Whilst taking the bookcase apart, I noticed that the plastic arm attached to the motor shank was also fractured.
Fracture of Bookcase arm
As the fracture was slightly open, I put some liquid superglue into the crack and clamped the fracture shut with an adjustable wrench until the glue had dried.
Repaired fracture of Bookcase arm
Today saw the completion of some of my playfield touch-ups.
Firstly, The Power insert, which had sunk into playfield at the top causing ugly wear to the playfield above the insert, wearing down to the bear wood required the insert to be readjusted to the same height as the playfield. This was achieved by applying heat to the back of the insert using a hair-dryer, thereby warming it up and the surrounding adhesive, so that the insert could then be moved up flush with the playfield.
The bare wood was sealed with superglue and sanded down when dry so that the surface was flush with the playfield. This area was then touched up.
In order to get the bright orange colour, it was first necessary to apply an “undercoat” of acrylic white. Next came the outer yellow colour followed by the inner orange colour, which I had to mix myself, consisting of orange, yellow and white acrylic colours. Whereas the resulting orange colour wasn’t bad, applying it onto the previously “undercoated” white area meant that the top surface actually stood proud of the playfield slightly. Trying to sand this top surface down with 2000 grit sandpaper only succeeded in removing the orange and yellow colours. So in the end, I just had to leave the colour proud of the surface. In the accompanying photo, the apparent dark boarder above the yellow touch-up is caused by the shadow of the uneven layer. You can see how the insert looked before here.
Repaired "The Power" insert
Incidentally, as acrylic colours tend to darken on application of a clear overcoat (which I will be spot-applying to protect the touch up) it will be interesting to see how the colours turn out. Also, this overcoating may actually help with the unevenness.
Next was the Electric Chair hole. Having sanded down the artificial wood to give the desired shape of hole and making sure that it was flush with the surface of the playfield I started off by touching up the white of the lightning bolts on both sides of the hole. Next came the green grass to the left of the hole, which was a combination of green and black acrylic colours and came out quite well. But then try as I might, I just couldn’t mix the light blue colour to the right of the hole.
I needed help. Fortunately for me, I had already been in contact with a pinball fan on Flippermarkt.de who has a reputation as an expert when it comes to touching up playfields and clearcoating. He supplies products to the automotive business and through his passion for pinball has colour “recipes” for the majority of colours for most of the popular pinball machines. This guy was able to help me at short notice and supplied me with the blue colour. At the same time (to save time in the future) I ordered yellow, lilac, ocre and wood colours from him also.
Incidentally, these colours are not water-based acrylics as I had been using for my touch-ups, but automotive paints. Fortunately though, I could thin these paints (and clean my brushes) with Isopropyl alcohol.
Having touched up the blue colour to the right of the chair, I painted the “wood” section with my newly acquired wood colour.
Once everything had dried it was time to do the black outline. For this, I used a permanent marker pen which came from a set used for marking CDs. In the set I bought was also an “eraser” to be used to remove any mistakes. This eraser proved to be a god-send as it allowed me to make minor corrections, whenever my straight lines ever went a bit wobbly. Interestingly, this eraser was also able to remove the newly-acquired automotive paints from the playfield surface thereby helping me with minor errors made when applying them also. You can see how the outhole looked before here.
Repaired Electric Chair outhole
The original damage to the Electric Chair hole actually started to break up the paintwork of the playfield underneath the Mylar protecting the outhole at the front of the hole. As touching up this area would require the Mylar to be removed, I decided to leave it as it was. It doesn’t look too bad as it is, but as it is going to be covered with a “Cliffy” hole protector anyway, it won’t be visible once I’ve finished.
Next came the Swamp. Apart from the slightly damaged entrance from the shooter lane, the entrances and outholes of the Swamp were surprisingly in good condition. So having sanded down the artificial wood on the entrance to the Swamp from the shooter lane, I painted the artificial wood with wood colour and then repainted the black outline with my marker pen. The Swamp kickout only needed a little sanding down before reapplying the black outline and the left entrance to the Swamp just required the black outline to be reapplied.
Repaired entrance to Swamp from shooter lane
Touched-up Swamp kick-out
Touched-up entrance to Swamp from playfield
The right inlane was next, where the pinball drops from the wire ramp onto the playfield. This area had also been worn down to the bare wood. Once again my first task was to seal the wood with superglue. Having done this I used my automotive colours and marker pen to touch up the paintwork. In contrast to my touch up to The Power insert, I didn’t build up the damaged area to be flush with the playfield before touching up. As such, once complete, the damaged area was still indented into the playfield. My intention here is to build up this indentation to the level of the playfield with clearcoat. My reason for doing this is to give more protection to this area. You can see how this area looked before here.
Touch-up to right in-lane (ball drop from wire ramp)
Finally I worked on the inserts. For this I turned the pinball machine on and let it go into attract mode – this way it was easier to see where paint was missing from the playfield inserts. The black borders were then easily touched up with the black marker pen. For the coloured areas, I found it easiest to black out the missing area with the black marker pen prior to applying the correct colour. This way I could guarantee an opaque finish. This was the strategy I also applied to the House, which, with its fine lines and details was the most challenging touch up by far!
Touch-ups to the damage around the Mansion inserts
Whilst taking off the lower right flipper today, I noticed that the pawl had been fractured. So it looks like I’ll have to rebuild both lower flippers using new parts (instead of repairing them, as with the upper right flipper).
Damaged plastic link on lower right flipper pawl
I also decided to remove the entire subway assembly (which transports the pinball from Thing’s box to the Swamp) so that I could clean it thoroughly. To be honest though, I had been put off by doing this, as I had been stumped by the problem of removing the scoop. I just didn’t know how best to remove the screws on the right hand side of the scoop, which were difficult to get to, because of the limited space. But then I came up with a solution, using a standard nut driver and an extension taken from another toolset
Removing the Thing box scoop from the underside of the playfield
Also took my Electric Chair and Swamp scoops to a metal worker to be rewelded today.They finished off welding the metal tabs from each side on both sides of the tab to improve stability.
I was happy with the results even though there was some discolouring of the scoop itself (which shouldn’t be too visible once the scoop is built into the pinball machine).
Repaired Swamp scoop
Repaired Electric Chair scoop
View of the Electric Chair scoop from frount showing discolouration
Having stripped down most of the playfield I started the undoubtedly daunting task of touching up the playfield today.
Armed with my plastic wood (PC-Lumber) imported from the US, I filled out the electric chair hole, keeping to the desired profile as well as I could in order to prevent giving myself too much work at the sanding down phase. I also filled out the slightly damaged area of the entrance to the Swamp from the shooter lane.
Plastic wood applied to the Electric Chair outhole
Plastic wood applied to the Swamp entrance from the shooter lane
Whilst waiting for this wood to dry, I took on some easier tasks: Firstly the crooked Train Wreck target was simply a case of physically bending the target upright. Originally I thought the target had not been mounted centrally with the cut out, but it had. Closer inspection of the target showed that the target upright wasn’t at 90 degrees to the mounting bracket, making it skewed when mounted.
Original (lopsided) Train Wreck target
Straightened Train Wreck target
Secondly, I touched up the front of the cabinet with the acrylic paints I had purchased. Fortunately, no mixing required, as the yellow colour I had in my pack matched the yellow of the sword quite well and the only other colour required was standard black.
Original front side of Pinball machine
Front side of Pinball machine after touch-up
Not bad, if I do say so myself!
As is one of my faults, I was once again a little too hasty:
Having removed off all the grime from the playfield I noticed that there were two particular parts on the playfield where the ball had created small grooves in the playfield which appered to be dirty. So I thought I’d clean them up with my Dremel equivalent and the “Polishing Kit Attachment Set”.
Having never done this before I was surpised how easy it was to “burn through” the “diamond plating” and the graphic right down to the bare wood of the playfield:
Cleaning the playfield down to the wood - brilliant!
So after this warning shot, I thought I now understood how to handle the Dremel – light pressure and constant movement. So I tried this on another spot on the playfield. It was certainly better, but I still managed to remove the diamond plate of the playfield!
More damage from the Dremel
After this disaster, I though I’d try something easier, so I turned my attention to the edges of the Mylar. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to remove the Mylar, but I did want to clean it up, as some grime had already forced itself under the edges of the Mylar causing ugly dirt streaks in the playfield:
Dirt under the edges of the Mylar causing ugly streaks
To clean this, I used some Isopropyl Alcohol and a cotton bud and gently rubbed the edge of the Mylar. Capillary action made the alcohol seep under the Mylar where the dirt was and actually drew it out:
Dirt removed from under the Mylar using isopropyl alcohol
Although the adhesive under the Mylar where the dirt had been was long gone (resulting in slightly lifted edges) I decided to leave the edges as they were. This will surely be a dirt trap for the future, but I can easily clean the grime out again at a later date. And if this gets too much, I could simply glue the edge down with Superglue. But not just yet (just in case I decide one day to actually remove the Mylar).
Back to stripping down today. Well after just under 10 more hours, the playfield looked like this:
Finished stripping
As you can see, I’ve left the pop-bumpers on the playfield as well as the targets and slingshot mechanisms. I didn’t see any point in removing these parts at this stage, as to do so would mean a lot of dangling pieces underneath the playfield (as these parts aren’t conveniently connected with connectors to the cable harnesses and would therefore need to be desoldered to remove them). Maybe I’ll need to later on, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!
Just look at that dirt:
Accumulated dirt on the playfield
Just look at those bumper skirts!
Yeuch!
It was a slow and laborious process stripping down (shopping) the pinball machine today. My process consisted of
Sample photo of right side plastics broken down
Now this wasn’t a quick process and after 8.5 hours I had got this far:
Halfway into the strip down
I’ll hopefully finish this tomorrow
Well it has taken months in coming, but today is the official start day of the big TAF Pinball Machine clean up.
I think I’ve prepared well for this event, but will no doubt discover something I’ve forgotten on the way.
Today I’m planning to take lots of photos of the playfield and start to dismantle the modules from the playfield. As I remove a module, I’ll be photographing it again in both its completed and broken down status. All photos will be taken on white paper with graduated markings in order to be able to tell the sizes of the screws (for example) more easily. As I intend to “tumble” clean the nuts and screws, it’s important to know which screw belongs to which module. This way of working will hopefully help me.
Incidentally, I found an intersting “Shop Out” Guide on line. Unfortunately this guide is no longer available on line (spotted by an eagle-eyed pinhead on flippermarkt.de) but I managed to save a copy here. Some of the information could help in this process.
Wish me luck!