Wms Bride of Pinbot tidy up

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi guys, I thought id start a thread on one of two machines I’m repairing/restoring at the moment.. NOT one of my own unfortunately, but for a client of mine. A Wms Bride of Pinbot, I’ve been working on this for a few weeks on and off now, in between other jobs/ travelling away for band gigs etc. Its starting to come together now so I thought I’d share what I’ve done to it so far. I’m calling ths one a “tidy up” as i basically just have to get it working and then restore the playfield.. only minor touch-ups will be done on the cabinet.

He bought this off ebay not working (or rather his wife did!!) for $1000 a couple of months ago, and contacted me to come and repair it for him at his home. I went out for a look see, only to find a non booting MPU, cracked display glass, and to top it off broken glass all through the playfield where the backglass had been smashed while the pf glass was out 

Well after seeing that lot I knew this wouldn’t be a quick fix. They had said to me it lit up and made strange sounds and nothing else happened. They demonstrated this to me, the game came on with a few lights, a stuck on digit in one of the displays and then the sound board went Crack and smoke came out near the power amp ic. This was enough for me to say “bring it to my workshop” (which they gladly did) as there was no way I was going to try to fix this in their home.
Anyway a few pics of the game after it was delivered to me. Overall it wasn’t in too bad condition cosmetically, a few scuff marks on the cab/backbox and some of the black flaking off the front of the backbox which I will repair later.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The playfield didn’t look too bad initially, just looked to have some mylar bubbling/lifting issues around the circle of inserts between the slings, (like most of this title I have seen).

Further investigation showed a lot of ball swirl around the posts etc in areas uncovered by mylar, some minor wear in the ball return lanes where the ball drops from the wire ramps, and very dirty. I discovered later on when I removed the mylar there was ball swirl underneath the mylar, so this was put on at some stage to prevent further wear, but it was a little too late as I found out the hard way.. (more on that later)….

[Mr Pinbologist]

One more pf pic.. this is area between the slings that had had mylar applied straight over worn inserts. 

[Mr Pinbologist]

My first job to do was to make the machine actually work, which naturally was the first thing I started on when the game was delivered to me. First thing I did was to check all of the voltages coming out of the power driver board, all seemed to be in order but I replaced a few bridges and caps (as is usually recommended for these boards) just for good measure. It has had a few connector hacks here which will be fixed later on as the goal at the time I did this was just to make the game run.

In these pics, the MPU has been replaced with a Rotten Dog MPU, bought from MAD Amusements, as the original wouldn’t boot, it was riddled with corrosion and I wasn’t convinced that it’d be reliable even if I HAD been able to repair it. Luckily for me I was able to use the original MPU chip and eprom, the sticker was missing from the eprom’s window, lucky it hadn’t been exposed to any sunlight.

The original display was dead too, cracked glass and I later found out blown regulator circuit feeding too many volts into it. Also I discovered that someone had plugged the ribbon data cable from the MPU to the display upside down on the MPU board!! I only realised this when I was replacing the MPU board. I’m wondering if this contributed to the destruction of the display??

As for the display, this was also replaced with a Rotten Dog LED display also bought from MAD Amusements.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Here’s the new display fitted (1st pic)

And finally the game up and running 

I repaired the sound board too while I was working on boards, replaced a fried cap in the power amp circuit, as well as the power amp ic as well.
The game was playable at this point, but had a few switch problems that have to be sorted.

Next job to do was to start on the playfield stripdown…
As I said before I’ve been working on this for nearly a month now, playfield is actually finished, (touched up/repainted where needed and remylared) and being reassembled. will add some more later on when I have more time…

[Crashramp]

I love this game, thanks for sharing.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Some more progress pics;

Some before and after shots of removing some of the ground in dirt with Magic Eraser and isopropyl alcohol.

[Mr Pinbologist]

More pics, 3rd pic; this was after the mylar removal… YIKES!!  There was NOTHING I could do to avoid this, and was development I didn’t count on. The mylar looked like shit and HAD to come off, but in doing so created more work than I had bargained for. I took ALL the usual precautions and this happened … followed by some swearing. 

[Mr Pinbologist]

There was nothing else for it but to repaint this area completely. But first I had to remove and relevel some of the inserts, as some of them were raised, plus I had to sand the old text and clearcoat off so I could redo the text later.

Then after sanding this area with 800 grit wet&dry sandpaper and Windex, I started masking off to paint the individual colours one at a time. I’m using clear contact for the masking here, same as I have done on most of my restores in the past. First colour done was the white.

In the last pic I’m using a compass and scalpel to cut the circular sections. I double sided taped a piece of plastic the the centre insert for the compass point to dig into rather than the insert.

[Mr Pinbologist]

More pics; cutting the contact ready to respray the light blue.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Spraying the light grey… then the dark blue was hand painted in. After that had dried the whole lot was sanded with some 1200 grit wet&dry sandpaper and Windex, to level it out a bit and to take the sharp edge off the paint. Then I redid the black key lines/circles.

[Mr Pinbologist]

More of the light blue being redone, the colour I used wasn’t an exact match… close but not exact so most of it was redone.

[Mr Pinbologist]

More light blue being done.. still a bit of work to be done when these pics were taken.  

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next job to be done was the missing text from the inserts. I used waterslide laser printer decals for this, created from scans taken earlier. I placed a work lamp under the pf for the pic to show the text better.

The following day I mylared the whole pf. This is where I’m up to at this point in time as of writing this.

[pinball god]

looks great and good recovery. I need to clean up a pf with magic eraser. Is it possible to describe in detail how this process works. I have had a test run on another old pf and wore down to the undercoat quite quickly. Also a picture or brand of magic eraser you use would be helpful. I think I haven't grasped the concept yet. Maybe I'm rubbing too hard or too long or something???

thanks