Stern Lectronamo restore

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi guys, here as promised is the resto thread for my 1978 Stern Lectronamo, which presently lives in Ian’s (Howzat on here) game room. It’ll remain with him until I get a bigger place with more room. This was a restore I did about 3 years ago.

Purchased 20/1/07 for $400, from the BP Black Mountain Roadhouse, near Guyra, about a 25-minute drive from my home. A friend who was told of an ad placed in the trading post put me onto this game. He checked out the game for himself, but wasn’t really interested in it and called me to tell me about it and gave me the guy’s phone number. After calling the guy that Friday afternoon, the same time the following day it was sitting in my garage!

The backglass had considerable flaking along the bottom edge. The cabinet had the usual amount of wear n tear for a, then 28 year old machine, needless to say, the cab would be resprayed. Both the front door key and the backglass key were missing… luckily I was able to carefully maneuver the glass out so I could dismantle the game, to get it into the back of my station wagon. The coin door I had to break into, levering it open with a large screwdriver. And if that wasn’t bad enough, someone had drilled three holes on the bottom right hand corner of the door! Probably put there to bolt on a door bolt and pad lock. I had to get those welded up. Also I had to cut a few wires that were soldered directly to the power supply board.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The playfield was in probably the worst condition of any I’ve ever seen. Having never been Mylar covered, there was a huge wear mark above the flippers that some idiot had coloured in black with a marker pen!!! What was this guy thinking??? Also there are a lot of ball swirl marks. The plastics are all intact, no breaks or cracks but very warped by the heat from the lamps..

The instruction card apron panel had most of its artwork worn completely away, probably from someone trying to clean it. Luckily I still had the correct artwork stored on my pc from when I made decals for my Stingray’s apron. All in all I didn’t think it was too bad for the money I spent… considering it had a working, but with slight acid damage MPU board, I could see a lot of potential in the game.

[Mr Pinbologist]

First thing I did once I got it home was to set it up so I could see what worked and what didn’t. I left the game set up on my trolley; I couldn’t bolt the legs on as the threads were stripped out on all four-leg bolt mounting plates (each bolt had 3/8” nuts screwed on from inside the cabinet). Once the back box was mounted, I replaced the missing connectors to the power supply and re-pinned the others as needed. Next I checked the voltages from the voltage regulator board, all were correct except for the high voltage for the displays, it was putting out 230 volts suggesting shorted transistors. I didn’t have the necessary parts on hand to repair it so it was left as it was for the moment, while I ordered the parts needed.

During that week I ordered the necessary components to repair the display regulator circuit, I replaced the two 2N3440 transistors, the diodes and caps C27 and C28, and I then was able to adjust the voltage to the correct value.
I powered up the game for the first time and was greeted with horrible noise from the speaker, which disappeared once the MPU had booted up. I put the game into self test mode to check all the hardware, in lamp test only half of the lamps flashed, as expected with possible blown lamps/faulty sockets (I ran the lamp driver board on my test jig later on and it worked flawlessly).

Next was the display test… a few digits out on some of the displays, and one had badly burnt segments due to the regulator being bad. The solenoid/sound test was next… only half of the solenoids worked, some intermittently worked and others energized more than once in the test sequence, suggesting to me faulty solenoid address lines to the solenoid driver. Furthermore if a game was started sometimes the wrong coil was activated when certain switches were hit, e.g., if the ball hit a bumper switch a slingshot fired! I then found that by moving connector J4 on the solenoid driver and activating the switches in question, the correct coil would energize. Re-pinning J4 and repairing a few cracked tracks to the solenoid transistors saw all of the solenoids working correctly. while the solenoid board was out, the main filter cap was replaced and all the mods done as per Clays repair guides (not yet done when these pics were taken).

As for the awful noise at power up, I eventually, with the help of a schematic of the soundboard worked out there was no reset pulse arriving at the soundboard. This board has a mute circuit to stop this noise on power up, which is activated by the MPU reset pulse, and is deactivated by the MPU when the power up tune is played. From following the circuit diagram and tracing signals, I eventually discovered that someone had actually cut the reset wire from the soundboard to MPU connectors! Why they had done this is beyond me. Replacing the wire solved the problem.

I now had the game up and running, apart from a few switch issues, which I decided could wait until I was ready to do the playfield restore. Later that week I removed the MPU and removed the old memory battery, cleaned up the corrosion with a 50/50 solution of white vinegar and water and added a remote battery holder fitted with a diode so I could use dry cell batteries.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The pic below shows the replacement backglass I purchased from Bumper Action Amusements in Melbourne. I remembered seeing this glass listed on their website, and decided to give them a call to see if they still had it. Upon being told they still had it I asked if they could email me a few pictures of the glass so I could see how it compared to mine, which they agreed to do. After checking out the three pics they sent, I could see it was in way better condition than mine, so I wasted no time in placing the order for it the following day over the phone. Two days and $400 later (including freight) it was delivered to my home! At the same time I ordered a spray can of Krylon triple thick to seal the artwork with.

Only minor touchups were needed in comparison with the original glass, though someone had painted silver on the back in places, which showed up badly where there were scratches in the artwork. Most of these silver patches were carefully scraped out with a hobby knife where possible and retouched after I had sealed the back of the glass with Krylon Triple Thick. 

[ddstoys]

   Black marker    Some people should be shot

[Mr Pinbologist]

THE RESTORATION BEGINS: March 07.

First I decided to tackle the playfield, as this was going to be the most difficult and time consuming. Most collectors would’ve launched this one to the rubbish tip and found a replacement, but I’m not most collectors! I just saw a challenge! As there was such severe wear and ball swirl marks, I decided to try something different for some of the artwork… by scanning the badly affected areas with a flatbed scanner, touching up the images in photostudio and printing them onto clear adhesive film. Thus making adhesive decals or overlays! These would be placed over the properly prepared worn areas as needed. The finished results would then be covered with Mylar, as have done with all my playfield restores that I’ve undertaken. At this stage I hadn’t heard of anyone repairing PF damage using decals, sites like AP didn’t exist at that time and I wasn’t aware of any other web forums with any info on this sort of thing so it was all an experiment to me.

The 1st pic here shows me recreating the missing black key lines on the playfield that were worn away. This was necessary so that I’d have something to scan in order to reproduce the artwork, and scanning the bonus ladder section that I was going to try making decals for. It was necessary to scan and print the overlay in two sections obviously because it was larger than A4 size. It had to be carefully lined up before sticking down onto the playfield. I knew I’d  probably only get ONE chance to get it right or I’d have to start all over again!

Last pic, the finished bonus ladder section decal(s) done in two sections, using A4 size inkjet clear adhesive decal paper.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The point of no return!!! The worn areas were sanded with 320 grit sandpaper, wiped down with Prepsol wax & grease remover and the surrounding areas masked up. Then I sprayed several coats of Septone automotive primer/filler onto the area. After thoroughly dry, I sanded it back smooth and flat with 400 wet & dry sandpaper and a rubbing block.

Next on the agenda was a trip to the local auto parts store to find some acrylic spray cans in similar matching colours. The red and yellow were extremely difficult to match, though the yellow looks much closer in real life than it does in these pics. In any case the end result was a HUGE improvement over how it was! Notice that some of the light inserts have been removed before painting. This was done to save having to mask these up, and also to allow me to flatten and reinstall them level later.

Because I had used clear adhesive for the decals, the coloured inks print translucent, it was necessary to paint white the areas that would have overlays applied. They were carefully rubbed back with 400 grit sandpaper, masked up, wiped down with Prepsol and sprayed with white automotive acrylic, as can be seen in the pic below. Much of the lettering was redone as overlays too as needed. The other areas redone with coloured overlays were the kickout hole, drop target areas, return lane inserts, spinner insert and advance bonus rollover area.

At this stage too I touched up a few other areas of flaking paint in the main blue/green colour, I used waterbased artists acrylis for this, which I had to mix up from several colours to get the correct shade (this took several attempts to get right!)

This pic was taken after all of the overlays had been applied. Because of the huge wear mark, the designer’s signature and copyright symbol were gone and I wanted to recreate these. So it was time to jump onto the net and get onto the Mr. Pinball collectors register and start searching for other Lectronamo owners, and see if anyone was willing to photograph this area for me. Only one came up in Australia and several overseas owners. A guy from the US emailed some really good clear pics of this area from his own game. From the pics sent to me I was able to recreate the “Shoot Again” insert lettering and the designers signature in Photostudio, carefully check the sizing and print the lettering onto clear adhesive and place them carefully onto the playfield, in the same way as the other overlays were done, but obviously without the white backing that was necessary for the coloured overlays. After all of the overlays are applied it is necessary to burnish them down. I did this by placing a sheet of A4 paper over them and rubbing firmly with the back of a tablespoon to make sure they’re properly stuck down. Once all of the paint touchups and overlays were done a new sheet of Mylar was applied over the whole playfield.

[ddstoys]

Well mitch ive said it before and ill say it again F**k your good.........

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next came the fun part… reassembling the playfield! All of the posts were cleaned one at a time by securing them in an electric drill with one of the post screws, and spinning them while carefully holding a piece of Nevr Dull polishing wadding against them. This worked really well for getting them nice n shiny. The ball guide rails were also polished up to a nice shine using Nevr Dull as well. The bumper assemblies were rebuilt using new coil sleeves and bumper skirts and bases. New flipper bats and bally flipper bushes modified to fit, were used to rebuild the flippers. I also hand fabricated new linkages out of fiberglass circuit board material, two pieces glued together to double the thickness. These seemed to work well… I’ll have to wait and see how long they last though.

The plastics were flattened using my heat gun and clamping technique, some of them were a bit crappy looking so I might try scanning and reproducing these later on. I also added extra pieces of wood under the edges of the to arch plastics, as they originally had nothing there except a post and a screw on each side, because they were badly warped, and I thought something extra for them to be attached to would help prevent them from warping again. New rubbers were fitted before the plastics went on.

Each and every lamp socket was removed and repaired while the underside was being worked on. The bases were soldered, the insides cleaned using a 3/8” drill bit in a cordless drill and the connecting wires soldered directly to the middle pin of each lamp socket.

The lower ball trough components were removed and polished. Also I removed and repainted white wooden guide rails. The 1st pic below was taken prior to these being done.

2nd pic below show the decals that were made for the spinner, and before and after pics of the instruction card apron. The apron was first sanded back with 400-wet/dry sandpaper, wiped down with Prepsol and sprayed in automotive acrylic primer. Then after the primer was dry it was sanded back smooth and sprayed in white acrylic, as was the spinner before having its decals applied. Mylar was used on the spinner rather than clear lacquer to protect the artwork.

As mentioned before the apron decal art had been done previously for my Stingray machine so these had only to be printed and carefully applied, (after priming and painting the apron of course!) before receiving a few coats of clear lacquer. The join where the two decals meet is noticeable, but it’s not too bad… it looks way better then it did before I started! There is no room for error applying these decals… it’s very difficult to line the two up perfectly… especially where the joins are clear, i.e. no colours printed. When I did my Klondike apron, because the decal was mostly black, it was easy to hide the join by running a sharpie pen over the join.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The final results can be seen in the before n after pics below.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Cabinet restoration was next on the agenda. The back box was tackled first, it was completely gutted except for the aluminium ground plane and the board mounts. The MDF used for the backglass frame surround had been wet at some stage and was swollen, as well as having huge gouges in it which prompted me to reconstruct this part from new MDF board, as can be seen in the pic below. I had already stripped the old paint with paint stripper and scraper at this stage, but not before tracing the stenciled patterns. The back panel needed to be re-glued to the bottom panel; the glue was just applied when this pic was taken. All of the dents and scratches were filled with automotive body filler.

Next the back box was completely sanded back, starting with 80-grit wet/dry sandpaper, then 320 grit before dusting it down and given several coats of white enamel undercoat. This was left to dry for 24 hours before sanding back with 400 grit sandpaper, then after removing all dust it was given several coats of red spray enamel.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The following pics show the stenciling being done. First though the black splatter finish was done using thinned out enamel paint and a toothbrush, by dipping the brush into the paint and lightly scraping the bristles with an icy pole stick. I always do a test run onto cardboard first to make sure I will get the correct finish before I attempt to do this onto a newly painted cabinet! The tracings done earlier were placed over white cardboard and cut out with a hobby knife, same process as used on every cabinet restore undertaken so far.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Cabinet repair work needed was minimal. Just a few loose joints needed gluing/nailing and a few dents to be filled. All work done was the same as described for the back box. Also a few repairs were needed where the plywood was separating.

[Mr Pinbologist]

The finished product!

[Mr Pinbologist]

 The pics above show the coin door reinstalled and the side rails, which were removed prior to painting. The side rails were fairly scratched so I decided to try polishing these out as best as I could. First I placed them on my bench, and block sanded them with 80 grit wet/dry sandpaper to remove most of the scratches, then sanded them again with 220 grit and then finally 400 grit to get them nice and smooth. Finally I polished them with Auto sol metal polish to bring out a nice shine before reattaching them to the cabinet.

The coin door was completely stripped of all parts and paint before doing any work. I had the holes that were drilled by a previous owner welded up during a visit back home to Port Macquarie, my brother did the welding for me.. Also I got him to repair the leg bolt fixing plates by welding 3/8” nuts to the backs of them, thereby repairing the stripped out original threads.

On returning to Armidale, I straightened out the dents in the coin door as best as I could before spraying both sides with automotive primer/filler. This was allowed to dry, and then I sanded it back with 400-wet/dry paper, wiped it down with Prepsol before spraying the door in silver acrylic, rather than hammer finish, which I know now is what the original finish is (it may get re-done one day). Once completely dry all of the parts were cleaned/polished and refitted to the door. The 2nd pic below shows the finished coin door installed. Notice too the coin entry plastics which I remanufactured by scanning the original and editing the image in photostudio. Then I printed the image onto clear adhesive label and stuck them onto pieces of clear polycarbonate plastic. New locks for the coin door and backglass were purchased and fitted.

The original “beehive” shooter assembly was cleaned up, drilled out and a new shooter sleeve from Mr. Pinball fitted and painted in gloss white acrylic before refitting to the cabinet. A new shooter rod and springs were installed.

The legs were very dodgy looking so I completely stripped the old paint off them with a clean n strip disc and a wire wheel in an electric drill before spraying them in acrylic primer filler. After the primer had dried I sanded the primer back smooth, them sprayed them with several coats of acrylic gunmetal grey followed by clear topcoat. I know they probably should be silver hammer finish too, like the door, but these were gunmetal in colour so I repainted them in that colour. New leg levelers were screwed in and the leg bolt heads were cleaned up with the clean n strip disc in the drill and polished.