bolt holes

The head was in pretty good shape. It mostly needed some gluing, sanding and to be repainted. Lots of sanding.
I decided after some review that I would try to sand the back of the head flat again. It was swollen, but nor horribly. That was hours of sanding to get correct, but it came out better than I had expected. For the record, I did test the paint for lead.I tested both the cabinet and the head and both were negative. sanding for hours on end
At this point, I had a new cabinet and a refreshed head. Now for what I was the most concerned about, painting. This would prove to be a slight uphill battle. My first thing was to make a booth I could paint in. I used my basement and built it from plastic I got at home depot. It was built against a window so I could put a box fan in place with a HVAC filter to vent the fumes outside. The other side had an intake HVAC filter to pull air from my basement to vent out. The floor was a paint drop cloth I had laying around. I hung an enclosed led light fixture from the ceiling to light the place up a bit more. One corner was held together with binder clips\small clamps so I could go in and out as I needed. I kept a negative pressure inside using the box fan.Absolutely creepy looking, but it worked quite well. The house never smelled of fumes and it worked better than i expected it to.
The picture shows me building it still. Fan is in the wrong place during this time. It ends up on the back wall between the paint booth and the window. You will see more of this as we get through the painting process. looks like its from a murder showSo this was built in the fall when it was still pretty nice outside, and thus nice in my mostly underground basement. However winter was around the corner. I put a small space heater in the booth to keep it around 75° for when I would paint.
Seems like I'm pretty set at this point. Time to paint something. And here came mistake #1. I got color matched paint from a local name brand store. It cost far more than I would prefer to say. I got a paint sprayer and decided to put the primer down on just the head, head frame and chaser light frame. Sprayed on nicely, thick, but nicely. I left it to dry for 3 weeks. It never dried.stupid paint

After googling possible issues and talking with a few people on Pinside (thank you vid1900 and HEP for the input), I decided that paint was a waste. I scraped it all off as it was still gooey like, re-sanded everything and started again. This time I just used rustoleum paint in a rattle can. Started with a primer on the head as it needed a bit of filling, sanded it and put a base color of black down on the head, head frame and chaser light frame. It thankfully dried very well after about a day and was super dry within a few days. I moved that out of the booth and moved in the cabinet. Suddenly I'm glad I made the booth as large as I did.

With the cabinet moved in, I was able to put down a few coats of paint\primer in the base color I needed. In this case its a satin granite color. grey paintbase paint cabinetmore base paint cabinet Now I need to mention a few things at this point.
1 - This is not perfect looking, but damn it was better than I thought I was capable of.
2 - I'm not shooting for a perfectly smooth finish. I like having some slight wood grain like they did from the factory. It makes it seem less "pristine" and more clean. Just a personal opinion.
3 - I'm not going to clearcoat it. I like the finish with the paint. It will likely spend its life in my basement, so i'm not concerned about wear or anything.
4 - I had ordered a stencil set from PinballPimp for Space Invaders and it looked great. It also looked detailed and complicated as hell to paint. This was only a shortly after he had released this stencil set so I was super pumped to get a unavailable item checked off the list.

Ok, So I put the first stencil down. Oh yea, we're looking good. And damn these are nice stencils. Nice job @pinballpimp!stencil 1stencil 1.2
Here is the red and black colors I used in for the rest of the painting. The red was a bit brighter than I had really wanted, but It still came out looking very nice in my opinion.more paints
Ok, Red color is down and looks great. That was super easy. I'm going to make this think look damned nice!First color down - red
Time for the second stencil. Okay, this one is a bit more complicated. Well... It's ALOT more complicated.2nd stencil
Mistake #2 now comes into play.
The second stencil is down and has been painted. I let it sit for 10-15min for the paint to get tacky enough to allow the stencil to be removed carefully. Same way that I did the first stencil and exactly what I was finding online.Now I start to remove it. Oh crap, this is going to take WAY longer than the first stencil. There is just So Much Detail! Again, the stencils are awesome, but damn the intricate details are a pain. All of the stencil has to be pulled up as quick as I can. So what happens, I dropped part of the stencil back into the fresh paint. More than once. Thankfully, I was able to make a quick emergency paint stencil out of card board to add a bit more paint to those spots. So not a huge error. It came out pretty darn good.painted sidepainted side part 2

So at this point I needed to let this side dry before I started the other side as it would have to lay on it while I painted again. I did not want wet or tacky paint touching the Super clean floor in here. Ok the floor is dirty looking, but its just the drop cloth coated in overspray. Its actually pretty nice in the booth.
I decided to do the front of the cabinet. This poses a few new challenges as you have to fill in the hole for the coin door and you have to make sure to wrap the rest of the cabinet up pretty well to avoid overspray.
Mistake #3.
I wish i had kept the cutout from the coin door hole. Alas, I didn't. I made one from cardboard and nested it into place to lay the first stencil down. Umm, it didn't go so well. I was able to save the stencil by forcing the wrinkles where there was no paint so alignment wasn't as important. Ultimately, I think this saved me from having to order a new stencil for this portion. The alignment squares were nearly perfectly on spot. Nearly. wrinkles are badmore bad wrinklesWell this is as good as I can get this stencil without redoing the whole thing and having to order, so I went ahead and sprayed down the red. Don't ask why I went so heavy with the red. Even I don't know.mucho red
I peeled off the stencil (It was so much easier than the side one that was super detailed) and it came out pretty nice. The alignment appears to be pretty close to where it needed to be. You can also see my ghetto carboard coindoor hole filler. It "worked" I guess, but I would do that differently next time for sure.not bad redok, its red
Time for the last stencil for the front, again this is a very complicated and intricate one. Lets see if I learned anything from the last mistake or two.stencil 2You can see the details of this before it was peeled. Its very intricate. That's both a reason I love and hate this artwork. I love its looks, I hated painting it. Okay, lets remove the stencil and see how the front turned out. Nice, I guess I learned something from the previous mistakes afterall.finished frontfinished front 2
Ok, so if you really look at the front, the alignment is not perfect. The top right around the shooter is slightly off. At first this annoyed the hell out of me, but I realized that the shooter will cover some of it, and its only slightly off so it gave it a nice "factory margin of error" kind of look. All in all, I'm very happy with how the cabinet front turned out with the painting, despite my mistakes.

The other side of the cabinet went just fine. No major errors that I can remember.first coat on first stencilred paint down2nd stencilside paintedI apparently learned a bit better on this side. While I made a mess of myself, no stencil material was dropped in the paint and I adjusted my timing a bit better to help prevent tearing. This side takes so long to peel that I have to start a bit earlier on the peeling. Wait too long and you can tear the paint when you peel the stencil up.

And now for the head.
I went ahead and applied the first stencil.stencil 1stencil 1 prepped The paint order for the head was a base of black, first stencil in grey and second stencil in red.
Having stenciled the main cabinet, I got a bit more creative with the head as I wanted to be able to get more stenciling done quicker. Enter my questionable idea to hang the head from boards attached to saw horses with full paint cans on the other end to keep it from tipping over. Yes those paint cans are my abandoned paint from failure #1. it totally workedNeedless to say, it looked weird, but it worked well. Apply a stencil, paint, peel, wait 30 min, flip the head and repeat.
In the end I was quite happy with the result.final head stenciling

Thanks! Space Invaders was my first time using them and they were great to work with. I'll be looking to get his Xenon set when I get that project underway later this year.

The lamp\display panel in the head was stripped of everything. The sockets were super crusty at best and the whole panel needed a good sanding. The front was repaired slightly as the wooden baffles for certain lamps were basically falling apart. I had to rebuild one with some wood scraps and the others got slathered with wood glue and sanded to get them into decent shape. For the tighter holes I had to use my Dremel with a drum sanding bit to get it smooth. The front of the panel was primed and painted white. I figured it was white from the factory, but it was a bit matted as it was not really sanded. This was sanded nicely and got a satin white paint, hopefully to reflect some of the light back onto the glasses.painted lamp panel
So here comes another failed idea. Lamp sockets get a bit pricy when you are buying a ton of them. I decided I would try to clean the lamp sockets from the lamp panel to reuse. After all, I had a newly acquired HF tumbler (the smaller one) and time on my hands.
That was a poor choice. After tossing them in the tumbler for a day or two with some walnut media and polish, they came out pretty clean and completely full of media i had to pick and scrape out. Totally not worth it. I wound up cleaning up about half of them before I abandoned the whole idea, ordered a ton of new lamp sockets and threw what I had left in a random box to think about later.this was a waste of time to clean these
Upon the arrival of the new lamp sockets, they were mounted to the back of the the lamp panel along with new lamp braid. I had thankfully taken plenty of pictures of the panel before I stripped it so I was able to get the braid run in the same way.braid run on the lamp panel
While all of this was going on, I was soaking some of the head hardware in evaporust. This mostly consists of the hinges and lock hardware for the backglass door panel, alignment dowel for the backglass door panel, lamp panel hinge, lamp panel lock assembly and head lock assembly. None of these were too heavily rusted, mostly surface rust and the need for paint or polishing. I think I soaked most of these pieces for ~12 hours before they were rinsed and dried.post evaporust, pre buffered Another new piece of equipment was a buffer I got with a coupon for HF. Not the greatest thing, but for how often I use it and what it's used for, it works well. You likely saw its box inside the paint booth in earlier pictures. All I can say for it is to replace the buffer pad and grinding disc. Both were so out of round that the thing vibrated like crazy. I got a think buffing pad and a new grinding disc on amazon and we were good to go. The only parts of the head hardware that were painted were the backglass door hinges. These things are rather large and stick out enough that I thought they would look best painted black.
At this point I also finished the paint on the chaser light lamp insert frame. After its run-in with the original paint, i just let it sit. It still wasn't dry, months later. The paint was scraped off and it was primed, sanded and painted black. The old lamp sockets were replaced with new and the short and weird wiring harness was reattached to the whole frame. That wire is a bit of a tight fit as it has to be squished between the lamp frame and the backglass door. I also repinned the connector as it has some green corrosion on the pins. The lamp panel was then fitted with #47 lamps. I did not go with LEDs as I want the original look for the chaser lamps. I have seen some of the LED'd ones and its just not a look that appeases me. The #47 lamps were chosen over #44 lamps as the chasers dont need to be super bright and the lower heat will be a good thing. The backglasses are original and I would like to keep them nice.
The chaser light frame was then installed back into the backglass panel, backglass retention parts were installed, backglasses were installed with new trim that came with one of many parts orders for this. The lamp panel and its hinge\locks were reinstalled as well. We now have a partly reassembled head that is looking pretty good. At this point, the head is missing boards, harness, rubber feet, maintenance cards, ground braid, ground plane and board supports. partially reassembled head.

At this point, I know I ended up making several orders for parts. Mostly as I wanted to get the cabinet finished up, and secondly, I wanted to get to work on the boards. I went back through numerous order to get a decent idea of what was ordered around this time, and this is what I came up with. I'll review some of the 'yet to be described' items later on.

Mantis Amusements
- new side rails

Third Coast Pinball
- coin door wiring harness
- transformer wiring harness

Big Daddy Enterprises
- SDB caps
- new mpu components
- 0.100 connector housings
- 0.156 connector housings
- display rebuild kits
- fuses

Great Plains Electronics
- 0.100 pins + headers
- 0.156 trifurcon pins + headers
- rectifier board components
- new mpu components
- 0.156 connector housings
- tons of diodes
- SDB relay and mount
- heat sinks
- EMI\RFI Filter

Tayda electronics
- switch matrix caps
- chip sockets

Ebay
- repro -35 MPU blank pcb

Marcos
- mpu CPU and PIA chips

Pinitech
- 5101 NVRam

This is definitely not everything. I know for sure I'm forgetting to list a ton of items, but you get the idea.
I did some research (mostly from vid1900) on how to clean harnesses. So I broke them into a few groups and ran them through the dishwasher. Playfield harness on its own, head harnesses on their own (includes display harness and chaser light harness, again not all this is in perfect order as it was done in the past, and finally the cabinet harness. The coin door harness was too badly chewed up from the mouse to recover. That was my reason for ordering a new one from third coast pinball. As for the washing, top rack, pots and pans, i used some samples of powdered soap we had as we normally used these weird packets with drying agent and I wasn't sure what that would do. Yes, this made me nervous, and yes my wife was aware.this made me nervousThe good news is that all the harnesses came out great on the other side. Very clean with no damage that I was able to find. Now I was able to get these onto the floor to keep their shape. This also allowed me to keep them organized and ready for when the re-pinning was to begin.fresh harnessready to re-pin a harness At this point, I had a good set of crimpers from GPE, tons of pins, connectors and keying plugs. Time to re-pin all the things.
It took forever. I literally did this for an hour two a day for like a week.
My back and fingers were toast by the time I finished re-pinning every connector on every harness.
But, It was Done.

I will say this for the harnesses, most of the connector housings were in good shape and were able to be reused. This was especially good as a few of these were no longer available, such as the 28pin 0.100 housing. Note that as of right now, G-P-E has his own version of the 28 pin 0.100 housing available. I ordered like 10 of them for the future.
There were two connectors for the rectifier board that were burnt that I chose to replace and one for the MPU that was broken that I was able to replace as well. All IDC connectors were removed completely and changed to molex connectors.
All of the 0.156 connectors were replaced using trifurcon pins to help with contact points and to reduce the stress on those pins just a bit.
A shout out to Ed at GPE as well as he was very busy at the time yet was able to assist me with getting nearly everything I needed to build a -35 from the ground up.
Yep, rather than use a Altek or a used board, I chose to get a blank -35 pcb on the Ebay and build it up from scratch. Why did I chose this route? Good question. Honestly, I think I wanted to get to work on the MPU and make it my own. I mean the rest of this project is turning into a ton of new stuff, why not the MPU. It also has to do with the old MPU. It was badly damaged from the battery leaking. I desoldered most of the components and there were many missing traces. I checked with a few repair experts on here and found that it was just too far gone to be worth my effort. I decided it was better to salvage what i could from the board and just start new. The only option on the market at the time like this was these spare boards on Ebay. I think it was ~$50 for the blank PCB and probably another $75 for the parts and a few spares of most items. The only expensive item was a new 6821 PIA as one of mine was missing legs due to corrosion.
Well you now know what a future post or two will be about...

Thanks! Its my first project, so hopefully it goes well. I'm learning alot as I work on this, so its definitely been a fun journey.

At this point I wanted to get the coin door restore underway. Mostly because I wanted the cabinet to feel "complete" but also because I had received my new coin door wiring harness and was itching to get it installed. So if we rewind back to the beginning, this is what we have to start with.not perfect, but not trashedyummy rust all over Remember that the wiring harness on the original was chewed to bits by a mouse at some point. I trimmed it back to get to insulated good wire again, and it was going to be too short to be usable. I debated just using some random wire to make it longer, but I was easily able to just buy a new harness and not have to worry about it at all.
So the door and its frame were removed from the cabinet. Thankfully no major surprises were found anywhere. Basically everything has a mild level of rust, with a few exceptions that have "bonus" rust. All parts seemed to be there and everything worked correctly. It has 3 original coin mechs as well, including an SBA mech. rust 1rust 23 coin mechs, including the SBA mech During the ordering of parts for the game, I knew I needed a sticker for the coin door, but I was unsure if this got the normal sticker or the SBA style sticker. Owing to the SBA mech and coin slot parts, I decided to go with the SBA sticker.
So at this point the coin door was broken down as far as I could get it. Everything was removed. I was able to wash the coin inserts for the front with mild soap and water and they cleaned up nicely. Basically every metal part went into some evaporust for varying amounts of time. The coin chutes, service button mount, hinge and the back skin were particularly rusty and wound up being pretty pitted after they were cleaned up. rusty service button mountFor the most part this was ok with me as the majority of it was hidden and would not impact its function at all. That is, if you exclude the back skin (not sure the real name, but it sounds good to me for now, its the back panel on the front door skin that everything mounts to, 2nd biggest part of this whole set of parts). The thing had rusted so bad in parts that it just looked pitted in a pathetic way. I wasn't into this so I primed and painted it to try to get it to look a little more normal. This is a bad picture, but its a hammered silver paint I went with. Its as close as I could get to the normal steel color without going crazy.back skin
At this point, rust was removed, parts were laid out, new components were ready to go, time to... buff small parts for hours on end!

I have definitely grown to appreciate the process of buffing. Its nice seeing something become so smooth and finished after knowing what it looked like before. For those that may have skipped some of the more boring parts above, I bought a HF buffer\grinder. Both the grinding and buffing wheels were replaced and it was put on a heavy stand. This along with green compound have been my go to for buffing.
I buffed all the components that I really could. Some was done by hand for complicated portions or for parts I was too concerned with being able to hold onto.
The outer skin took the most time by far. I buffed this thing for quite a while to get it as close as I could. It mostly just had alot of scratches all over and staining from an unknown source. The stains came out quickly, the scratches were mostly removed. I was afraid to buff it too much or it would completely lose the grain, but I figured a slightly shiny coin door compared to the rest of the grained metals would likely still look pretty good.
There was one part I did have a difficult time with, and that was the coin door hinge. There are no sources for new ones and most used ones are in just as rough of shape. Basically, I had to make it work or try to source something similar that I could modify to make ti work. I chose to try to restore it.
It was rusty and even after cleaning, it was just not pretty nor was it working well. I decided to take it apart. I uncrimped the ends and was able to force the center pin out of the whole thing. It went for another dip in the evaporust and was degreased, washed and dried. I took both sides on a nice long trip to the buffer to get them cleaned up. The inside of the hinge was cleaned as well using small brushes, files and hole cleaners. The center of the hinge, which is just a long metal round piece, was buffed, sanded slightly to remove edges, buffed again and was mildly oiled before it was reinserted into the two hinge sides. It was a huge improvement on looks and function. Ignore the lockdown bar in this picture as I have not discussed that yet, but I still need to show off the coin door.ahh so sexy

Okay, covering a two main topics today, Lockdown bar/receiver and shooter rod. So, the lockdown bar was not in bad shape to start with. It had the normal scratches on top, but bottom side was fairly corroded and had some nasty leftover beer seal stuck to it. I was able to use goo-gone to remove all the old beer seal and I did a light soak in evaporust to get rid of the surface rust on the bottom. After a wash and a dry, I went to town with some sanding pads to re-grain the lockdown bar and get the scratches out. Nothing too fancy in this case. My post above shows a front view of how it came out. I debated buffing it to a nicer shine, but with how much its touched, it would always look like a smudged mess to me.
The lockdown bar receiver was another story. That thing was rusty and covered in beer\soda residue. It had an overnight soak in evaporust, a wash and dry and then had to be heavily sanded and buffed to be considered anything acceptable. I was very close to buying a new one from Mantis Amusements, but I felt this one was good enough for now as it didn't look horrid and it might clean up well if I put one of those warning stickers over the top, and No, I still have not put a sticker on it. All the other bits for the lockdown bar were soaked, washed, dried, buffed and set to go back on as well. You can see some of the components at the top of this picture. This is post evaporust soak and wash\dry right before I did a little bit of buffing on some parts.some cleaned parts

The ball shooter needed a few new parts to start with. New shooter rod (i had to cut the old one in half...), spring, bushing and clip. Basically, everything but the base plate inside the cab and the outside plate, though the outside one was a bit rough. I ordered the correct rod, what I correctly assumed was the correct spring and a clip. The two plates were both evaporust soaked, washed, dried, and polished\buffed. The outer plate with the Bally logo was not exactly perfect. The issue is that its slightly bent\warped as though someone tightened it too much and it pulled the center portion inwards. I attempted to fix it and got it slightly better, but its noticeably a bit off still. It was buffed to a nice shine, but I did not leave much grain in it at all. Not sure if I'll redo this later or not, we'll see how it all looks in the end. At the time that I was doing this work, the bushing (C-934) was not available anywhere. It took several months before Marcos got them in stock. I would have used my old one but it was all worn out and wobbly, not to mention the dirt and grime in it.New shooter bushing
Once all these were cleaned up, they were installed onto the cabinet. As seen in the above post, lockdown bar and receiver went in easily. The shooter rod and bushing was just as easy. I left a screw off as I had not run the ground braid in the cabinet yet.

Thanks! I hope it turns out well in the end.

I picked up so new legs along the way. The old ones were rusted so badly that the levelers were completely stuck. I broke 2 of them off after attempting to remove them. Also discovered that one of the was a bit twisted. They were a lost cause, so new ones were in order along with new levelers and cabinet protectors for the legs (can't mash up my expertly done cabinet stenciling!). I used the metal ones that are hidden behind the legs. I think It came out looking pretty good.Front of cab with legsside of cab with legs As some might have noticed, there is a power cable coming out the back and some wiring in place inside the cab. That's right, most of my new electrical parts came in, so I'll cover that soon. In order to get the wiring in place, I had to get the tilt panel updated and cleaned. The harness had been cleaned already and repinned, but the tilt panel was a bit rough.
I removed everything, evaporust soak, wash, dry and did some hand buffing with some mothers mag polish on the ball tilt bracket, service outlet bracket and the tilt bob components. You can probably see from the photo below, but the mouse guest made another stop here and chewed up a few wires. Thankfully they were long enough that I was able to trim them back to good wire with some to spare still. All diodes and caps were replaced while I was at it. The wood panel was sanded, cleaned components replaced and it was reattached to the cabinet harness and mounted back inside the cabinet.prior to cleaning This also means that I was able to get all the ground braid run in the cabinet. I mostly followed the original paths, except where it made more sense to do otherwise. You'll see more details later as i had to leave a few pieces kinda hanging until what they attach to was mounted (cross bar support, side rails, etc..) I also used the original style leg holt brackets. I know the newer ones are much better (I got both sets as I was unable to decide at first), but with how heavy this cabinet is with the new wood and everything, it does not move at all and the legs are super solid. So the old ones work just fine for me. I did get the longer bolts, so if i want to switch to the newer style, I can without too much trouble.

So some electronics stuff finally.
I wanted to get the rectifier board and the transformer finished and remounted so I could at least get power checked off the list. First up was the mounting plate for the rectifier board and transformer. It was soaked in evaporust to get the surface rust under control, washed, rinsed, dried well and was painted a silver color like a few other components were. A similar process was repeated for the transformer cage, except that it was painted the same black that I used on the cabinet.painting the rectifier bracket
The transformer was in decent shape. I removed all the wires (after taking good photos and checking the wiring diagrams to see how it was wired up in the first palce) and tossed them. I got a new wiring harness from Third Coast Pinball for this. My harness was okay, but the wires were a bit burnt in a few spots for who knows what reason and i'd just prefer a newer one that wasn't so yellowed and whatnot. The transformer bracket was removed, which was no easy task. The transformer wax stuck it all together pretty well. That stuff wasn't easy to remove from the brackets or the outside of the transformer. I used a combo of heat, goo gone, abrasives and hot water. The transformer brackets were basically soaked in boiling water to get the wax off completely, but it worked. The transformer itself I used a head gun and rags at first, switched to a bit of goo gone for some other crap that got on it, then sanded it a bit and that took care of most of the wax. The brackets were cleaned and buffed and reattached to the transformer along with the new wiring harness. Here are a few before shots of the transformer.side ASide B
The next was the rectifier board. As I had mentioned when I went over the whole game. It appeared to be in good shape. All original parts, but it was super crusty. I desoldered everything from the board. Here are a few shots of the board part way through.rectifier 1rectifier 2 After I removed everything, I ran it through the dishwasher to get it really cleaned up. Came out nicely. I had ordered new fuse clips, headers, diodes, power resistors and bridge rectifiers which were then reattached. I chose to use the original Varo R712E devices on the top as they both worked well and I can't deny that I like how it looks. I did get a backup set of Varo R712E devices (new old stock) that I came across along with a slightly higher rated set and a new bridge rectifier I could use. Both the original back mounted bridge rectifiers were removed and replaced with newer and higher rated versions. They do not currently have heat sinks as I may replace them before I get them finished. I used BR104 10a as replacements due to their smaller size. We will see how they hold up, if they aren't enough i may have to go with some of the larger 35a versions. Everything was wired up and mounted onto the mounting plate. New standoffs and an original, but hacked with a ton of vent holes, cover were also put in place. this was all put on the now sanded board and mounted in the cabinet.newnew 2

At this point I the majority of the cabinet finished. As seen before, Its up on legs and I was able to test fit the backbox. I was able to get the knocker polished up and assembled as well. Thankfully all the components were in good shape once the surface rust was removed. The only casualty was the rubber stopper for the knocker. I still don't have a replacement as I have been unable to find any. I may resort to cutting another miscellaneous rubber down to fit. Here are some of the knocker components after tumbling and prior to polishing.Knocker prior to tumblingThe power switch was de-soldered from the harness for cleaning prior to the harness getting washed. Overall the switch was in good shape, just a bit crusty. I was able to use basic cleaning stuff to get it cleaned up. The switch itself was electrically tested and worked great. I polished the actual switch by hand before I was content with it being clean and ready to install.
The power filter was removed from the game. Technically it is still working just fine, so for now I'm going to continue using it. I did order a spare from GPE just in case a new one is needed. The varister was replaced however. Here is a shot of it before it was reinstalled.Power Filter
A weird part to find was a new speaker. I was trying to stick to a speaker with the same power ratings so it would sound correct. I was eventually able to get something that would work. It is actually an ACDelco speaker for the rear deck of a Chevy Cobalt\Pontiac G5. Perfect fit, cost like $15 and is way better than the mouse poo infested\torn cone\junked speaker that was in there. Pretty sure I got it from Amazon at the time. Stocked full of parts

Thanks for the info guys!
I'll be looking into these for sure. Maybe they'll have something for the missing rubber playfield stops on the back of the cabinet (R-231-7).

I grabbed a snapshot of the speaker I put in the game.New Speaker

So I did a thing. Some may not like it, but I'm liking it so far.
DIY illuminated flipper buttons. I got the transparent red ones, drilled a hole in the back metal bracket and put a bendy led in a 44 socket that is tied into the GI from the coin door harness. It has some spare PinballLife LEDs in it right now, but the whole game will be Comet LEDs by the time i get this finished.
You can also see the new flipper switches as the old ones were beyond shot due to pitting and being bent out of shape.
Illuminated Flippers

So the only thing preventing me from powering the cabinet on is the rest of the boards.
I had multiple orders from GPE, Big Daddy, Pinball life, Marcos, Digikey and Tayda that had showed up, so I had a mount of new components ready to go.
First things first, these boards were like super dirty. Obvious solution, run em through the dishwasher. Note that I did remove any socketed chips or anything that could be damaged in the dishwasher (relay, larger heatsinks were removed, etc.) Once finished, they sat on a table with a fan on them for a day just to make sure they were dry. I ran the displays (no cracked glasses or nipples, so they were fine), SDB, LDB, Aux and sound board through. I skipped the old MPU as it was a lost cause to me, i just scavenged it for parts as needed.middle of a dry cycle
The first board I started with was the SDB. I removed the old caps, including a tantulum that was on right side near TP3 (It was crusty, so i just replaced it). I also removed 2 transistors and diode\resistors combos as they were cracked and likely dead. All headers were removed as well as they definitely needed replacement. I had removed the relay in order to wash the board, but the relay was not looking correct. Someone had broken the case around it and it had some brown\orange syrupy goop that was on it. My attempts to clean it left a lot to be desired. Thankfully this happened before i did my big order, so GPE sent me a new relay, socket and metal clamp wire.
As seen in my afterthought picture below, New headers, caps, relay and transistors with support resistors and diodes. I also followed Vid's guide to bulletproof the board by putting a few jumpers on the back of the board. No pictures from me of the jumpers, but the ones on his thread are better anyway and he covers multiple generations\makers of this board. I found the original high voltage cover buried in the game manual and was able to buff it out to be clear again. The faded sticker was a cool look to me, so i let it stay as it was. I re-flowed all the solder on the board as well at this time. SDB completed and tested in the game to check voltages.
Note that the picture does not have every plug attached as I'm still waiting on a new playfield, so those connectors will be missing from all boards.SDB
Next was the LDB. I know I did it second because it had the least amount of work to actually do. I literally replaced the headers. That was it. Everything else was working just fine. I did add the led boards to this so I can run comet LEDs on the playfield. Other than that, its just a normal LDB.

Third was the aux lamp driver board. Similar to the LDB, the Aux board really only needed new headers. Everything else checked out OK. I tested most transistors on these boards while they were out of the game to be sure, same with diodes when possible. In this game, the Aux board basically just runs the chaser lights around the backbox frame. I'm keeping those incandescent so no need for any LED boards. The board does run backbox lights as well, but I have not had any issues with flickering on those LEDs.Aux Lamp Driver board

Next, and surprisingly the most complicated, was the sound board. This uses the -51 sound board. The original in the game was in great shape, though dirty. All chips, sockets, crystal and headers were removed before it went through the dishwasher. I replaced all the caps on the board with new and put all new sockets for all the chips. I know that many say some caps don't need to be replaced, but at this point, lets just get new ones. They're old. Older than me. Even I am starting to break, so the board gets new caps. I had to purchase a new ROM as the old one lost several legs when it was removed. They had just corroded away over time. Matt's Basement Arcade burned the new ones for me. I had used him for new JP ROMs a while back, so it was obvious to use him again.
Once reassembled, I put it in the game for some testing (good 'ol test button on top) and got nothing. Strange.
Test points checked out just fine.
I scoped out the amp outputs and got nothing.
Checked all the chips to make sure they were seated.
Double check chip locations. (3x 40pin chips...). No issues here.
Backwards cap... nope.
Turned the game back on and left it for a minute or so to touch chips. Sound was fine. PIA was warm enough to grill a burger. Damn.
I removed the now dead PIA and started to check out the socket. Nothing really stood out at first. I started to see if anything was shorted. Yep, two pins on the top of the chip were shorted. I forget which two, but it definitely killed the original PIA. De-soldered the socket to see what it was. Here was the discovery of my next mistake. I found a small wisp of solder had bridged two pins. Cleaned up the socket and the board. Re-soldered the socket. Checked EVERY DAMN PIN this time. Checked out good.
Good news time. I had purchased a spare PIA chip as part of my order. I was unsure of the remaining PIA on my scrap MPU, so I ordered two instead of one. Chip was installed, game powered on. Sounds are alive again.-51 Sound Board

Displays came next. It has five 6-digit displays. All 5 of the glasses looked good with no burn marks or breaks. Prior to their ride through the dishwasher, the header pins were removed, but basically everything else was left in place.
Once cleaned, I replaced the .156 headers, upgraded the six 100k ohm 1/4 watt resistors with 1/2 watt versions to help the board a bit with heat dissipation issues. All the solder points on the boards were re-flowed, including for the glass and anything else that looked suspect. One display had a bad decoder chip that had to be replaced. How did I know it was bad without powering it on? well it was missing one leg entirely. No idea what happened. Either way, I had a new chip that is now socketed.
Now in my glee of getting all 5 of these finished, I did make one mistake. The same one I made earlier.
If we fast forward to testing the machine during its first power on, I had one display that was not working correctly. The issue was another bridged solder joint on the .156 header. Thankfully I was able to suck the solder out from the back and it fixed the issue. No damage done to anything else. Okay, back to the board work.
Displays are now finished. Their bases were painted black, new rubber stand off feet were stuck on the back, new "High Voltage" covers were put on each display and they were added to the backbox with their nice and clean and re-pinned harness. No picture now, but you'll see one soon enough. Note that I have the high voltage on the SDB set to ~175v right now. I had it lower at one point (~165v), but it was putting a bit much stress on some components on the SDB and causing more heat than I'd prefer, so I turned it up a bit.

Now the interesting part. A new MPU.
I had debated what to do for a while and found I had a few options.
-buy an original from someone
-buy an alltek
-build my own
Originals are nice to have and that's ideally what I wanted. However most that came up for sale were basically in rough shape and would require work to get going again. I didn't really want an Alltek. They are great and all, but I like the look of original boards too much. This leaves me with build my own.
I had found some repro blank PCBs on FeeBay, so I ordered one. So fresh and so shiny.
Since this is a blank board, I literally need to get every part for the board. It was a fairly substantial list.the list That was the first half. The vast majority of what I needed was available at GPE. Big thanks to Ed for getting that rather large order of parts for me. For the few items that Ed did not have, I got some from Marcos, Pinitech (nvram) and Tayda Electronics (sockets).
This was a weekend soldering job. I started with the smaller caps and diodes and resistors. Moved to jumper wires and 0 ohm jumpers. Then the reset button, the LED, sockets, switches and finally headers. Damn this thing looked clean. I went ahead and installed all the ICs into the sockets.
I have an old pc power supply that I use as a 5v and 12v supply. I connected it up to the board and powered it on for a bench test.
Now for the next error on my part. This is my worst one yet. I had ordered new ROMs from Matt's Basement Arcade. Rather than making sure that I had the chips in correctly, aka not upside down, I just put them in so the text was right side up. Oops.
Yea the power on did not go well. No magic smoke or anything, just a flicker on the LED and that was it. I tried to reorient the ROMs correctly, but no dice. I had damaged them. Thankfully I still had the original ROMs that came with the old board. The legs weren't dirty or anything. I just ordered new shiny ROMS for my new shiny board. Old ROMs went back in, oriented CORRECTLY and I tried again.
It worked perfect, all but one flash (remember on the bench I'm missing the +43v the last flash requires.)
New MPU
I installed it all in the game and powered it on for the first time. Works great! I was able to let it boot, show HSTD, coin it up across both quarter mechs and the SBA mech and start a game. Chase lights, backbox lights, flipper lights, coin door lights and sound all worked great!
Side shot until I grab some new photos.Side shot

Thanks! I'm figuring most of this out as I go since its my first restore. Definitely been a few oops along the way, but the reward for seeing things working has been awesome.

So I have the cabinet basically finished at this point. The only real things that are not completed are the 2 quarter mechs and the SBA mech, possible rectifier board upgrades and rubbers for the back playfield hold down bar.
I think I failed to mention that the new side rails I got are from Kerry at Mantis Pinball. Rails are super solid and not thin at all, plus the price was great compared to some of the offerings available.

Next task is to start refurbishment\cleaning of all the mechs and components under the playfield. Not a huge amount of mechs, but still enough work as most of them have some form of corrosion or just need heavy rebuilds.
- 4 flippers
- 3 pop bumpers
- 4 dead bumpers
- drop target bank
- single drop target bank
- 2 slingshots
- ball trough
- ball kickout

I started with the 4 target drop bank. They only used 3 of the drops, but the mech could hold 4. This one is in decent shape. Some rust, but overall doing okay.surface rustfront sideright sideleft sideback side

The mech was completely dismantled so I can get everything cleaned up. All the parts were washed and anything not rusty went into the tumbler for a day or two. The rusty parts got a decent soak in some evaporust. After the soak it was all washed again and dried. There are a surprising amount of pieces in this mech.bits n piecesswitches and stopslinks and screws
Some of the drop switches had rust on them that needed to be treated. This meant that the switches had to be taken apart to get to the pieces needed.switch deconstruction With them apart, i was also able to really clean the switches to get the gunk and grime out from between the stack pieces.IMG_20180809_215437 (resized).jpg
As for new parts, the list isn't too bad for this mech.
- new drop target set
- coil sleeve
- nyliners
- diodes

Next is reassembly and adjustments.

Sorry for the sudden lack of posts. Life has suddenly gotten busy in a time that was not expected.
Hopefully I can get some more pictures posted here this weekend.

Ok, after a short break, here is another update.
I try to do an update every few days, but between the craziness at work (super busy with projects, factory automation engineer by trade), my wife being 6 months pregnant with our first kid, finishing\assembling all the baby stuff and all the projects and items that come with a new home (built new about a year ago by us), I have been beyond busy. Pinball has been pretty low on the list of late. However, such is life.
The 4 target bank has been completed. I didn't go for a mirror finish on the metal. I felt like it would just be a fingerprint and dust magnet. It's been cleaned, rust removed, quick hand polish with mothers mag polish and rebuilt.4 bank front
4bank back4 bank side
The original coil was just fine, but the wrapper was pretty bad. I was able to find some decently heavy paper that I was able to print my own wrappers onto. I think they came out pretty decent looking. I printed them for the whole game while I was at it.
The new nyliners were pretty to re-install,but one or two of them took a bit of force to get completely inserted.
The switches for sensing when the drops fall were in pretty good shape, but I cleaned them up a bit, especially the spring steel backer that the drop target hits. Those weren't too worn, but they had some surface rust I had to deal with. They were tumbled and polished lightly with mothers mag polish.
Overall, a pretty easy mech to restore.

I repeated the same process on the single drop target. Here are some starting shots.
dirty single sidedirt drop back
You can see that it wasn't too dirty, but it definitely has some components that need some love. Spring steel is visibly rust, coil wrapper was literally crumbling when i touched it, drop spring was crusty and broke when stretched and someone had "lubed" the bottom pin in the drop target itself with something gooey that was not easy to clean off. Ended up needing goo gone to get it completely removed.

The mech was completely disassembled, metal was cleaned, tumbled and lightly polished.
Switch was disassembled to clean and polish the spring steel.
New coil wrapper, diode, drop target spring and drop target were installed.
single drop sidesingle drop frontsingle drop back
Similar to the other drop bank, this one was pretty simple. No nyliners were required on this one.
I think this one has a bit of an adjustable drop depth for the target, that way you can get it level with the playfield. That will have to be adjusted when I go to install it on the playfield.

Finally home after a 2 week work trip. Today was my the baby shower as my wife and I are expecting our first kid this August. Been busy for sure, but I should be getting back on track to getting more details posted for the game restoration.
Good news though, I got the email last week that my new Space Invaders playfield is finished and on its way to me this coming Friday! That will definitely give me something to work on for a while. I even got the pearl version of the playfield!

You're not wrong about the original cabinet. It was pretty bad all over. The way is saw it, I can attempt to rebuild it and learn the process without doing so on an expensive game, or I could part it out and at least make my money back (backglass, drop banks, boards, etc.) Obviously I went for the learn and rebuild process. Not sure I'd do this level of restore again unless it was a game I REALLY wanted.

My playfield made it all the way from Canada to my home in St. Louis last Friday. Admittedly, the box was a little beat up, but the inner box and playfield were perfect. Since I had been on the list a while and was likely one of the first people to pay for their playfield after the email went out, I got one of the limited edition pearl versions. I was super happy just to see the "Playfields are ready!" headline in the email and I was even more happy to see the pearl version had been created. Here is a quick picture I took of the playfield last week before I left again for a trip. The playfield is dusty from packaging and I was near a window, so the pictures aren't super amazing. What is amazing is that is a NEW playfield to replace my blown out one.IMG_20200612_171702 (resized).jpg
The pearl they added isn't super easy to see on some colors, but it stands out on the black. I'm definitely happy with their results on this playfield.

Side note, I'm working on adding new lighting to my basement\mancave\workshop right now, so i'll get some better pictures as soon as I can. This will likely cause a few delays in finishing this project, along with upcoming holidays and the birth of my daughter in August. Thankfully, letting the playfield sit for a bit is likely a good thing for the clearcoat, so its all good in the end.