Got this one from Jeff Rothe (Rotheblog) on New Year's Eve, 2008.  Cab is solid, but paint is not.  Playfield is actually pretty darn good, but will need to be restored to at least a certain extent.  This page will be my restoration log.  Main goals:  Get playfield and cabinet looking good (backglass, thankfully, is pretty darn good) and get it working.  Doesn't have to be perfect, I just want it to be presentable. 

1/7/09

Got everything off of the playfield and started cleaning up.  Biggest issue seems to be the stained wood up top and near the drain area.  Looks like I'll just have to sand it out.  Here are some pix of the depopulation, giving some idea of the condition of the playfield.  Good news is that the Genie (?) and the Gottlieb trademark are in great shape (hardest things to touch up). 

 

1/13/09

I went to Michael's and got about fifteen shades of acrylic craft paints to touch this up.  So far, I have touched-up orange, blue, green, red, and white.  All in all, I'm pretty pleased so far.  I know this will never look perfect, but I think you'd have to look fairly hard to see the extent of the touch-ups.  Should be pretty invisible when everything's back on and you're playing in the dark, as I generally do.  Still have black to go, and that should be the toughest.   Every insert (there are 28!) will have to be leveled with superglue and the black key circle redone.  Not looking forward to that!  Other goals for the next few weeks are derusting big parts and maybe tumbling small metal parts and beginning the clearcoating process on the playfield.  I need to clear out a space in the garage for that...

I had to touchup pretty large areas around the top rollovers and the target bank.  The area around the "R" insert on the lower left was worn pretty badly, but luckily none of the text was.  In fact, not one letter or number on the whole thing needs to be touched!  That is some luck right there. 

I had to hit the circles around the pop bumpers pretty hard, as large areas of the orange and blue were worn away.  The orange in particular might need another coat.  The matches for the colors are not perfect, but pretty good.  The biggest difference is the texture, as the touchups are flat and the original glossy.  This won't be an issue when the clear goes on.  You can see the green area just right of center where I touched up, but most of that should sand out, as it was just laying on a thick coat over a large area to fill some small bare spots.

All of the inserts have sunk a bit, so nearly all of them had to be retouched a little, and all of them will have to be leveled and the black circle redone.  Still not quite sure what to do about the bare wood at the bottom.  I read on the internet that hydrogen peroxide can help with urine stains, so I'll try that first.  There's always stain or paint, if that fails. 

 

 

 

 

 

1/19/09

Had a few minutes, so I thought I would try to derust some of the metal parts.  I used Lightning rust remover, and I have to say that the results were pretty remarkable.  Here are some before and one after shots.  Some of the stuff was pretty bad, but all the rust came right off.  Some of these parts will touch the ball, especially that trough-thing in the center of the first photo) so it's vitally important that no rough spots remain!   

Yes, those are the same parts!  Some of this stuff was at least 10% covered in rust, but now is free of rust.  Note the brackets, some of which were basically covered in rust.  This stuff is the real deal!  As soon as the parts tumbler comes in a few days (I hope) I expect to see some more remarkable results. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/21/09

This morning, I started the process of filling in my sunken inserts (all 28 of them) with CA glue, commonly known as superglue.  I also started some of the black touchups with a fine-tip sharpie, but was a little overcome by the fumes from the CA.  I had a splitting headache pretty much all morning, so I think that I will provide some ventilation for the next treatment.