Devil's Dare - Playfield prep

I started to prep the new replacement playfield and get it ready for clearcoat and swap. The replacement playfield I have is not in the greates shape but it is significantly better than the original. It as some very stubborn mylar on it, which is good and bad. The good is it protected the playfield. the bad is it is the hardest mylar I have ever tried to remove. First I tried to use the upside down freeze spray technique. It just wouldn't budge. it started removing tiny flecks of playfield paint. So i switched to trying out goo gone applied underneath. That was the worst. So needless to say, 5 cans of spray later (yep almost $50 worth of freeze spray) I got it off.

What that left me was some little touchups on the playfield but overall it isn't too bad.

The worst part about this playfield is the area around the pop bumpers. Itis badly work to the wood in spots. I touched it up ok with matching yellow and orange paint. the blessing here is that they are behind the pop bumpers so they won't be visible during gameplay.

I'm not the greatest artist, so the larger the worn area, the tougher it is for me to make it look decent. Frankly I make little kids refrigerator art look like a rembrant.

I have attached a few pics of the stripped playfield. I hope to get it clearcoated this weekend to give it some decent cure time before swapping the parts off the old pf.

I think rather than go completely stock on this (it isn't a high dollar machine I am hoping to get collector quality out of, I just want it to be a player's machine) I think I'm going to add some special edition type features to it. Legs, coin door and side rails colored to mach the game. I've stripped down the coin door (why are gottlieb coin doors so complex?) to the skin and I'm going to get it, the legs and the side rails powder coated. Details to follow.

Devil's Dare

So I've restored a few machines that I think I will try to post about a little later, But for now I thought I'd start by journalling my latest project as I work on it.

Recently I picked up a Devil's Dare project machine. I am not the biggest fan of Gottlieb machines, and from what I've heard they are a nightmare to work on, however I really dig the art on this particular machine and this one appears to be a good candidate for a restore.

So I started with the breakdown and that is where my story begins....

It appears that most of the parts are here. The back box is missing some boards, however there is a box of spare boards. I have no idea what condition they are in electronically but they look good. There is a CPU board, a sound board, a sound power board, 2 power supply boards (which will need rebuild I'm sure), 2 driver boards (one is badly hacked, it was definitely on fire as there is a huge hole under a transistor that someone repaired with epoxy, photos to come when I get to the boards), pop bumper power board and a reset board. Good start.

Leg's were missing but thanks to the previous owner Matt S. as he hooked me up with a set of legs( and the all important manual! Yay!) that he found later. That's the kind of person you want to deal with when you buy a machine. Very stand up guy.

Now it is missing a lockdown bar which seems impossible to come by. Of course Gottlieb widebody machines are a unique 'mid body' size, which it seems there are no lockdown bars around at any distributors. So my plan is to get two standard bars and have a metal fabricator weld me up the right bar size. I'll let you know how this comes out.

This machine came with two playfields. One in the machine is completely trashed. i'd say water damage in the culprit but I don't know for sure. there is a second playfield however that is mylared and has only a small amount of wear around the back of a pop bumper and a couple of raised inserts. this should be the easiest playfield restoration I've ever done (grand Lizard and Time fantasy where a nightmare).

the Cabinet on this machine is trashed. Again I am assuming water damage at some point as the plywood is starting to delaminate it's layers. the most noticable is the flaking of the top layer off the sides. Lot's of sanding, epoxy work on the wood (I restore boats so I'm used to repairing plywood that is delaminating) and finally a new stencil and paintwork. Should be good as new.

The displays are all there, look to be in great shape and the green plasic covers look almost perfect. Good news there.

Most of the metal in this thing is showing signs of rust (again, water damage assumed) so there will be some tumbling and cleaning involved.

So here are the pics that I have so far, more to come as work commences.

Here is a link to all the photo's on flikr: Pics here

Pinball Projects

I thought it would be good to share my experiences with whoever might be interested in reading this. Not that I am any expert or that I have anything particularily interesting to say but if this blog can help other folks in the pinball community then it will be a worthwhile use of my time :-) Generally learning from my mistakes and what not to do will probably be the biggest takeaway!