Solar City restore

[Mr Pinbologist]

Here’s another of my resto efforts from about seven years ago. a ’77 Gtb Solar City. This is one I found in an antique shop in Uralla, the pics in this post are how it looked when I got it. The guy in the shop had the nerve to have a price tag of $965 on it.. and it only barely worked!!! In the end I got it for $800.. probably still too much money but I thought it’d be a good, challenging project for me.

Once again I apologise for the poor quality pics of how it looked before resto, some of the pics are pre digital camera, as were some of the Abra ca dabra pics!! As can be seen the cabinet was pretty hammered and the backglass had a bit of its ink missing. I couldn’t find any of the early playfield pics, but it was filthy and had crappy looking mylar over most of it, so apart from that not a lot of wear was evident. Probably the worst of the wear was near the back of the flippers near the return lanes, which I was unable to do much with at the time.

I was fortunate with this game in that I already had a manual and schematic that I kept from a Solar City I repaired some years before, for a guy who had treated HIS game to a new paint job… and theme! Being a biker he turned it into a Harley Davidson pin by repainting the cab black and stenciling skull and crossbones in gold on the sides, AND scraping the BG art and sticking harley pictures behind the glass!!! He had them stuck to the PF as well. I was offered this particular game once but turned it down in favour of the Wms Klondike he had. (yes i kept his SolarCity manuals.. he never even knew they were there, and would've let me have them anyway!)

Anyway with the aid of the schematic I was able to get it all going fairly quickly. Just needed the usual relays, steppers and score reels cleaning/adjusting etc.

Most pin enthusiasts spend time chasing up manuals to go with games they have acquired.. well when I bought THIS game I told people I needed this game to go with the manual that I had. 

[Mr Pinbologist]

I decided the original cabinet was too far-gone so it was decided that another cabinet would be used. The donor cabinet was a Gtb Count Down cab I was given and needed a lot less work. This saved a heap of time being able to use this cab, as I simply restored this one and swapped the parts over onto the new cab when it was done, then launched the old empty cab to the dump.

The bottom panel was replaced, the dents filled, then it was sanded back, sprayed in undercoat and then sprayed in gloss white enamel. After the white was dry the black speckling was applied using thinned out black enamel and a toothbrush by flicking the bristles with an icy pole stick from about a foot away from the cabinet.

Stencils were made by first tracing the designs off the original cabinet with tracing paper, then placing the tracing paper over white cardboard and cutting out the shapes with a hobby knife., as per my other resto threads I’ve posted so I wont bore you all by repeating myself too much, lol. I had a couple of stuff ups along the way doing these stencils, requiring me to start again. Pics show the end result. Excuse the bad pics… sorry

[Mr Pinbologist]

Stenciling pics...

[Ford Fairlane]

wow that cab looks minty!! great job!

[illawarra_steelers]

Oh yes, oh yes....can't get enough of these!

Solar City, when working right is an awesome game to play. So important to have the 2" flippers strong and working like they should.

Doesn't a respray make a game just come to life! Such a major job but well worth it in the end.

Thanks for posting Mitch!

[Mr Pinbologist]

PLAYFIELD RESTORE;

The playfield was completely stripped and the old mylar removed by heating first with a fan heater. The mylar glue was removed with “Prepsol” wax& grease remover, a plastic scraper and rags. Only minor paint touch-up’s were needed and paint lift from the mylar removal was minimal. The purple around the left bumper had the most wear, from those non adhesive clear ring crap things that Gtb loved to put under the bumper assemblies at that time (dirt traps I call them!) and the purple under the top left drop target lifted in spots as the Mylar was removed. After the touch-ups were done, using waterbased acrylics as documented in Clays repair guides it was re covered with a new sheet of Mylar purchased from Bumper Action.

Before any parts/posts were screwed on I cut out and removed the mylar from anywhere anything was to be screwed down, otherwise the mylar bubbles and lifts in these areas. It was then reassembled.

New rubbers, globes and 3” flipper bats from Bumper Action were fitted. Coin door and apron decals were bought from Pinball Rescue in Queensland. The coin door was raided from the same Countdown game the cabinet came from, as it was in better condition than the original. All the metalwork was polished with Auto-Sol. The legs, coin door reject button and shooter housing have been rechromed.  New coin door and back box cover locks were fitted (The back box cover had to be made as the original was missing, I ended up just making it out of plywood for simplicity).
Most of the electrics had been repaired prior to stripping the game, however minor tweaking and adjusting was necessary to get the machine working spot on (mainly relay/ switch adjustments).

[Mr Pinbologist]

BACKGLASS TOUCH UP;

The backglass was first sealed with “Bodytech Clear coat” automotive clear acrylic lacquer, purchased from Kmart. While you can get away with using this kind of clear acrylic, Triple Thick is MUCH better! Anything other that Triple Thick can cause the coloured inks to bleed back through the white diffusing ink on the glass, as has happened to this one. It doesn’t harm the artwork though luckily, but if you sprayed it on too heavily too quickly things could get nasty!!!.

Touch-up’s were done using “Chromacryl” water based acrylic artist’s paints and “Holts” or “Power Plus” automotive acrylic touch up spray paint.

The spray paint was used to touch up the blue translucent areas of the backglass. The entire original colour had to be carefully chipped out using a hot hobby knife (heated with a cigarette lighter). This was an experimental procedure, as I had never heard of anyone using spray paint to touch up a backglass this way before, and therefore was taking a big risk I thought!! I traced the area onto paper and made stencils as shown in the pic below, in order to paint these areas. The results aren’t perfect but it looks a lot better than it did before!

Since doing my Dracula glass and seeing how good it turned out I might have another go at this glass and do some more work on it!!!

[Mr Pinbologist]

And here are the end results of  nearly four months of work!!

[ddstoys]

Love these restores your attention to detail is awsome

[ajlaird]

Fantastic result!

Obviously this sort of thing takes a lot of hours, but I can see that the end-product is worth it.

[bossninja17]

Fabulous!
Can someone please give me the winning lotto numbers for next week.
I just want to retire and have the time and money to do something like this on a couple of my EMs. Is it too much to ask?

[ddstoys]

Sont need to be retired to do stuff like this just get a piss easy job like me lol

[Strangeways]

Great work - again, Mitch 

It is hard to sometime find the time to commit to work at this level, so you have to "find" the time which means you need to make sacrifices in some other areas !

I just find it addictive - and obviously other do too !

[goodolddays]

Really nice work  Thanks for taking the time to put this thread together Mitch . It certainly is yet another inspirational example .

Cheers
Dave

[Extra Ball]

Blown away buy that effort, the restos you guys do is inspiring. Also I havent played this game, but how cool is the layout on that PF! Another pin added to the wish list.