if not taking them off, i'd tape off the cabinet REAL well and use a green scotchbrite pad to regrain them... if damage is "deep", you might need to use something more aggressive at first...

but i'd take them off... blownfuse has a real good point (and he is FAR more experienced than i) you don't have to take them off to do it, but i find it a lot easier to regrain them if i have them off lying in front of me... i made a jig out of a piece of 1x6 to hold the rail in place while sanding... ymmv...

star posts will clean up nice in the ultrasonic... it IS a great tool, everyone who shops a pinball machine should have one...

NO!!!! nothing hot stamped or inked in the ultrasonic... it will come off... i learned this the hard way...

yea, i have 3 perfectly white pop bumper bodies sitting here...

dirtflipper gave me a real good tip on cleaning score reels, and i have tried it on other inked things with success... use goop... the version with no abrasives in it... gop it on there good, and gently swirl it around with a soft toothbrush... rinse with cold water...

sometimes, parts gotta die in order for me to satisfy my curiosity...

no problem... it works great on many things that you want to be careful with...

you can use "gojo" as well, again just make sure you get the "non abrasive" flavor...

man i need to move to cali...

can you please move to southern new jersey?

that does not look correct to me... is there an "empty" pair of slots below the stack that has the blade "on top" of the armature?

edit: it is normal, see following two posts...

if blownfuse and dirtflipper say it is normal, it's normal, and you can ignore what i had to say...

hadn't seen one like that... learned my new thing for the day...

although i haven't bought many machines, one thing i learned pretty quickly is that you might as well suck it up and go through the steppers and score reels when you bring it home...

besides the obvious benefit of "knowing" that they are functioning correctly (and as steve notes, "fixing" issues before they show themselves) you may also see "other stuff" that "needs fixin" as part of the process...

yes, thank goodness for those of us with "not so good" soldering skills...

dupe

this pinwiki article does a good job of guiding you through it...

http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=EM_Repair#Stepper_Unit_Issues

TAKE PICTURES!!! after you have had a couple of them apart, you won't need them, but it never hurts to take pictures from every conceivable angle after removing each piece...

^^^

gotta learn sometime...

fair enough opinion, and one that i can understand...

i'm coming from a different spot... my first machine was "dead", hadn't been maintained in forever, and needed virtually everything rebuilt, so i basically went the "crash course" method... fortunately, pinside, clay's guide and pinwiki existed as resources...

i was highly motivated though, i had a "not insignificant" wager with my bestie over whether i could make it work or not... that was one of the best tasting dinners i've ever eaten when he had to pay off...

i won't lie, spending an entire weekend rebuilding a dt bank was more than a bit tedious and frustrating... amoungst other major frustrations... and there were times when i almost said "screw it"...

not saying either way is better... just that he's gotta learn sooner or later...

edit: plus he has steve relatively close by if he really gets stuck...

ever since stashyboy suggested using brasso to clean the rivets, i have been using that... then LIGHTLY lube the rivets with superlube...

take a couple minutes and watch videos 2 and 3 in this thread... they show you how to take them apart and put them together (h/t newmantnj).....

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/good-youtube-vid-for-decagon-score-reels#post-1059043

sadly, this will not be the only time that this happens...

the dreaded "switch that looks like it is making when it really isn't" glitch...

but now you know how to read the schematic, and how to isolate "breaks" in circuits... a good learning day!