The Aussie Pinball Arcade
Aussie Pinball Forums => Restorations => Topic started by: Mr Pinbologist on February 27, 2009, 12:07:39 AM
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Ok.. I decided to start a new thread documenting the rest of the restore of my Dracula machine. Next after the playfield restore was to be the cabinet repair/repaint.
First thing I had to do was to make the stencils for the cab/backbox art. So it was off to the newsagents for tracing paper and white cardboard that I normally use for this. The following pics show my stencil making progress… Only one set of two stencils (yellow and black) was needed for the cab sides, backbox sides. So with the cab front set that’s a total of six stencils. Using the cardboard allows the side stencils to be reused on the opposite side of the cab/backbox, since the paint soaks into the cardboard fairly well and once it dries, there is no danger of it ruining the opposite side paint. I have used this method of stencil making for years, and any problems of reusing side stencils to do the opposite side, and having them stick to the cab have been due to my own impatience!! (wanting to do too much too quickly). So if anyone tries this.. make SURE the paint is properly dried before attempting to do the opposite side!!
After tracing the art onto the tracing paper, I then lay this onto the cardboard sheets. I have to tape two and a third of these cardboard sheets together to get the size I need to do a cab side art stencil. I use wide masking tape for this. This can be seen in the second pic.
Once the tracing paper is taped down, I lay the stencil onto a sheet of MDF and cut out the shapes with a scalpel. I also use some hole punches as well (3rd pic).. these are good for really tight curved spaces that would be tricky to cut with the scalpel. I simply place the punch onto the curved area and give it a whack with a hammer, leaving a neatly cut circle. I can then simply cut to the edge of the circle with the scalpel. Last pic shows one of the finished stencils sitting on the cabinet side.
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Now for the cabinet repairs. Not a great deal of repair was needed, just tightening a couple of loose joints and filling a few dents/scrapes. The front had a couple of screws with cup washers in it which I promptly removed. I then carefully spread the loose corners with a screwdriver.. just enough to allow some woodglue into the join, then clamped and put in a few nails just for good measure. Same deal for the cross braces in the bottom of the cabinet, a couple of the joins were a bit loose so these were glued, clamped and a couple of nails. Back panel and backbox mount were checked and repaired as needed. I filled the nail holes during the next step covered in my next post.
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And now for the part I most dislike… stripping the old paint!! This, to me is the most painful/messy part of a restoration.. prepping a cabinet for paint!! Its only when i start spraying the base colour i start to get a sense of relief! %.% After stripping off all of the old paint with paint stripper and wiping down with methylated spirits, I left it til the next day before I sanded it back with 60 grit sandpaper. I then filled all of the dents and gouges with auto body filler. After that had dried I block sanded the filler smooth with 60 grit and refilled any spots I’d missed, or anywhere there were low spots that I could find.
After that I block sanded the whole cabinet back again with 220 grit paper, dusted off the cabinet completely and gave the whole thing a couple of coats of K&H brand enamel primer. When dry I gave it a sand back with 220 grit and filled a few small scratches that showed up after the primer had been sprayed, using “Septone” brand automotive spot putty. After that had dried, I block sanded back the putty back smooth, then, once again sanded back the whole cabinet with 220, before wiping down the cabinet with Prepsol and rags and giving it another coat of primer. I then left it to dry for a day, before sanding the primer back with 400 grit paper, wiping it down with Prepsol then spraying on the purple base colour in about four coats. The paint I used was Plasti-kote brand enamel spray paint, bought from Bunnings. The colour is called “African Violet” and was a fairly good match for the original unfaded colour found under the siderails and on the inside of the cabinet. I gave the inside of the cab a coat of this colour as well, since the whole inside was painted on this cab.. so I thought I should tidy it up too!
I’ll now leave this for a few days before I do the stenciling. This cab had no “splatter” pattern paint on it so there’s one step I don’t have to do! In the mean time I’ll go thru the whole ordeal again with the backbox!
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Amazing Mitch !
The only difference between our menthods is that you use Cardboard, and I use acetate sheets. I think my method takes a bit longer !
Keep the updates coming - I enjoy resto threads
$#$
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Another quick update: after leaving the cabinet base colour to dry over the weekend I decided to make a start the stenciling. (I’ll start on the backbox next weekend!). I started with the left side of the cabinet, laying on and aligning the yellow stencil. I weighted the stencils down with washers/nuts, sockets/spanners etc… anything I could lay my hands on that was small and heavy..lol.
Once again I used Plasti-kote brand enamel, so as to make sure the paints were compatible with each other, to make sure there would be no problems with crinkling paint (reacting with the base coat).
I sprayed each colour on in several light coats… allowing about 10 minutes between coats, all the time making sure to use just enough paint to cover evenly and no more. As mentioned first the yellow was done, then the black. This paint dried fairly quick, even so I waited 24 hours before doing the black. While the black was drying on the left hand side I did the stenciling on the front. The 1st pic shows the front stencil for the yellow positioned ready to be done. Again I let this dry 24 hours before doing the black. remaining pics the side stenciling progress.
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After I’d let the left hand side dry for a few hours, I turned the cabinet over to do the right hand side. The yellow stencil was done first, and allowed to dry I was going to leave it for a few days between doing each colour… but patience is not one of my strong points %.%
Even so it came out pretty good, with no major overspray getting under the stencils. What little overspray that DOES get under comes off easily with some Re-Po paint doctor auto polish and some soft cloth, or cotton bud in small areas. I find Its best to do this before the paint completely dries (I did this step after about an hour, and had NOT been done in these pics).
Im pretty happy with the way this turned out. The original base colour was slightly “redder” than the colour I used, though I dont think it looks too bad. but it did, as I said match the colour under the side rails and insides reasonably well. Anyway its only a pinball machine after all… lol
Next.. the backbox rebuild and repaint… stay tuned!!
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MAN that looks bloody awsome i hope my cabinet restore on my marathon turns out even close to that ill be happy
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Looks great Mitch. Well done.
question - The stencils are cardboard - so how do you line up the stencils so well ? They need to be "spot on" - as your results show, but how do your set the registration of them ?
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Looks great Mitch. Well done.
question - The stencils are cardboard - so how do you line up the stencils so well ? They need to be "spot on" - as your results show, but how do your set the registration of them ?
When i trace the artwork onto the tracing paper, i also trace the outline of the front, back and bottom edges of the cabinet onto the tracing paper with a black marker pen (see pics in 1st post of this thread, also notice the arrows marked in the corners), sometimes i'll align the edge of the tracing paper to an edge of the cab, as i've done here on the cab bottom. From these, i mark these edges onto the cardboard with the marker pen and a ruler, (front, back and bottom.. the front stencil pic shows these lines in my 2nd last post).
Then after i remove the tracing paper, with a ruler i draw the cabinet edge lines onto the stencil, right to the edges, so i can copy these onto the opposite side as well. Usually i'll pick one edge/corner and mark this on the stencil as the alignment edge, i do this on both sides of all of the side stencils.
I ALWAYS double check these on both sets of stencils before i spray any paint onto the cab with them.
Hope i explained that sufficiently... i can add some pics of how i do this when i do the backbox stencils if need be...
Cheers and thanks... Mitch
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Interesting Mitch.
Sounds a lot easier than the method I used to use with Acetate sheets !
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Quick progress update: On Friday on my day off I got a start on the back box. First thing to do obviously was to trace the stencils, which I did the night before.
So come Friday morning it was out with the paint stripper and scraper for some stripping. The paint came off fairly easily as it did on the cabinet. Once that was done I wiped the backbox down with methylated spirits and rags.
The backglass surround section on this game had been water damaged at some stage of its life, so naturally I just had to replace this. It was made from MDF originally, as have been every other Stern machine I’ve seen, so I used MDF again to remake this section. I didn’t get any pics of what it looked like before.. it wasn’t all that bad really, but being the perfectionist I am I decided to repair it anyway! :lol 2nd pic was taken after this work had been done, and while the dent repairs were in progress.
3rd pic shows the backbox after several coats of primer, done today. While that was drying I decided to repaint the legs. I bought a can of Septone brand hammer finish spraypaint. No primer was needed for this paint so it was as simple as stripping the crappy old paint off with my clean n strip disc in the drill, giving them a wipe down with Prepsol and giving them a few coats of the paint. Las pic shows the end result. Tomorrow I should be able to bolt them onto the cabinet!!
Also I got a start reassembling the cabinet. I polished the side rails with Autosol polish and refitted them. I managed to save most of the twist nails so I buffed the heads to a nice shine before putting them in. a couple of them broke removing them, luckily I had some spare nails in my spare parts boxes. Late this afternoon I started refitting the ground braid back into the cab, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Hopefully I’ll get some paint onto the backbox.. Should be able to post more pics tomorrow!!
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Nice work, Mitch.
I used a similar Hammertone paint from Bunnings for my Meteor - and I also did the door with this paint - It is almost an exact match.
http://aussiepinball.com/index.php?topic=49.15
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Thanx Nino.. i remembered that thread, it gave me the idea to give the hammertone paint a try in the first place ^^^ .. That and i found it the other day when in Supercheap Auto
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Backbox base coats are now done..Yay!! #*# first thing this morning I sanded the primer back smooth with 400 grit sandpaper, then a wipe down with Prepsol to get it ready for paint. Before the purple went on I masked off the front backglass surround section as this was to be painted black.
First I sprayed the back of the backbox and allowed it to dry, before laying it onto its back (supported by some wood offcuts under the edges) and spraying the top, bottom and sides in several coats, allowing about 20 minutes between coats. I then left this for several hours to dry. 2nd pic shows the front surround done, picture taken late this afternoon.
While the purple backbox paint was drying I went into the garage and started some reassembly of the cabinet. 2nd pic shows the mylar protectors I made to help protect the cab paint where the legs bolt on. This is something I started doing on my last few restores.
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And heres the crappy looking lock down bar assembly in the first pic before any cleaning was done to it.. rusty and caked on black enamel paint! I bought a new clean n strip disc today as the other one was worn out, and this made short work of removing the paint and rust (I removed the opening lever first before cleaning).
After cleaning I decided to give it a coat of the same hammer finish paint I used on the legs, just to pretty it up a bit, as can be seen in the 3rd pic with it installed into the cabinet. While the paint was drying in this I did some more cleaning of the various bits and pieces that belong in the cabinet, including the wiring harness and tilt mechanism, knocker assy etc and installed each item as it was cleaned and/or repaired.
I’ll let the backbox dry for a few days before I do the stencils. In the mean time I’ll strip, clean and repaint the coin door.. it was done by the previous owner but im not happy with the job that was done on it.
I reckon in about another two weeks the game should be very close to being finished!! $#$
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Super professional job as usual Mitch. Ive got two questions 1. after you paint the last coat over your stensil when do you lift up your stencil ? straight away.
2. Is that a Fender amp in the back ground of your pix's ?
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Thanks for the kind words Mark.
In answer to your questions...
depending on how many coats were needed to cover, usually betwen 10 - 15 minutes, i always use enamel paint for this. the more coats i have to use, the longer i leave it before removing the stencils. but its NEVER much longer than about 15 minutes.
Yes... Very observant of you!! its a fender amp sitting on my bench.. only a solid state one unfortunately, a Pro185 belonging to my band mate, in need of a few repairs.
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I LOVE your idea of using the hammer finish paint on the lock down bar assembly ^^^
I might have to steal that idea for a Stern I have to do later on down the track.
Brilliant work as always, Mitch $#$
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Coin Door:
While the backbox base coat was drying, I got stuck into the coin door, totally dismantling it then stripping the old paint with the clean n strip disc in my drill. Then it was wiped down with Prepsol and sprayed in the same hammer finish paint as the legs. Upon checking the colour, I realized after looking at a few pics of other Stern games that the hammer finish paint colour id used was too dark So I then decided to go for the same White Knight brand hammer finish paint Nino used on his Stern Meteor coin door.
So I searched all the shops local to me (the nearest Bunnings to me is an hours drive away), I ended up at my mate Ricks place of work (who custom mixed some of my playfield paints for me), and found the right paint. So it was then a matter of stripping the coin door… again!! and respraying it in the new colour. Id also sprayed most of the parts inside in the darker colour, so rather than strip these I left them as they were. After the paint had dried I reassembled everything and fitted the door back into the cabinet. The coin chutes I polished with Autosol polish before refitting to the door. Initially id painted the door bolt heads but decided to buff them to a nice shine instead. To do this I put each bolt into my electric drill and spun them, while first holding a piece of 400 grit sandpaper against them to clean them, then a piece of rag with Re-po paint doctor polish to buff them to a shine, this stuff works a treat for this!! Plus it’s a wax based polish so it should help prevent corrosion.
In these pics the legs still have the darker colour paint on them but they will probably be removed and resprayed in the lighter colour.
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Backbox Stencilling:
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Power Supply and Transformer:
First thing I did here was to remove the transformer from its metal housing and remove the circuit board from its metal backing plate, and gave these metal parts a thorough clean and to remove some surface rust that was present with the clean n strip disc. Then I gave them both a coat of hammer finish paint and sat them aside to dry.
Notice in the 1st pic the threaded insulated spacers I fitted in place of two of the nylon mounting standoffs. This is something I did on my Lectronamo power supply to give the board a more solid mounting, since the boards normally rely on the original rectifier bolts for this. Otherwise the board can fall off from the mounts. I bought these from DSE.
Next I rebuilt the power supply board with new 35 amp bridge rectifiers, new header pins and performed all of the upgrades as per the Marvin website. I usually use the spade terminal type bridges and solder paper clip wire to the terminals so they can be fitted into the board.. a bit of extra work I know but these bridge rectifiers are pretty cheap and quick and easy to obtain from DSE so that’s why I use them.
Also before fitting them to the board I fitted some heatsinks to each bridge. These cost me nothing as I raided them from a dead TV switchmode power supply board from work!! I trimmed them down a bit so they’d fit neatly and bolted them on with some heatsink compound smeared on for good measure. Last pic shows the power supply fitted back into the backbox. I tested all the voltages coming out of the supply.. the solenoid 43 volt was missing but I quickly traced that to a solder joint on the AC side of the bridge that hadn’t tinned with solder properly.
Next on the to do list… ground mods etc for the solenoid driver and check voltages before connecting any other boards up, a few connector pins to be redone, fit a remote memory battery lead to the MPU board. Also have to fit a new power switch that was missing (the wires had been joined and taped before I bought the game)!
No long to go now!! #*#
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Great work Mitch, looking really nice. Hopefully will be able to apply your methods, particularly with the stenciling to one of my own restorations one day.
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The coin door has come up really nice, and the backbox stencilling has worked a treat as well.
Looks like you have put in some big hours with this one but I can tell the result is going to be very pleasing.
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Thanks for taking the time to post these excellent results Mitch
I'm sure everybody that reads your posts becomes even more inspired by doing so
Ever thought about doing a pin from the early to mid 1960s?
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What would we do with out you Mitch?
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Exception Cabinet work, Mitch. Looking great.
A question regarding the Power supply upgrade. I notice the housing is an original one. Did you replace the trifericon pins ?
The picture of the door mounted in the cabinet is fantastic. I love your work, Mate !
$#$
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Exception Cabinet work, Mitch. Looking great.
A question regarding the Power supply upgrade. I notice the housing is an original one. Did you replace the trifericon pins ?
The picture of the door mounted in the cabinet is fantastic. I love your work, Mate !
$#$
havent replaced any connector pins/housings yet, thats on the 'to do" list
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Made some more good progress today in getting this game done. 1st pic shows the playfield ready to go into the cabinet. Note the protective felt strip on the side of the playfield… an idea borrowed from, I think it was one of Nino’s restores? where he put felt strip on the side of one of his playfields to protect the newly painted insides of the cab?? sorry if I got that wrong. Anyway the idea came from on here!! ^^^
2nd pic shows the solenoid driver board with all of the grounding mods done as per the Marvins repair guides. The filter cap C23 had already been done on this board and had a 15’000uF fitted, so no need to change this one as it looked near new. I fitted this board into the backbox, connected it up and switched on and checked the voltages, all measured fine, as they should because the game was working before I dismantled it.
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These pics show my home made board test jig I built to test bally and gottlieb driver boards and displays. With this I can fully test both bally AND gottlieb 6 digit displays, bally lamp driver boards and gottlieb sys 1 driver boards. The top rows of LEDs connect to each output of a stern/bally lamp board, and the bottom rows are for the gottlied sys 1 driver board, each LED goes to an output driver transistor or SCR. The gold strip in the middle has the edge conector for the sys1 board behind it. Each LED is labeled with the board reference number for the output device its connected to.
Anyway for the bally/stern board, an internal binary counter drives the ic’s on the driver board, turning each output on one at a time in each of the four banks of leds, one bank for each decoder ic and its output devices on the driver board. the fore red switches at the top let me blank each bank of leds to test the decoder ic’s and the output SCRs. The 5th switch (strobe) lets me stop the decoders on a particular output in the four decoders, as can be seen in the 2nd and 3rd pics, thus its telling me Q43 on the driver board isn’t switching.
Last pic shows the output working after I replaced the SCR Q43. the board was then ready to go back into the machine.
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Nice one - are you going to release a schematic? Pretty please?
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Next I got stuck into the MPU board, on inspecting the pin headers I found the cause of some problems I was having with digits going out, which I initially thought would be the connectors. Some of the pins had bad solder joints. The pins were tarnished and had at some stage been sanded so I just replaced the pin headers.. no point in mucking about with dodgey connector pins I always say!! While I was at it I soldered on some long wires to where the memory battery connects to, and on the other end I fitted a 9v type battery snap to connect onto the battery holder that is shown in the second pic below.
These pics show the board installed and the 3x AA battery holder. Actually it’s a modified 6x AA holder. I soldered the diode into the backside that stops the MPU from trying to charge the alkaline batteries that will be fitted.
Still to be done, the ball shooter assy to be rebuilt, and one display with damaged segments to have a new glass soldered in. Also I’ll check and replace any corroded/tarnished connector pins.
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Thanks for taking the time to post these excellent results Mitch
I'm sure everybody that reads your posts becomes even more inspired by doing so
Ever thought about doing a pin from the early to mid 1960s?
Thanks Tony. ^^^
Yeah id definitely consider doing a resto on an early 60s pin if i came across one for sale.
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simply superb Mitch !
I love your test rig - that would make life so much easier !
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simply superb Mitch !
I love your test rig - that would make life so much easier !
^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^
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Another update: getting close to finished now! #*# I removed the legs and repainted them again, in the same colour hammertone paint used on the coin door. Rather that strip them back I simply sanded them back with 400 wet/dry paper, gave them a wipedown with Prepsol, gave them a few coats of paint and refitted them to the cab once dry.
I’ve actually had the game powered up and running a few days now, checking everything. Just a few small issues that had to be dealt with, ie switch cleaning/adjusting etc.
The sound board had always had a few probs with some of the tones weak/distorted, especially during the cold weather, and ALWAYS on the 1000 point sound. After studying the circuit I figured it had to be in the tone generator circuits, around U17 (LM324) a quad op amp ic and its associated components. Three of the four op amps in this IC form the score tone generator circuits for the 10, 100 and 1000 point scores. Rather than muck round I simply replaced all the ceramic capacitors in these circuits with new polyester caps as well as the IC itself for good measure. I didn’t have an LM324 on hand so I used a TL074 instead, which is basically the same, having identical pin outs works just fine.
Next I repinned the power supply connectors where needed and used new housings for the connectors, to help improve reliability.
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aww f**k!! forgot to resize that last pic!! sorry!! @.@
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Ball Shooter :
This was looking crappy so I removed the plunger and springs and gave the housing a sand back with 220 grit sandpaper, then 400 grit. As shown in the 1st pic I wrapped a 3/8’ drill bit in masking tape and pushed the shooter housing onto the drill bit firmly, and spun the drill at a slow speed while holding the sandpaper against it.. thus making short work of sanding!! A quick wipe with Prepsol and rag and it was given a few coats of acrylic primer.
When the primer had dried I sanded it again with 400 grit, cleaned it up with Prepsol and hit it with a few coats of acrylic white. While that was drying I mounted the plunger shaft in my drill and buffed the shaft and end to a nice shine. Then reassembled everything when the paint had dried.
One mistake id made when repainting the cab.. the cutout for the plunger assy had at some stage been enlarged/drilled out, so the hole was just visible with the shooter mounted .. Of course I forgot about this when I repaired the cab didn’t I??!! @.@ Anyway to get around the problem I cut out a piece of clear polycarbonate plastic to fit over the shooter housing mounts, and made it a slightly larger diameter than the housing itself, thus covering the hole. Next I painted the plastic on the back side that would be against the cabinet with the same colour paint as the cab.
Worked out pretty well I think, the average person looking at it would never know it wasn’t original unless they knew a bit about these games.
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we share the same amount of attention to detail !
Love your work, Mitch !
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Display repair: I had one dodgey display that needed a new glass. I ordered a couple of glasses that arrived on Friday (yesterday), so I got stuck into replacing the glass.
1st pic shows the display in question. 2nd pic, the new and old glass on the bench. I desoldered the old glass and fitted the new one then tested the display on my test jig. The display function lets me test all of the inputs to the display. It advances the digits 0 thru 9, and I have switches for the latch, strobe and blanking inputs so I can fully test the display.
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While I was printing out the instruction cards I thought I might as well scan and recreate all of the information/ settings cards as well.
Hows THAT for attention to detail Nino??!!
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And heres the game complete.. well except for the backglass, which I still have to do something with to make it look better.. hopefully!
Its so great to finally have this up and running again. $#$ $#$
In the meantime, I’ll set up the game into the lineup and enjoy playing it for a while and repair the backglass later on.
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more pics..
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Heh, heh, you guys are too much! Once again, superb work.
I can see why you guys need a few pins - otherwise you would have nothing to play while your restoration pins are tied up in the workshop for months.
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Display repair: I had one dodgey display that needed a new glass. I ordered a couple of glasses that arrived on Friday (yesterday), so I got stuck into replacing the glass.
1st pic shows the display in question. 2nd pic, the new and old glass on the bench. I desoldered the old glass and fitted the new one then tested the display on my test jig. The display function lets me test all of the inputs to the display. It advances the digits 0 thru 9, and I have switches for the latch, strobe and blanking inputs so I can fully test the display.
Hard to believe that this is the same machine fantastic job
Where did you buy the new display glasses from and were they expensive ?
I have four that either need repairing or replacing.
Cheers
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And are you going to spill the beans on your test rig? Or is that a trade secret?
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Display repair: I had one dodgey display that needed a new glass. I ordered a couple of glasses that arrived on Friday (yesterday), so I got stuck into replacing the glass.
1st pic shows the display in question. 2nd pic, the new and old glass on the bench. I desoldered the old glass and fitted the new one then tested the display on my test jig. The display function lets me test all of the inputs to the display. It advances the digits 0 thru 9, and I have switches for the latch, strobe and blanking inputs so I can fully test the display.
Hard to believe that this is the same machine fantastic job
Where did you buy the new display glasses from and were they expensive ?
I have four that either need repairing or replacing.
Cheers
I bought the display glasses (i got two, but only needed one for this game) from Bumper Action and they were $80 each. i dont know if they can be bought cheaper anywhere else as i havent really looked... But their service is great i think.. ordered them Wednesday arvo and had them Friday morning!! so i tend not to worry too much about price if i can get parts that quick!!
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And are you going to spill the beans on your test rig? Or is that a trade secret?
Trade secret... lol just kidding.
Theres nothing brilliant about it really, anyone with some electronic know how could knock something similar up quite easily. i built and added onto that over a period of about a month, adding on extra functions over that time. Unfortunately there are no schematics for it but it wouldnt take much for me to work out exactly what i did to build it and draw some up. The most tedious part of building it was wiring all of those LEDs and connectors.. :lol
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Great result. Great looking pin.
I do like your test bench. I've found over my last couple of rebuilds / repairs having correct and quality tools makes life so much easier.
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$%$
That's an absolutely "jaw dropping" restore, Mitch. One question ? Did you use ORIGINAL staples for the cards in the head ? (Just joking %.%)
Great job mate - and like the others - I'd LOVE to see a schematic of your test rig. That would come in very handy.
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Ta very much everyone for your great comments! ^^^
I just have to do something about the backglass, it looks ok unlit but has quite a few cracks in the ink. Some of it will touch up fine i think, but a lot of the damage is in the lit areas unfortunately. I might post some pics later on of the game before and after and maybe a few detail shots if anyone would like to see more. Also if i can make the backglass look "decent", i'll post some details and pics here at a later date.
As for the board test rig i'll have to sit down and draw out the schematics. I used mostly stuff i had in hand, the only thing i bought was the LEDs, and made my own circuit boards. I might even do a thread later on detailing what went into building it! its kind of a work in progress as i still want to add more functions onto it as i need them.
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As for the board test rig i'll have to sit down and draw out the schematics. I used mostly stuff i had in hand, the only thing i bought was the LEDs, and made my own circuit boards. I might even do a thread later on detailing what went into building it! its kind of a work in progress as i still want to add more functions onto it as i need them.
Could work it out myself, I guess, but if someone has already done it I prefer to use their work.
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just thought id add a few more pics..
1st and 2nd BEFORE and AFTER respectively..
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Thats a fantastic Job all round love the legs and door
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a few playfield detail shots with, and without the flash
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these pics with the light and flash off show up just how bad the backglass really is.
this, for me is the biggest disappointment with the whole game.
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Yes - it took the later pictures for me to see the backglass problems. But it does not spoil the rest of the game.
You have "lifted the bar" on this one, Mitch !
$%$
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Fantastic work Mitch. Great to see the Drac restored. Well done.
How do you reckon some silicon globe covers would go to soften the lamps behind the "cracks" in the backglass.
I bought some from autobahn as 2 of my backglasses have cracks in the paint & it stopped that "piercing" glow of the lamps filament through the missing colour on the backglass.
just a thought.
Hey I still can't get over the transformation of your Dracula, as you know I did see & play that pin before you bought it & the resto is unreal! ^^^
Congrats
Steve.
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Well i've racked up a fair few games on this machine now and its working great apart from a few minor switch problems, ie some drop target switches not registering sometimes. Have tried cleaning the switches but still they play up a bit so i'll be replacing ALL of the drop target switches soon as the new ones arrive.
Also on its way is a can of Krylon Triple Thick for the backglass, so i can get a start on restoring this glass. I'll be taking progress pics of this work as well and posting some results on here if all goes well. i'll be taking my time with it, i may well only end up doing the "unlit" sections that are missing ink (there are several spots like that) and leaving it at that, and not bothering with the lit up sections.. i'll just have to wait and see...
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Mitch another plan of attack for the backglass, before any triple thick is sprayed on. Scrap of the red lettering on DRACULA and air brush it red I did this with my Gorgar and looks great. Any full coloured damaged sections on the BG air brush them first.
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Well i've racked up a fair few games on this machine now and its working great apart from a few minor switch problems, ie some drop target switches not registering sometimes. Have tried cleaning the switches but still they play up a bit so i'll be replacing ALL of the drop target switches soon as the new ones arrive.
Also on its way is a can of Krylon Triple Thick for the backglass, so i can get a start on restoring this glass. I'll be taking progress pics of this work as well and posting some results on here if all goes well. i'll be taking my time with it, i may well only end up doing the "unlit" sections that are missing ink (there are several spots like that) and leaving it at that, and not bothering with the lit up sections.. i'll just have to wait and see...
I had the exact same problems with the drop targets on a Dracula I had. Upper drop targets not registering (sometimes) and registering twice as well at times.
I added .47mf ceramic capacitors to all the drop target switches and that fixed them 100%. This should work as the switches themselves when cleaned should be fine. So I have added caps to all switches an all my games and targets all register 100% every time.
Not sure if this is common knowelege for those who own or have played a Dracula , there is a trick (cheat) shot, where when you have specials of extra ball lit in the return lanes and you capture the ball, then shoot the ball right at the end of the flipper at the last split second before the ball rolls down the guts off the flipper , and the ball crosses over to the other return lane and up to collect extra ball or special, downside is every now and then it would roll down the guts!
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I did the same with my firepower backglass scraped off all the blue area on the wings and airbrushed it looked pretty good for a first attempt
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Mitch another plan of attack for the backglass, before any triple thick is sprayed on. Scrap of the red lettering on DRACULA and air brush it red I did this with my Gorgar and looks great. Any full coloured damaged sections on the BG air brush them first.
Thanks for the tip Mark ^^^ I had actually thought about trying that idea believe it or not! but wasnt sure if i should. i might just have to give it a try!!
Thanks again..
Cheers... Mitch
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Well i've racked up a fair few games on this machine now and its working great apart from a few minor switch problems, ie some drop target switches not registering sometimes. Have tried cleaning the switches but still they play up a bit so i'll be replacing ALL of the drop target switches soon as the new ones arrive.
Also on its way is a can of Krylon Triple Thick for the backglass, so i can get a start on restoring this glass. I'll be taking progress pics of this work as well and posting some results on here if all goes well. i'll be taking my time with it, i may well only end up doing the "unlit" sections that are missing ink (there are several spots like that) and leaving it at that, and not bothering with the lit up sections.. i'll just have to wait and see...
I had the exact same problems with the drop targets on a Dracula I had. Upper drop targets not registering (sometimes) and registering twice as well at times.
I added .47mf ceramic capacitors to all the drop target switches and that fixed them 100%. This should work as the switches themselves when cleaned should be fine. So I have added caps to all switches an all my games and targets all register 100% every time.
Another tip worth trying!! again it had crossed my mind to try this idea too, just couldn't find the motivation to try it.. seems i just found it :lol
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Backglass Restore:
After reading SPURR’s post this afternoon in this thread re airbrushing on this glass I decided to give it a try. As I said, it had crossed my mind to try it but I was initially iffy about doing so.. until now.
So I spent a few hours this afternoon and here are the results so far, half way thru respraying the name. I ended up using a spray can rather than airbrushing, as I had this on hand and the colour was a reasonably close match. It’s the same colour red I used on the playfield restore.
I started out by removing the old cracked ink, first, with a scalpel I cut into the ink along the key lines (actually reflective material in this section), I heated the blade with a cigarette lighter so it would cut cleanly and not to chip the surrounding areas. I set up a light underneath, as can be seen in the 1st pic so I could see where to cut/scrape to. I worked on one letter at a time, scraping out the old ink, cleaning it then painting before going onto the next letter. As can be seen in the 1st pic I’m working on the “C”, the U, L and A have been done already.
Once all the ink was removed I carefully cleaned the glass with some Windex and cloth, being careful not to touch the surrounding area as much as possible. 2nd pic was taken before cleaning.
Oh btw... the red paint overspray that can be seen all around the cleaned glass was NOT put there by me!! That was someone elses Dodgey Bros attempt to save the glass!! ^.^
After that I marked and cut out a paper stencil so I could spray the letter without getting overspray everywhere. I cut these stencils slightly larger than the area I was painting, to overlap a little.
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Next I placed the stencil into position with a few weights to hold it down, and placed a few sheets of paper over the surrounding area of the glass to protect it from overspray.
With the light still shining thru from underneath I sprayed on a few light coats of the red acrylic paint. Having the light on allowed me to get an even coverage of paint. I found if I sprayed JUST enough paint on so that the light bulbs filament couldn’t be seen thru the paint, that would be enough. This ensured an even coverage on all of the letters since I was spraying each one individually.
After the first couple of letters I sat the glass into the machine to see how it looked lit up by the games G.I. lamps.. it looked pretty sweet!!
Last pic shows the C, U, L and A done. In that pic it can be seen even without being backlit how bad this area was!! I’ll post more pics tomorrow of this section done.
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OK.. here 'tis with the name redone.. pretty happy with how this turned out $#$
just need to get the rest of it looking better now..
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Bloody hell! Is there anything you CAN'T do Mitch?
How fantastic are those results!
Once again high quality work to inspire us all ^^^
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1000% on what it was - amazing work!
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Got some more done this afternoon. I started touching up a few small spots of wear that i could do with the spray paint and air brush.
The pics below show the area below the ball/credit display.. first thing i had to do was put in the missing black line. For this i used the air brush rather than a sharpie pen as i'd done in the past. 1st pic shows how i masked off the area using paper and a few sockets to hold the paper down.
2nd pic shows the black line done. After the black had dried i sprayed on the red.. again i masked off the surrounding area with paper, and i used the same red i used for the name. rather than put the silver mask paint straight over the red, through trial and error i found it neccessary to spray white on first, then the silver after the white had dried.
On my first attempt, i sprayed the silver on, and it darkened the red too much. After i took all the paint off and started again, this time i put some white paint on over the red, followed by silver.. worked out much better. i used auto acrylic spray paints for all of this.
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heres a view of the back of the glass. the 1st pic shows the white sprayed over another retouched area just below the "match" area and the next is the silver sprayed onto the area shown in the previous post, above the "match" area.
I also gave the player up light and number of player openings a very light spray with the airbrush, as there were some fine cracks in these areas (3rd pic). These look much better lit up now than they did before... buying that airbrush and compressor is the best thing i could've done i've decided!!
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Holy Crap - That's just inspirational !
what airbrush are you using ?
will you seal your work with triple Thick ?
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Mitch give the Dracula lettering a fine coat of white over the red to defuse the light better so the whole letter glows not only where the light bulb is behind it, most colours look heaps better with a white behind it. eg white undercoat
ps dont bother to much about overspray it seals just like triple thick.
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Great Results mitch wish my fire power turned out that well. Mine had a large area so if i went over somewhere a little bit the color was un even. Ill post pics when i get around to the restore thread
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Holy Crap - That's just inspirational !
what airbrush are you using ?
will you seal your work with triple Thick ?
Pic below of the air brush and compressor i bought.. an 'Artlogic' brand AC335. I looked at three different airbrushes when i bought this, this one was the middle of the range one they had, works well.
And yes the BG will be sealed with Triple Thick.
So far ive only used the airbrush on small areas.. anything large i sprayed with the pressure pack spray paints.. ie i did the DRACULA lettering with the spray paint.
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Mitch give the Dracula lettering a fine coat of white over the red to defuse the light better so the whole letter glows not only where the light bulb is behind it, most colours look heaps better with a white behind it. eg white undercoat
ps dont bother to much about overspray it seals just like triple thick.
Thats on the "to do" list. *%*
I know what your saying about colours looking better with white behind them. I worked that out a while back thru trial n error.. :lol
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Here’s a bit of an update on my Dracula backglass restore. I’ve been slack with it lately, just doing little bits and pieces here and there on the glass.. haven’t been real motivated to do anything much to it until a couple of days ago.
I’ve been working on some of the light up lettering that has damage/ flaking of the paint on them.. namely the GAME OVER, and the HIGH GAME TO DATE sections.
As can be seen in the 1st and 2nd pic the GAME OVER has some paint missing in a couple of letters. First thing I did was to carefully airbrush in the missing paint, using the same acrylic “centre red” colour I used for the name lettering. With a light behind the glass to help with matching of the translucency, I air brushed in the red being careful not to get too much paint on the surrounding paint.. VERY tricky to do, and it took me a few goes to get it looking “decent” as I like to say about doing this type of thing. Once I was happy with the paint thickness and translucency I then sprayed on some acrylic white primer to help even out the light shining through it, and to brighten the paint a bit.
Next thing I did was to spray on some silver to block out the light where it wasn’t wanted. I used sheets of paper as stencils to mask off the top and bottom of the letters (masked top first and sprayed, then the bottom after the top had dried).
Then I used a combination of stencil and hand painting to repair the silver mask on the V, E and R on the word OVER. 3rd pic below shows the work done. The vertical line is the gap between the E and R, which I sprayed in, the rest was done by hand with a brush. I’ll spray some more silver around the rest of this later on to tidy it up a bit.
Last pic shows end result, backlit. Not perfect I know, but MUCH better than how it originally looked!!
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Now for the HIGH GAME TO DATE section.
Look at the first pic, showing the backside of the glass lit from the front.. showing just how bad this area was!! And to make matters worse, it too was sprayed with red paint just like the rest of the art!!! I still can’t believe the idiotic things some people do!!! ^.^
At one point I almost considered just painting this a solid colour and pulling the globes out from behind and leaving it at that. But when I was looking thru my shelf of spraypaints, I noticed a can of acrylic paint in a colour called blaze blue. I sprayed a bit onto the front of the glass, and would you believe it… it was a pretty good match straight outta the can!!
A bold plan immediately started to form in my mind, scan the lettering from the back, clean off the glass in this area, spray on some blaze blue and create a decal to replace the lettering!!
First thing I did was to scan the back of the glass in this area. 2nd pic shows how I did it, placing a light underneath so the scanner would pick up the area properly. I removed the scanner lid and placed it onto the backglass. I always scan everything at 300dpi when doing this kind of thing. Once I had it scanned into my PC, I cleaned up the image in photostudio, making the background black, and the letters clear (white, prints clear onto the clear adhesive label I use). 3rd pic shows a test print done onto normal A4 paper. Notice I’m recreating a “lightning bolt” in the backglass artwork here too.
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Next comes scary bit.. scraping and cleaning off the backside of the glass!!! First I cut a line in original paint with a hot scalpel blade, so as not to chip the surrounding art, where I wanted to paint up to. Then I scraped off all the old paint up to the cut lines, and cleaned the glass with Windex. 1st pic shows the top part cleaned up.. I hadn’t yet cleaned the ‘lightning bolt’ area (light blue) below when this pic was taken.
Next I covered the surrounding areas and gave the glass a few coats of the acrylic blue. (2nd and 3rd pic). I found it necessary to do several coats to get the paint to cover and not be “see through”. As a result, this will NOT get the flat white backing as it was not necessary, and would’ve dulled the lamps too much, (it blocks a fair bit of light already).
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After I’d applied the blue paint to my satisfaction and allowed it to dry (overnight), I applied the lettering decal I’d made the night before (one I prepared earlier… :lol :lol), smoothing it on carefully trying not to get any bubbles in it. I knew id only get ONE go at applying this.. if I got it wrong id be starting all over again!! Luckily I got the decal on first go (If it had to come back off, all of the paint would’ve come up with it!!)
Pics below show the end result. I didn’t get a pic of the decal without the silver backing paint unfortunately.. (too impatient..lol). 2nd pic is with the desk lamp backlighting the glass. Im pretty happy with how this turned out.
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Thats a bloody awesome job ive just wrapped a few backglasses to send to you for repair.
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Oh Mitch you are a VERY BRAVE MAN!
The results (as always) are top shelf and now you have me thinking about my Thoro-Bred backglass as it has the same issues.
Time to go for a walk on the beach with my dogs and get my head around this :lol
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Very brave indeed Mitch !
Great results given the risk you took.
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Thanks guys. I figured i had nothing to lose really by trying this.. especially seeing as the blue was a pretty good match (not perfect i know) but good enough to get away with.
Anything is better than how it looked before!!!
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Ok… today I’ve spent some time working on some of the backlit artwork areas, in particular the area shown in the 1st pic. Unfortunately I didn’t get a “before” pic to show the damage to the bits im repairing in this post, not from the front at least. But you can see in some of the behind pics what im attempting to repair.
First thing I had to do was to replace the missing parts of the black key lines, I used a sharpie pen in some spots and black paint in others. The 1st and 2nd pic show the parts I used the black paint on. Some of this has already been repaired and had some flat white sprayed on as can be seen, this was areas of red and white that had fine cracks that I touched up by hand that came up ok.
The last two pics show the damaged ink in the womens legs and arms, and an attempt to touch up by hand. This looked bad I thought, so I decided to clean out all of the skin coloured ink on the legs and airbrush these areas instead. Details in the next post…
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Mitch,
Sorry if I missed this in your posts - but what methid did you use to match the blue so well?
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First thing I had to do before removing the skin coloured ink was to take some pics so I could recreate the black detail “dots” in the girls arms and legs. Next I scraped out all of the old ink, taking care not to damage the surrounding black lines etc, (I cut into the ink close to these keylines with a scalpel blade that I heated with a cigarette lighter). I then very carefully cleaned the glass with Windex, sprayed onto a rag or cotton bud first and NOT the glass.
1st pic shows on of the paper stencils cut out and positioned in the backglass (the glass had not yet been cleaned when I took this pic). Next I mixed up some paint in the correct colour.. after some experimentation I found that using the white primer and some Centre Red mixed together in the right amounts gave a near perfect match for the skin colours!!
In the 2nd pic the girls arm and leg have been airbrushed. Last pic shows the front of the glass after the skin colours areas have been done as needed. As stated I ended up doing all of the girls arms, the girl in the fronts leg and some very fine touchup work on their faces as needed.
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Mitch,
Sorry if I missed this in your posts - but what methid did you use to match the blue so well?
Umm... pot luck.. :lol :lol seriously though that colour was how it was straight outta the can!!
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The guys trousers were very patchy looking so rather that try to touch up and match to the original colour which was virtually impossible, I again removed all of the ink and black detail dots, recreated these from a pic taken earlier and repainted the area in a solid blue that I had at hand. The colour didn’t match the original hue used, but I thought it’d look a LOT better than it did before!!! And because its only a small area im not overly worried about it.
After that I gave the repaired areas a light coat of flat white acrylic primer. Note that I’d been doing this for each individual section as I repaired it.. looks a bit patchy from the back where each section joins but I can fix this later.
Last of all some pics of the repaired area.. with flash on, no flash and with the garage lights off.
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Honestly mate - I can't see the touched up areas in the last pictures - You did a GREAT job !
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Very impressive - unless you told us I wouldn't know any better.
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Honestly mate - I can't see the touched up areas in the last pictures - You did a GREAT job !
Glad you weren't the only one - I kept comparing the photos and couldn't figure out where the touchup was!
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Thanks again guys for your great comments!
If you cant tell where the touch ups are then i must be doing something right.. :lol
seriously though im glad you all like the results so far.
I think i've done as much repair as i can do to the the lit up areas, so I just sprayed on a few coats of Triple Thick to seal it. Now i'll just do the touchups to the rest of the damage around the glass. i'll probably just use the the old tried and true water based acrylics for this, followed by the silver mask paint and i'll most likely leave it at that... well for the time being at least!!!
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Mate your doing s top notch job as the others said you cant even spot the repairs. When you scan the see through text areas and print them onto the transparent sticker paper. Im slightly confused do you spray the glass the solid blue then stick the sticker over that then spray the silver mask?
Again great job
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Mate your doing s top notch job as the others said you cant even spot the repairs. When you scan the see through text areas and print them onto the transparent sticker paper. Im slightly confused do you spray the glass the solid blue then stick the sticker over that then spray the silver mask?
Again great job
Yepp, sprayed the solid blue onto the glass and let it dry. then i aligned and stuck on the sticker for the light up text. next i burnished the sticker down by placing a sheet of A4 paper over the sticker and rubbing it down with the back of a teaspoon, this makes sure its stuck down properly. then the silver mask was sprayed on.
I probably could've printed the sticker silver/grey rather than black but i wasnt sure if it would block out enough light so i printed it black instead.
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Sweet mate thats how i read it but just wanted to make sure. Doing a great job im goint to attempt one very soon
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Yeah yeah I know.. I said I was going to do some SMALL touchups and leave it at that after I’d sprayed the glass with Triple Thick… But I couldn’t help myself Just HAD to some more airbrush work!!!
Well I was going to leave it after id done some brush touchups, but when I was working on the area shown in the 1st pic, and after no less than five attempts to trying to match the light blue in waterbased acrylics and getting nowhere fast, I’d had enough and decided to scrape out the old ink and paint this entire area! ^.^ You can see in the upper right part of the pic the damaged area I was trying to repair. If id persevered with it I might’ve gotten it right but I thought F**k this im redoing all of this colour!!
The small dots of blue paint on the front of the glass are from me mixing and matching some auto acrylic paint for the airbrush. This type of paint doesn’t seem to dry heaps darker like the waterbased acrylics do. It DOES dry slightly darker but not as waterbased acrylic.
So after I mixed the paint I scraped the glass clean, but not before taking pics of the black detail so I could recreate this later. Another trick I used was to trace this black onto the FRONT of the glass, so as to help with getting it in the right place later. After id scraped and cleaned the glass I drew the black detail in on the back of the glass with a sharpie pen (2nd pic, note also I still had some tidying up to do on some of the paint edges).
I compared my work and trimmed the sharpie ink back by scraping with a scalpel to get the shapes as close as I could to the pic taken earlier, and wiped over with some soft cloth slightly dampened with Windex to remove loose excess ink.
Next I laid the glass flat and masked off the surrounding areas with paper, loaded up the airbrush with the colour I mixed and sprayed on a few coats of paint. I sprayed the first couple of coats REALLY LIGHT so the sharpie ink wouldn’t bleed back through the paint, allowing about five minutes between coats. Not a sign of the sharpie ink bled back through the paint, as you will see in the next pics in the next post.
Notice in the last pic the areas to the left and right have been scraped and cleaned as well. I did this after seeing how well this middle section turned out and deciding to do these bits as well.
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More pics...
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Couldnt help yourself heh? Well when your on a winner keep going your doing a great job so keep it up
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Mate - some serious hours behind this project !
What a great machine you now have to enjoy !
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yeah everytime i think i've done all i can with this glass, i end up wanting to do more with it. i keep seeing bits and thinking to myself i can fix that :lol :lol
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Thats some impressive work. Thanx for sharing!
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A few more pics of whats been done. i've been spraying the silver mask over each repaired section as it is done (after a light coat of flat white first), as can be seen in the first pic, showing the back of the glass so far.
And a pic of the front
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some before and after pics of a couple of the other damaged areas that had to be repaired..
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And finally (for now) a pic of the BG before any work was done, and how it looks lit up now, so far.
i just have to do something with dracula's blue suit now!! In these pics the girl in draculas arms, ive airbrushed the cracks in her legs and dress. the legs turned out pretty good, but the blue in her dress didnt turn out as well as id hoped it would.
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Coming along very nicely, well done.
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Great work looks like a completely different back glass