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.
