The Aussie Pinball Arcade
Aussie Pinball Forums => General Chat - Non Pinball/coin-opp Discussion => Topic started by: ktm450 on March 17, 2013, 04:22:02 PM
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A friend of mine Dale 'Chippy' passed away this morning after a long battle with brain tumors, he was only 48yo.
He was a member here cobbindale, who had a passion for his prized Cobra replica which he mostly built himself.
(http://aussiepinball.com/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=29669;type=avatar)
A few of you guys met Chippy at the last meet that I had at my house.
I worked with Chippy and we got talking about pinballs a few years back. Next thing you know he had bought a pinball. I had to ask why did you just jump in without asking me to help source one, he told me he was searching ebay and got all excited and had bid on a non working pin with an old upright arcade machine. I laughed and was interested to findout more, he had purchased a cosmic princess, paid too much but was a happy pinball owner *%*
Chippy is a very particular man, as I am myself, and had to have everything looking perfect, he just started pulling everything apart and ordering new parts to restore the old girl. Cool, I thought, until he told me he had started to sand back the cabinet and was going to have a go repainting the artwork. :lol Luckly he had taken a few photos and transfered the design onto some clear plastic, he started by painting the cabinet blue, no problems next he bought some adhesive stenciling paper but found that after all the work cutting it was too adhesive and lifted some of the blue background paint. He had considered using vinyl decals so I suggested he get in contact with Greg (oldpins) after some lengthy discussions with Greg, which he told me he really appreciated, he decided to buy a vinyl cutter to eventually scan into the computer and cut vinyl decals, He had a lot of trouble getting the program he was using to scale correctly, and decided to move onto the playfield. Stripped it down, he did a few touchups and then had it clear coated, it has come up very nicely, the original owner had a couple of the wrong inserts installed but it is so shiny you can hardly notice, rebuild drop targets pops etc. and re assembled. Looks very nice.
Thats where I come into the picture, a couple of months back Chippy was trying to cleanout a lot of his garage, I guess to make it easier for his family when he passed. His pinball is in many bits due to the restoration, he immediately thought of me and generously gave it to me. I offered to buy it off him but he just wanted it gone so his wife could fit her car into the garage. Shame he never really got a chance to enjoy it.
I look back on that day with fond memories of Chippy as he was still relatively healthy but knew the end was near, we chatted for a couple of hours, when he told me he probally only had 3 months left, I found it hard to believe.
RIP mate
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Good story. RIP Chippy
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RIP
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sorry to here about Chippy and for his family and also you for losing a mate
great story and a little sad - will you restore on his behalf?
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sorry to here about Chippy and for his family and also you for losing a mate
great story and a little sad - will you restore on his behalf?
Yes I will, I offered to help him when he wanted to get rid of it, but his motorskills had gone downhill a fair bit, and he just wanted it gone.
A daunting task, respraying the cabinet, very complex design (long flowing hair and stars) with very basic guides to go from, but I'm sure I will be able to make him proud.
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Sorry to hear the sad news about Chippy. Way too young for anything like that.
Looking forward to seeing the Chippy Princess take shape.
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Shame to hear Matt. You finishing off his machine will be a great tribute to him and will be an Awsome machine the work done so far was better than most.
Good luck with the respray
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Sorry to hear chippys gone
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Sorry to his family and friends. Very sad news, that's way to early to go.
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Nice eulogy Matt, I am sure Chippy would have appreciated your thoughts.
Condolences to you and his family, rest in peace Chippy.
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Very sad to hear of the passing of Chippy. My condolences to the family. I look forward to the restoration of the Cosmic Princess in his memory.
If there is anything I can do to help with the resto, Matt - Just give me a yell.
RIP.
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If there is anything I can do to help with the resto, Matt - Just give me a yell.
Same here - anything I can help with let me know.
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Thank you all for your thoughts and offers of help. I will start a restoration thread when I get around to starting.
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Sorry to hear about the loss of your mate Matt, great write up and tribute.
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My condolences Matt, to you & Dale's family, very sad news.
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Sad news and all our condolences to the families. Your write up carries something special about Chippy that will last a long time. I am sure that Cosmic Princess has more significance for you than what we can imagine.
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RIP Chippy,
All pinball lovers in the west send our best wishes at this sad time,
Goodluck with cosmic princess resto,brillant tribute to chippy's love of pinball and life.
Regards pinwaz,pinnipop and rest of the Perth Pinball Restores and Collectors Group
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RIP, Chippy.
I have a pin that a close friend left to me, and it's never leaving. It's a great reminder of our friendship and a shared hobby.
You don't get many really, really good friends in life.
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Nearly 6 years later I have finally made some progress, although it was a case of 1 step forward 2 back.
I had put this WAY on the back burner thinking I would need to make my own stencils up, not something I was looking forward to. Luckily Pinball pimp had made them up, I was very surprised as there were only 336 units made and I would be surprised if any machines ended up in the USA. Anyway i counted my lucky stars and jumped on them.
Chippy had painted the cab blue but had left a few little dings and scratches, so I decided to use spot putty to fill all the little imperfections. I didn’t realise I would have to re prime almost the whole cabinet to lock in the spray putty, apparently it can draw in the colour and bleed through.
It was at this point that I should have stripped the whole cab back to bare wood but more on that later.
So I laid some blue back on and applied the first stencil. Yellow went on pretty well although to get coverage on dark blue I had to apply a little more paint than I would have liked. Made a slight edge when I peeled the stencil off that I had to run my finger over to remove, not ideal a couple of little touch ups by hand but all pretty good. A small chip of blue came away when removing the first stencil, very disappointing. I thought maybe Dale had missed prepping a small section of the bare wood or primer. I touched it up by hand and hoped that was the end of it but boy was I wrong. When I removed the second stencil a massive chunk came away all the way to the base undercoat. f**k! Then I removed the other side another massive chunk F**K!
I realised at that point I should have stripped back to bare wood. Unfortunately somewhere along the line the paint Dale applied had not keyed to the timber or undercoat, maybe it hadn’t been rubbed back, not sure anyway now I had two massive f**kups to fix and a small one on the side of the back box.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/98254dfedb90e1080d11ce349e388ba5.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/c14011bf8a374f1f71f21100a2f38dbb.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/45c66a508ae4e16d3d11aa5ab57f5829.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/3696962e563421262a587695fd1b7af4.jpg)
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Anyway after a lot of swearing it came out ok, and is hardly noticeable. I really wanted to start again but after a few hundred in stencils and automotive paint I had to make do. Now to get the electronics going and need to find a knocker and a beehive shooter setup. HopefullyNino has the shooter and if Dan doesn’t have a knocker for me I’ll just fit one of the ones off Nino’s website.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/035d2282ffc74b7d6cca4d4a44967edd.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/51105ecd2fe543a25df69d58b72023c3.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/0cc42f1aaca0c6211e14ac885c927f6b.jpg)
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So I need one of these knocker assemblies in the cab and all the parts of this drawing for shooter
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/80218d321de7ac9b5be5fd11b254e06a.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181106/8bdadd78884b5d0ff875528fb1e10cdd.jpg)
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That kind of paint separation can be due to a number of things. If the stripped cabinet was sanded with a high grit, the undercoat has nothing to bite into. Also, the first coat of undercoat should be thin, so that the next coat "binds" properly. The completed undercoat should sit (acrylic) for 24 hours and any reaction observed before sanding 800 Grit (highest), and then I like to pass the air gun over the top to see if there's any lift. Next, the base - which is mist then heavier. Let the cab bake in the sun. Then do the stencil colors.
It appears the base had nothing to bite into. But as you have found out - sometimes walking away and having a think how to fix the issue is the best course of action. You did a great job with the repairs.
Knocker - I might have THE VERY knocker that came out of Dad's Cosmic Princess - Donated to your project. The beehive housing / hardware we have new and the plunger itself - I'll need the measurement - we might have an original Stern hanging around. They were a dull aluminum finish.
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Wow, awesome mate, I’ll work out anything else I need and send you a PM, so you can work out a price for me. Unfortunately I don’t have the original plunger. I could probably guesstimate it with the playfield in position. Or someone with a Stern of the era with beehive housing may be able to measure for me.
Yes I was thinking maybe a sanding issue, as he used good quality automotive paint. But maybe he went too thick on the first undercoat. One of those things, I just couldn’t tell by looking at the blue that was already applied. Once touched up and partially hidden by the side rails your eyes are not drawn to it, so I doubt anyone would notice unless pointed out. I’m pretty happy with the result.
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Unfortunately I don’t have the original plunger. I could probably guesstimate it with the playfield in position. Or someone with a Stern of the era with beehive housing may be able to measure for me.
I'll visit my Cosmic Princess in storage today and measure the shooter rod for you - will report back.
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Looking sweet so far and nice work saving the lifted paint.. can't even tell it happened looking at the after pics ^^^
You're making me wanna repaint my own Cosmic Bitch (thats what CP is known as around here) :lol
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Unfortunately I don’t have the original plunger. I could probably guesstimate it with the playfield in position. Or someone with a Stern of the era with beehive housing may be able to measure for me.
I'll visit my Cosmic Princess in storage today and measure the shooter rod for you - will report back.
Thanks Quench, I’ll have a look at the paint codes I have today and let you know those. The red and yellow are the paint shop tint colours without anything else in them. I didn’t have anything to go off and the tints are true red and true yellow so I just used them. But the blue is a decent match for my original cab colour so I’ll have a look at the tin and get back to you.
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Looking sweet so far and nice work saving the lifted paint.. can't even tell it happened looking at the after pics ^^^
You're making me wanna repaint my own Cosmic Bitch (thats what CP is known as around here) :lol
Thanks mate :lol
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Quench, these are the colour codes I used. You would need 1lt of the blue though if you were painting the whole cab. They are Spartan automotive finishes.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181107/d0926b991a79d9621dc07b266bc05484.jpg)
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Looks great mate. I’ll try look for the knocker and shooter bits when I get home next week
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Looking great Matt
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Thanks guys!
I’ll try look for the knocker and shooter bits when I get home next week
No worries mate, between you and Nino, sounds like I’ll be all sorted ^^^
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Quench, these are the colour codes I used. You would need 1lt of the blue though if you were painting the whole cab. They are Spartan automotive finishes.
Cheers, thanks for that.
The length of the shooter rod shaft is approx 205mm. I've attached pictures but have a feeling they might not come through.
The springs are old so they're probably compressed but the long inner spring loose measures around 120mm and the small external spring measures around 20mm.
The E-clip groove is about 53mm from the tip. This also matches my Stern Hot Hand pinball shooter rod. The spring setup is kind of weak on these games.
The MPU-200 based Sterns I have used an updated shooter rod with the E-clip groove closer to the tip (like your PBR picture above) and has a stronger internal spring.
Note, if I'm not mistaken, LAI clear coated these Cosmic Princess cabinets with a clear gloss lacquer.
BTW I modified the Cosmic Princess ROMs to fix a spinner scoring bug and add some other features. Details are in this thread:
http://aussiepinball.com/index.php?topic=15052.0
PM me your email if you want a copy.
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Thanks very much for that mate! Hopefully I can find one that will do the job. I ended up clear coating the cabinet with a touch of satin mixed into the clear to take off the gloss. After fixing the couple of touch ups by hand I needed to lock it in and try to get an even finish
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great to see this coming along....finally lol. Looks the goods to me even after seeing the problems you have encountered. well done mate
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Looking really great . Nice recovery on the paint issues ^^^
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6 years today since Chippy passed, the Cosmic Princess is back in action. After lots of other cleaning and adjusting, rebuilding the power driver board and some other circuit board work I finally finished it. I’m pretty sure Chippy would be happy with the way the old girl came up. Thanks to all that helped with parts and advice along the way!
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190317/48a77ebecc0e3d807bb8e32fcc8334fc.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190317/325d65a2289e5d29cb0c76544eca37c7.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190317/9c2edd9c5db5d8c3c4eb18b60a6260a4.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190317/bd142f99205216799c68acf488e63d49.jpg)
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190317/1d8f1c764a5ac69df9b13225f6eccc2e.jpg)
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She is a thing of beauty mate chippy would be proud
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Wow, beautiful! Awesome job and a great tribute to Chippy.
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Thanks very much guys!
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Looks awesome mate!!
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Thanks Nick, will have to organise a day to have you guys over soon!
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Looking forward to that!
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Well done mate. Simply outstanding restoration. Chippy would be proud.
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Well done mate. Simply outstanding restoration. Chippy would be proud.
Thanks for your help and advice mate ^^^