Hi all,
I have been reading your excellent restoration-stories for a while now and wanted to share my latest (third) project.
Dirty Harry, Williams 1995.
I bought this game from operator in Netherlands. Game was in quite good condition, no big playfield wear, cabinet is almost mint and price was reasonable so I couldn't resist. I know that this title isn't that popular, but I really like the theme and there isn't any big design flaws so I stuffed it in back of my van (with 5 other pins). I'll post more pics that words so enjoy, I sure did :)
Some overview pictures
So as you can see, quite solid game and I didn't want to put so much time and effort to this project, reasons will follow.
Under playfield after cleaning. I rebuilded flippers (left coil was wrong), cleaned all inserts from below, and washed all inserlampboards. I also lightly sanded playfield so now it looks quite nice and original.
One nasty thing popped to my eye when first time lifted PF up....
External PSU, any queses what it feeds?
Correct! CPU-board. Game did work flawlessly and voltages were in range so I decided to left it as-is, maybe I'll fix that later. I had to fix GI (Supprise!) but didn't have parts to fix that BR2+caps. Here is my sample of GI-fixing, basic stuff, I know but I'm still quite proud that I managed to do that quite well.
Back to playfield. "Magna Save" magnet axle was looking quite nasty. Unfortunetally it didn't stop there, there was a divot in pf because ball hits that axle and it's surroundings quite often so whitewood has given up and ball was stuck in that divot. Something must be done.
We have a mushroom season in Finland, as you can see:
When I removed that magnet-assembly from playfield, it took a piece of pf with it, so I did have to fill it up and sand. When I started this, I noticed that whitewood was very thin and in a bad shape. If I wanted that to last, I had to do something. First solution that come up to my mind was to add some metal under playfield and glue it in place. So I went to my friends metalshop where he cut a ring from 4mm thick stainless steel and I sanded this magnet axle with beltsander. Result:
Then I bought some 2K epoxy, glued that ring in place and left it to dry for few days. Meanwhile I did polish that axle, I come out quite nicely:
After this I filled holes in PF. At this moment I want to remind that this place is almost impossible to see, when game is assembled fully so I didnt purchase correct colour to do the touch up for those yellow areas. Some black paint I did have so I quickly touched that area. It's quite nasty but I didn't want to sterss about it. After this I applied some 2K urethane CC (yes, that "real" stuff) with foam pad. I come out quite good, after sanding it with 600-1000-1500-2000 girt and polished it with orbital sander and novus. So now pf is solid and there is nice thick layer of CC to protect. And in future, if I want to restore that section fully, I can always sand that part away. Here is result:
Playfield was quite dull all around, here is pic before:
There was two chunks of CC missing from the lowest "mode"-insert, this also needed to fix:
So what I did? Firstly I sanded whole playfield with 1500grit sandpaper-block. This way I managed to get some airball divots out of the PF. I also applied CC to those missing parts with foam and sanded it also. Then with foam-pad in my orbital buffer and novus2 I polished whole playfield. I came out quite nicely, don't you think?
Not 100% but extremely nice for original playfield. In those pictuers pf is already waxed with hard carnauba-wax. I did try to apply that so thick layer as possible and let it dry for 5+ hours, then with some "elbow greas" puffing and result is amazing.
Some pics of assembly-phase. I took quite many pics from upper playfield, because almost all of that stuff is under two main ramps and impossible to see when game is assembled fully. All parts were cleaned in ultrasound cleaner and metal parts are tumbled or polished by hand. Luckily I got some assistance from a friend, so this phase was quite rapid. All metal rails were puffed and ramps was cleaned, lightly sanded and flamed.
Metal parts before and after:
Ramps before:
Ramps after:
And misc assembly pics:
So there it is. And now it's time to put it on location for play. That's the reason I didn't want to waste too much time in some cosmetic-stuff, because in bar or elsewhere nobody cares. I have one pinball (CBW, some pics posted here before) on location and it's doing quite well so I have high hopes for this one also. I have negotiations with few bars ongoing and looking good, these are so easy to "sell" for operation. Some may think that this is quite overkill project for routed machine but I see that now it will hold it's grounds for some time, hopefully few years without any bigger problems.
Thank you for reading my little story, I know that this is still far away from most of this forums real restorations-projects level but I'm satisfied and proud of my work (this has been my hobby for some 14 months now) so I am a real rookie still. But developing skills every day, there is always something to learn :)
Peace and respect,
Tensikka
Finland
