Bally Delta Queen Restoration

[goodolddays]

Looking great so far Steve . 
Repainting the playfield rails and ball arch really makes a big difference to the finished machine (or so I've found with the 3 games I've done so far)

[Steve2010]

Overdue for another (and final) update (sorry, it’s been busy with 3 young ones leading up to Christmas).

Focus now shifted to the business end of the game – the coin door.  The game was received with the door all polished, but I suspect it was meant to have a grain finish to it.  Nevertheless, the door itself was left untouched.

Here is the coin door before any work.




What did need some cleaning were the cupped bolt heads and the coin door trim, which had years of rust on them (especially the bolt heads).  All the trim was removed and cleaned, and I found a quick way to clean the bolt heads was to put them in a drill, and rotate them slowly whilst pushing the cupped head of the bolt into a pad of scotchbrite with Brasso.  The before and after images tell the story.

Door trim bolts before cleaning.






Door trim bolt after cleaning.




More before and after images.






Another “rust attracter” is the coin reject button.  Again, more before and after images.








Final touches were some “new” coin drop window inserts, and a Bally sticker for the coin door (I wasn’t sure if the sticker was correct for this era, but I did it anyway).






A few other areas – shooter rod was cleaned, and the flipper buttons looked like they had seen much better days (cigarette burns?).








New flipper button between the old ones.




FINAL IMAGES

Well, here it is.  The cabinet could have been resprayed, but for me it was good enough to leave as-is.  Not bad for a game made in 1974.  Not a great player, but not a bad one either.  Sure brings back the memories of the mid-70’s!

[swinks]

You have done well Steve, looks great, now you can ENJOY.

[goodolddays]

Great work Steve. Polishing up the bolt heads and coin door trim etc makes a big difference .

Such a shame that we can't buy new 20c coin labels for the coin slots .

Nothing like finishsing a resto and then enjoying playing your nice clean and tidy game 

[ktm450]

Nice work mate, well done 

[Strangeways]

Very nice work Steve - thanks for documenting a Bally EM. Very underrated for their time. 

[Retropin]

Lovely looking machine... especially the BG..

...looks beautiful and im kinda jealous!

[Steve2010]

OK, so after a number of months since I thought I was "finished" with the Delta Queen, I decided to take the plunge and do a full cabinet restore.  What a very long, but very rewarding road this has been, now that the results are finished.

I have never done a cab restore, and of course there was the daunting stencil creation and "how am I actually going to paint this beast" approach to think about.

As you can see from the images below, the cab was in some rough shape, and the white background has long faded for a 1974 machine.












Here is some more detail in the images, and you can see just how rough it was ….. the beginnings!








The preparation began with the usual  - sanding down, filling in the gaps, sanding some more, etc.  I used acrylic lacquer spray paints, and started with a few coats of primer.  I am using the range from Anchor, and although it probably isn’t an exact match, the range was sufficient to source a very good match (at least to my eyes).

One of the biggest pains in the arse was the creation of the stencils.  I had read a bit on what to use for the stencil, and ended up using freezer paper.  I have read about this on RGP (the thread I came across was http://rgparchive.com/rgpforum/showthread.php?t=282364&highlight=freezer+paper&page=2), and gave it a go.  This stuff has a shiny/plastic side, and a waxy finish on the other side.  Placing it over the original artwork, it is translucent and has some level of transparency to it.  Enough to trace the artwork directly onto the (wax) side of the paper with pencil.  For the Delta Queen, this was not the simplest of patterns, and was very time consuming to create the whole set of stencils required.

After tracing, it was then using an xacto knife to cut out the patterns.  The stencils were adhered to the cab using a Krylon low tack adhesive spray.  I did get a bit of bleeding here and there of paint, but only minor touchups were needed.

Alot of work for sure, but I was quite happy with the results.














And here is the machine back together again.


















All in all, a huge effort to do this, and a learning curve for me.  But, I must say I am quite pleased with the result.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Nice job Steve  looks great, awesome results for your first cab repaint 

[howzat]

Steve    That looks really nice   lots of work but all worth it      Classic old game         Howzat

[bleargh]

Nice!  Tell me more about the paper you used for the stencils... I've been considering doing a re-stencil of my Williams "Doozie" cab, and have been thinking of using "parchment paper" (cooking paper).  Comes in big long roles, and its cheap.

[femto]

That looks really sweet. Congratulations on your efforts.

[Retropin]

That came up real good...

You did bloody well with the stencilling!

[swinks]

that looks great Steve, well done

[Crashramp]

Looks great Steve, it really finishes off all of your earlier work very nicely. You must be chuffed every time you look at it.