Peter (Inkochnito) kindly made the headbox cards for this game and they came out brilliant
. For the moment, I'm testing the machine with my trusty Altek board. I won't be leaving the board in there permanently. I'd earmarked a Homepin MPU board as the permanent MPU board. Displays and boards are all upgraded or repaired where necessary.
Heaps of progress on this restore. The playfield had some serious wear around the pops, and I made it a little worse by removing the factory mylar rings. I ended up touching up the area and then using a clearcoat with a fine brush. Then I'd block sand it and MORE paint would flake. So I sanded the entire top area, touched it up and then applied mylar. It was a never ending battle. I would have preferred to remove the lower playfield factory mylar, but that was a huge risk I didn't want to take - but it might have been rewarding because I could then clearcoat it. I decided not to.
Mylar in Australia is not the real McCoy. It is thin vinyl adhesive used for signwriting. I ended up buying huge rolls (4 playfields worth) from the USA for a fraction of the vinyl adhesive sold here. I covered the top section of the playfield and it looks much better.
I've reassembled the playfield, with mostly new parts like pop bumper bodies, caps, new targets, flipper bats and shafts etc etc. Fired it up and played a few games.
I'm seeing many "restored" games that have major problems because they are not electrically done properly. I use flipper kits in ALL games I restore and I always replace the EOS, and in games with more than 2 flippers, the "Advanced EOS". For a few dollars, you can add these into the game and it plays so much better.
Here is a picture of the advanced EOS - these are now available from rtbb.com.au
Underside is completely re assembled.
Almost done on this classic ! Plays really well.
