Gorgar speaks ....

[FirePower]

... and he says "Tell the good folk at AP the story of my cleanup". Now this is slightly bigger than his seven word vocab and shows grammatical construction greater than his ability but this is the story of my first pin clean-up.  It's in the restore section as it covers lots (to me!) of work I've got to do on the pin, but I hesitate to call it a restore for several reasons.

• 1. it wasn't the dog eaten, rain drenched, more missing than complete basket case example that many are - it was bought playable
• 2. it won't be a strip back everything, better than off the production line finish, rather hopefully a good clean reliable pin. It does have a few problems that I'd like to fix up
• 3. it'll sit nowhere near the standard set in other restore threads, I certainly don't anticipate seeing my ugly mug in the reflection of the coil stops!

The standard seen in the restores is so high and I admire them, so please don't take the above as a shot at anyone, rather it's a reflection of what I want to achieve and the skills and experience I have.  I bought my first pin in May of this year and prior to seeing the restores on here I would have described a lick of windex and a new ball as a restoration, so be gentle with me. 

It's been a little quiet lately and this seems to me to be a way I  can contribute to the site, ask some questions and gain some advice along the way. 

Purchase.
The machine was purchased on ebay - it got a mention here as the character selling it had re-listed it after an auction with a very hi start price and just a single bid. A few members here fire q's at him about the re-listing and were met with the "buyer pulled out story" -- who knows really, but he now had a lower price.  I rang to be told it had sold again - fair enough, but the seller called a few days later with another story of a no showing buyer - a pattern emerging?  Who knows but after a few questions to ascertain it was in "pristine condition, just serviced, everything 110%" etc I said I'd come and have a look.

Surprise, surprise it wasn't quite as described, the "recent service" had installed perished rubbers, left it filthy, with a few features not working but never mind that allows some negotiation room for offers.  So, wave a bit of cash under his nose, explain it was a today only, take it or leave it offer and it was mine. I think he was surprised to see it fit in my toyota corolla hatch - there's about a cigarette paper to spare as I drove away.

Anyway it's mine now and here are some as purchased pics.

[FirePower]

BG pics

[JD]

That looks good firepower.

Backglass good too. Great machine, lots of noise, voice and fun to play. One of the best and a classic!

Are you going to repaint the cabinet? Looks good anyway.

There are some absolute gurus on this site who can help with restore and repair tips.

If I can help I will too.  Cheers

J.D.

[Caveoftreasures]

extremely well written and love ya work. looks great           

whats the next restore ? once the pinball bug bites, it never lets go. just lots of fun hey. 

[Strangeways]

It is a very valid point regarding the definition of a "restore". Some of us are just attracted to "basket cases" and some like to do more of a reconditioning. The important thing to remember, that no matter if you are changing globes / rubbers or polishing the screws holding the cable ties - the fact is - You enjoyed the process and you shared it with us on the site. Everyone is different in their definition and methods. I certainly want to share my knowledge and I want to learn from others.

As long as at the end of the journey - you have a machine that you enjoy, you enjoyed the process and you have learnt something along the way. If it inspires you to go out and further your skills, or pick out a more challenging machine to work on - then I think you simply cannot ask anything more from yourself.

I will look forward to your updates - It looks like the perfect machine to base a restoration on !

[ddstoys]

I couldnt agree with Nino more if your improving a Pinball machine its a good thing.    If there is anything you need dave be sure to let me know Plenty of Gorgar spares kicking around (in a box someplace)

[FirePower]

Thanks for the kind words, offers of help and encouragement. To continue with a bit of background narrative, I bought this machine for a few reasons.  As others have observed once you buy the first machine it's a slippery slope and doesn't take long before you are after a few more and I've certainly fallen for that trap. I recall playing Gorgar in my youth and as my first machine was Firepower and it had not been the most reliable I thought having two sets of the same electronics would be handy to try and have at least one machine running at a time. Somewhat surprisingly Firepower has been a model of reliability lately so I haven't needed to cannibalise either and swap parts around. The historical significance of Gorgar being the first pin to speak has some interest to me and finally I reckon it plays pretty well!

Gorgar was purchased about two months ago and I've played it a lot prior to stripping it down. I still find it amusing that a grown man can grin like an idiot when Gorgar speaks, but I justify the many hours playing time as working out what needed rectification.

The faults that I've identified and want to improve upon are;

General cosmetic faults;

• badly cracking mylar around some of the inserts, some lifting of mylar at the edges
• all the red target arrow inserts have lifted
• most plastics warped
• one slingshot plastic broken
• filthy play field - very visible in the edges of the mylar
• wrong colour rubbers and assorted blown globes
• very faded and worn drop target decals
• wear on spinner decals
• apron covered in stickers and shabby paint
• BG flaking of dark blue

Playfield wear faults;

• flipper scrape through to the wood
• wear to wood around bottom bumper
• wear near spinner
• ball arch wear

Playing faults;

• drop targets not resetting properly all the time, although this has the advantage of getting some big scores. After dropping the GAR targets would feebly attempt and fail to reset multiple times and rack up lots of points as this goes on
• flipper sloppy / wobbly

Anyway enough pontification on why and what needs to be done the next posts will start on what I have been doing. I've progressed a bit down the track and have the rest of this week off so hope to make some progress. But here are some pics of the existing faults for before and after comparisons.

[FirePower]

a few more faults

[FirePower]

So after a final night of playing I started stripping the game down. I took lots of pictures and sketches to aid reassembly, as the plastics came off I traced around them and added notes of what went where. The main thing I noted on the sketches was where the different styles of post anchors were located. Post screws have bottom ends that screw into T nuts on the play field underside or are tapered screws directly into the play field and the tops either take an acorn nut or have a straight blade screw top, so there are four different styles. 

I worked on one area at a time which was essentially grouped around a plastic. I left the wire forms and guides in place.  I labelled anything tricky or that I thought might confuse me later and stored bits grouped together. I removed the apron and the ball launch guides and hardware, but left the wooden perimeter and shooter lane pieces in place. I also decided to largely leave the underside wiring in place. I think I can work in smaller areas as needed for thing like the flippers and drop targets.

[FirePower]

I had read up on the different techniques for mylar removal, easy to read, but nerve racking to attack you own pin.  There were a few edges that were lifting so it seemed best to start at these. I used heat and went fairly slowly. The heat came from an electric paint stripper that has temperature controll. I set it to the lowest setting - don't know what temp this is, but you can put your hands in the way without burning so I figured this was low enough. I also thought if my hand was getting too hot then probably so was the play field.  This went well to begin with and was easy to control. Where it started to get hard was where the mylar was in poor condition as you get little tears in the mylar compared to just rolling it of in one big sheet.

[FirePower]

I lifted a bit of paint in a few areas, some of it I hope will be easy to touch up, but in any case I reckon the mylar had to come up in these areas.

Around the area of the right kicker it stopped coming up easily, if you turn the heat up it seems to thin the mylar out and it reached a point where it was just not lifting. I reckon it has just adhered too well to the play field, so  I tried to use some desolve it to get under the mylar in this area, but this seemed to be softening the paint and was having no effect on the mylar so I decided that rather than press on and damage more paint I would trim the mylar right next to the play field. This is nerve racking but fairly easy with a new razor blade. 

Initially I had hoped that I would get all the mylar off then only wax the playfield. I think now that as I'll have to touch up and as there is still some mylar in place that I might have to apply more mylar. 

What do those with experience in these matters think? 

Best to apply mylar?
Best to apply it in a large piece or best to apply smaller patches over touch ups?

Any thought or comments appreciated.

[ddstoys]

When Re assembling the playfield i find the easiest way is to sit each plastics near where it belongs install all the Post with the thread for the acorn nuts.   T nut type first then screw type then whats left

[Wotto]

LMK when U are nearly done restoring this as I am pretty sure I have some brand new nylon 'acorn' nuts that I will mail you for this game -FREE -  I should have enough 

You need the spinner art or any of the target images for this game?

[FirePower]

Thanks Wotto, that's a very nice and generous offer on the acorns.

I have the images from the drops and the spinner - I grabbed these from the web from a US based supplier with hi postage costs!  Happy to give a copy to anyone who wants them. I don't have the round blue and white targets, so if you have that handy I'd appreciate it. I'll pm you my email address.

I'm planning to get some adhesive glossy photo paper from office works and then put some mylar over the top. Does anybody know where you can buy mylar in sheet form locally. I know PBR have it (if you can sort the payment method out), I also see RTBB sell an assortment of pieces, but I think I'm going to want to do some custom and larger shapes.

On other progress, I've kept up the cleaning efforts. It's not producing the gleaming results I'd hoped for, but maybe I was hoping for too much? The best way I've found was a light mist of Nifti in a small area, spread in with a finger and then use ME, then a light mist of isopropyl with ME and finally a good dry with a soft cotton rag.  I'll try a little eucalyptus oil today. My feeling is I'm better with a little dirt and grubbiness rather than bare wood due to my heavy handedness.

I've flattened a few inserts following Clay's methods with 240 then 400 grade wet and dry. They went from being very visibly bowed to dead flat. Have some super glue gel to put them back in, just have to be careful as they are now a little thinner and could fall below the PF level.

I've been madly collecting paint sample cards, but it appears that few people paint their houses Gorgar red so it's either take the PF down to a colour matching machine or try my hand at colour matching. I had a look in an art shop and see that there is a small range of base colours available at about $3 per tube. So I might try this first. 

I'll get some more pics up as progress is made.


 

[Strangeways]

It is a tough decision when the mylar is simply too stubborn to lift. Sometimes, you have to "cut your losses" and trim as you have done. Sometimes, you need to walk away and have a think about whether you want to keep going or not. I've had some luck on stubborn myla by removed from the other direction - sometime the change in direction can help - so instead of peeling UP, peel DOWN.

However - if you are happy leaving it as is - then leave it. Just trim and leave. Waxing over the area won't hurt at all !!

Remember when cleaning the playfield - don't spray any chemicals directly on to the playfield - spray onto a rag, then apply the rag to the playfield.

Jeep the updates coming !