working on a Capersville which has always been a must-have pinball for me. everything from the deep and maybe the deepest EM rule set to the colors, gameplay, multiball, and art has always grabbed my attention. over the years i obtained 3 (2 English and one German) machines and sent off one playfield to be professionally restored and clear coated. now the reassembly has begun with some new parts as needed such as flipper rebuild kits and pop bumper caps. i've decided to get it all together and play it and put off some of the resto until later such as whitening all the playfield posts if they're ABS and repainting the cab. i've got the head pretty much complete and disassembling 21 score reels was tedious but necessary. the original backglass is in good shape but i have a repro from bg resto. the playfield assembly is coming to an end and working on the top now and i'm in the process of flattening a few plastics. the last step and what will be the longest will be going through everything in the cab.

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i woulda done the lamp connectivity mod while working on it. i also have a surf champ and am about to do the mod to all the sockets.

damn, that Gemini is a beautiful game! now i want one.

great article on fixing gottlieb spinners in terms of having them score properly which they typically don't do.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/surf-champ-slummin-spinner

i don't think that post between the flippers is supposed to be there. looks like a ball can't drain if the flippers are down.

Just picked up these two.

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there's one member on here that makes replacement ribbons but he's out of stock at the moment. the red part of the ribbon on the one machine i'm working on is in good shape but the white part is dirty which is probably the issue with most of these. going to get everything cleaned and working and then revisit this issue.

yep, these are the ones. i'd say they're both in fair shape and there weren't many pics provided but i took the risk because i'd been looking for one for years and i figured they were gonna go pretty quickly. both playfields are in really nice shape from a wear point of view but unfortunately one has mouse urine stains on the playfield so it's on the backburner for now till i get the other one cleaned up, cab repaint, etc. i expected to see a huge mess of chewed wires and corrosion everywhere when first looking in the cab but evidently the mice didn't get into there and chew everything up, it's actually surprisingly clean. ideally i'd put one of wade's repro playfields in one and replace the stained playfield with the good one for the other machine. last pic is of the other playfield.
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done so far on C-37:
-waited till i had the pins before ordering Pinball Pimp stencils since they're almost 200 bones per set w/ shipping.
-ordered Montana paints for the cab graphics, not sure what white i'll use.
-completed disassembly and cleaning of 2 of the stepper units in the head minus the credit unit. first time i've seen a completely immobile stepper (ball count unit) with globs of solidified grease. cleaned all the score reel units and saw that the 10k unit had all but the top switch in the stack bent down and forced into the lowest slot of the plastic armature. that was intentionally done for some reason but i'm pretty much done with the head.
started on the playfield underside and installed flipper rebuild kits, soldered all the lamp sockets for better connectivity, put in non ghosting color correct LED's and warm white ones for the white inserts. the main issue is going to be the drop target bank-it's a little sluggish and looks like a pain to get to all the internals.

after doing some reading on here it looks like there's a few white colors that people prefer but i think i'm going to go with your recommendation. my Dimension cab was redone before i bought it and they did an outstanding job but the white is too bright.

here's my Dimension with the bright white cab paint which also demonstrates the results of a trigger happy webbing application, a can of montana pink panther and tiny can of kicking yellow.
this link shows a great drop target bank how-to of disassembly and reassembly:

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no, the only replacement playfields that I’m aware of are Wade Krause’s which are incredibly high quality works of art. he’s done a run of C-37’s so I was mentioning installing one of those would be the ideal situation if one comes up for sale. as for my second C-37 machine, I’ll be selling it at some point.

wow, you’ve never heard of Krause’s playfields? he’s pretty much a legend and there’s tons of posts on here about his work. he does all the work himself to include cutting the boards, inserts, silkscreening, etc. they’re done just like the factory ones were but are of even better quality. he uses original playfields as templates for the art. he does limited runs and enough people have to be interested to get a batch done and it may take a year or more for completion as it’s extremely labor intensive. do a search on here and you’ll have plenty of reading material.

looks like the blue and red stripes go beneath the leg attachment points and that may be a good spot to compare some paint samples to if no one can help with the exact colors.

EMsInKC
what did you use for the splatter paint on the cab? looks like localized areas of webbing.

how would you get the plexi to lay flat on the playfield particularly where there isn't a playfield feature holding it down? the rollover buttons would be an issue too.

i bought a pair of these machines and now one is working thanks to an extremely skilled, local pinball repairman. a ron webb backglass is on the way and i have a set of pinball pimp stencils to redo the cab with. still much cleaning and flattening of plastics left to do.

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thanks. playfield cleaned up better than i thought it would.
i have one c-ville set up and playing, a german version in storage and the third one is also in storage but is missing a few parts that i've pulled off for the other two.

outstanding work!
regarding the more detailed work like the women’s faces, how did you replicate those?
Thanks.

what I’ve done in the past and I believe I got the idea on here from Vid’s guide, is to cure the paint with a heat gun after application. takes just a few seconds.
I was using Createx Auto-Air paints via airbrush on a Bally Express playfield and the method worked great.

createx may be pricey but it’s just about free when compared to the time and effort that goes into this kind of work.
why did you choose to go the 2 part clear route as opposed to heat curing? seems like significantly more hassle.

About to do a playfield swap on SW.
Machine’s in great shape as is the original playfield but the inserts were about as sunken as any I’ve ever seen hence the new PF. New Webb Backglass too.

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thanks much! i had seen that post before but forgot about it.
it is a great game although when I reassemble it, I’ll be putting the posts to the conservative position. they’re all currently set to liberal and it’s pretty easy to roll it.

I think I’ll fill the existing pop bumper holes with epoxy putty and redrill them properly.
Wasn’t aware the flipper alignment was off too.
Wonder what happened with the initial drilling when the playfields were made.
Not a big deal though.

after repopulating the bottom of the playfield i managed to get much of the top done. i'm waiting on some mylar pop bumper protectors to arrive to button everything up. for the misaligned pop bumper mounting bracket holes on these playfields i filled them with epoxy putty but i also slightly enlarged the holes in the brackets themselves. i have a drill press so it was easy to do it accurately.
i used ron's method of removing the clearcoat around the post holes and followed that up with super glue. worked great and had no issues.
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got it finished + pic of everything installed.
what's been done:
Webb backglass
Krause/Kruzman playfield
new plastics
non ghosting LEDs for the inserts
LEDs in head with blinking ones behind "Strange World" but i found a stash of original GE blinking bulbs i forgot i had so those will be going in.
44's underneath the plastics. 47's are too weak plus heat will never be an issue at home.
all playfield posts are set to conservative. too easy otherwise.

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