The starting point...playable, but needing a little love. I bought the machine last fall from a local Craigslist seller. He'd owned it for a number of years, but hadn't played it much in the last few years and was storing it in his garage.
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Rodney's done some hard living in his 26 years.
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Rusty legs
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Playfield
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Removing the playfield...

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Propped up on some wooden blocks on a table for disassembly. A nice addition to the kitchen!
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New LEDs from Comet Pinball...
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Starting to disassemble.
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Labelling stuff (and taking LOTS of pictures)
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Rodney looks nervous
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The only two wires I cut (carefully) when disassembling were these two for his nostrils
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More playfield disassembly and starting to clean...

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New drop targets and decals.
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Playfield before and after cleaning (Vaccuum, Simple Green, a little Magic Eraser, Novus and Wax)
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Starting to replace lights with LEDs, color-matched to the inserts.
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The strip down the middle is still the old incandescent bulbs. These go under yellow playfield inserts, and I ordered the wrong yellow LEDs...Comet was able to send me the correct ones the following week and I swapped them in.
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Flipper rebuilds. My soldering skills are lackluster, and this was one of the more frustrating parts of the project...

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Installing some Cliffy protectors. The worst wear was around the "Pipeline" upkicker (a common wear spot, it seems). Cliff doesn't make Surf 'n Safari protectors, so I bought a 1 1/8" Super Mario Brothers Protector, and trimmed it down -- works great!

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New pop bumper plastics, decals and mylar rings. The only parts I ended up re-using from the old pop bumpers were the metals rings, which cleaned up nicely, and the springs.

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Installing Rodney into his new pop bumper home. Given my lack of soldering skills, I re-attached the wires for his nostrils using crimped-on ring terminals.
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Surf 'n Safari has ~30 little plastic palm trees on the playfield. Many of mine were very dirty, broken, or both. I couldn't find NOS replacements, so ended up trying some palm tree cake toppers, and they worked great. The trunks are the right diameter to fit in the brass rivets, and they are easily cut down to the right height.

Example of old trees
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Palm tree cake toppers (pre-cutting).
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Test fitting the first tree - success!
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Back on the playfield.
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Playfield reassembly. New rubber rings, many new posts and hardware, rails all polished up. The plastics themselves are in pretty good shape, so I just cleaned them with Novus. I do have a NOS set of plastics that I'm hanging onto in case any of these break later.

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Whirpool ramp. I couldn't find a replacement, so I cleaned up the existing one...

Before picture
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Cracked out bottom
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Cleaned up and added new plastic insert from The Pinball Resource to protect the bottom from further damage
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New decals, palm tree and posts installed
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Back on the playfield
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Replaced the left waterslide ramp with a NOS one, also from The Pinball Resource

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Looked everywhere, but couldn't find a right side waterslide ramp. Cleaned it up as best I could and replaced decals, etc. Still hoping to find a NOS one at some point but, for now, this is functional.

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Playfield looking much better.

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Thanks! It's from a Super Mario Brothers machine. The one I used is the top right one in the photo below from his site. He lists the SMB protectors as a set of four on his site, but was kind enough to sell me this one individually.

http://www.passionforpinball.com/Mario/SMB-Pro-set1.jpg

Brought in a professional to paint the cabinet (thankfully; what a lot of work!) He did a great job -- he's a mural and sign painter, and this was his first pinball project. We took some liberties with the lettering, etc., so not totally authentic to the original, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Light sanding on the side
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Hand-masking all of the artwork. The painter was meticulous and has a very steady hand!
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Rolling on some glossy black, and then exposing the artwork after the black dried.
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Now masking with transparent tape, and rolling on each color individually, followed by some airbrushing detail. A ton of work!

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Finishing touches...hand painting detail and lettering, and some more airbrushing for a little bit of depth. He "muted" the colors of the logo and, while not authentic to the original artwork, looks great to me.

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Finishing touches on the cabinet now...

Shiny new legs (again, The Pinball Resource). Relatively inexpensive to replace, and the ones on the machine were rusted and the incorrect size, so I just gave them away and replaced.

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Spray painted the coin door and replaced the coin inserts. Also (not pictured), I put in some AnyCoin coin mechs...they are a straight swap in and work great. The machine is on free play, but being able to put a coin in is fun, too.

Coin Door Before
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Disassembled and ready to spraypaint
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Coin Door After
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Backbox now...

Cleaned up the wood nicely just with a Magic Eraser, and installed LEDs.
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Spraypainted speaker panel to clean it up a bit.
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Cleaned up the shooter housing, and replaced the shooter rod and springs.

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Stripped and repainted the side rails (went with black), and installed new flipper buttons.

Side rails before
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Stripped
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Primed
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Spray painting in process
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Old and new buttons
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Reinstalled on cabinet
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Finished! Later, Gators!
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A few more pictures of the final product (and a couple side-by-side before and afters)

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Oh yes, and the commemorative coffee mug to celebrate a project well done!

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