Good luck Tss, you have your work cut out for you

looks like a fun project. Look forward to following your progress.

I can't wait to see the finished product... I would love to try a restore project myself someday...

I am working on a World Cup right now too. I just stripped the playfield down the other day.

There are a lot of small pin size dots of paint loss. I haven't figured out how I want to tackle it yet. I need to replace the back of the head as well.

Ah this was my first pin my Dad got me in high school. Had fun with it but back then could never get anyone to fix it and he sold it for $100 bucks to my memory. I remember making a card lard ramp we put in the center shot in front of spinner. Still like and play soccer today and hope for a new World Cup Brazil pin in 2014 but really want an NHL pin.

Yes, lots of nails to keep them from sagging.

Hey, before I sold my World Cup, I noticed it had small, straight nails under the plastics as well.

Then I recently bought a Disco Fever (same era) and THAT had the nails under the plastics, as well as holding the metal ball return lanes up.

On both machines they looked like they were put there by a previous owner, but now I'm wondering if these were intentional! How strange...

Those nails are standard and assist in providing support for the plastics. When you reassemble it be careful to place them at the correct depth so they do not scratch the heck out of the plastics, yet still provide some support. They are common on Gottlieb and Bally games of this era- You can simply polish up the originals if you removed them carefully. After you clear coat the play field (as you will have to once you put acrylics on it) the holes will be a little filled with clear and the nails will once again fit a little bit tighter.

If you follow Vids guide for the restoration you will do fine, your play field looks absolutely great, very little work to be done honestly. All you need to do is find a few color matches and fill and repaint a couple of worn spots. The magic eraser will take care of the large majority of other issues. If you still find the cracks to be too obvious, you can spray or paint the area and let it mostly dry, then simply wipe it all back off with a dry cloth, wiping in from the edges so as not to smear the paint onto other colors. This will fill the cracks with the correct color and more or less restore the play field.

I DO not recommend you bother with attempting to recolor the play field, e.g. in some way imagine that your going to frisket mask every single bit of green and spray the entire thing with a new "better", non-faded, green... and then do this for every bit of white etc, this is very very ambitious and likely a lot to take on for a first attempt. These games look absolutely awesome if you fix the issues and use the wipe on and wipe off technique to fill the cracks (I am talking about fine scale cracks in the finish that look dark, not voids to wood).

Vids guide is great- but remember there is zero need to attempt to actually repaint the play field. You want to FIX the defects but largely leave it alone beyond that. Anything beyond that is asking for trouble unless you really, really, know what your doing.

READ Vid's guide to play field restoration on this site! Nothing against the guide you have read... as I used that for my first restore, but Vid has a slightly different take and recommends some different materials and highlights some things that perhaps are not equally well covered.

Remember, do NOT attempt to pull a plastic insert out unless your certain you can either replace it or that its loose and will come out undamaged. More than one person has ended up with a broken insert and no option but to basically manufacturer a new one and you will never get the color to match 40 year old yellowed plastic. Just be careful, some recommend pulling them all.. using a heat gun. I choose to ignore this advice as I have no experience and was to worried about breaking them.

Also, to fix cupped inserts you can simply add a few drops of clear coat over the sunken part- just hit the play field with a thin coat of clear first so you can sand your drops flat. DO not let the clear fully cure after you put the eye dropper drops on it.. sand it the next day or a few days later (depending on the product) so you can bring it down to level without spending forever sanding.

Also- Looks NICE! Good job with the magic eraser!

Its going to turn out so nice!

Mine has white flipper bats. I wonder what was original.

Jason

IMG_20130718_182925_570.jpg

Mine has white flipper bats. I wonder what was original.

Jason

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Nice work. I'm going off on a bit a tangent but one of your pictures sparked my memory. I've been working on a '78 World Cup. I noticed that you had the same problem mine did, that being the white plastic guides on either side of the L and R kick out. One is cracked I see. That seems to be a hard to find piece for replacement. I ended up fabbing a piece out of steel and it looks great but I was wondering the whole time:

-Is anyone using 3D printing for pin parts yet? I was thinking that a simple piece like that would be super easy and pretty cheap to do. I feel like there would be a ton of applications in the pin world...

We failed at our first attempt at color matching. Walked away until another day.

I would be interested in seeing how you replaced the plastic kicker guides as well.

Jason

We were just trying totouch up the small pinhead size spots. Matching the color was easy, but couldn't get it to dry the same color.

God it's funny you mention that. The boards have been out for repair with Borygard since last October. I got so tired of the machine sitting in the shop that I took it to my storage unit two days ago haha. Will take some pics next time I'm up there.

Essentially what I used was a piece from an old Tri Zone that I parted out, the steel guide that runs along the ball trough. I traced the shape I wanted and cut it out using a Dremmel. I cut in an area that had the screw mounts already so the install was easy. The fit was perfect.

Close
Adding this thread to me favourites just to see how it goes on

I have an old flier, and it shows white from the factory.

Looking great. I've started my search for an old pinball restoration project. I will hopefully find something out there that has been completely unloved...

I love threads like these. Restoring the PF is probably my favorite part of pinball. I love to play but taking a beat up machine and making it playable again is a lot of fun. I may not be the best at it, but I do know I enjoy it.

I just started a F-14 tear down and repair myself and am having a great time with it.

Good Luck to ya,
Bill

http://www.marcospecialties.com/control/keywordsearch?SEARCH_STRING=ball%20guides&S_CAT1=PFLD-LNGUIDE

Nice, the ultrasonic cleaner really did a good job. For newer star posts I just replace them, but for those old finned posts the price per is a little higher than I want to pay for a beater machine. So far I've just used Novus 1 and a toothbrush but the ultrasonic sounds a lot easier!

I ordered new ones for over the lamps too, take the lane for Super Ball Advance for example.. I just wanted all the white to match instead of old yellowed white in places and bright shiny white in others

Yeah there you go. "Fin" style is what I would have been looking for. Love Marco!

Still looking to see how this worked out. I had one of these as a project pin but just sold it. Next project, Stern Stars.