GTB Hit The Deck first EM restoration

[Pauly540]

1978 Gottlieb ‘Hit The Deck’ restoration.
Never worked on any type of pinball before, being electrically competent, thought that ‘can’t be too hard 11 months later!!!!!!!!
 ‘Hit The Deck’, I’d never heard of it before. Only months into the restoration I found IPDB and it states only 375 units ever made. Maybe being at the tail end of EM’s (love the fake neon score reels) I have to assume it was a bit of a lemon. Hey, it’s my pinball and I love it. Don’t have any history on it, but whilst pulling apart the coin door, I did find some 1979 NZ 20 cent coins, so either it was re-imported from NZ or kids had tried to score some free games with NZ coins in Australia.
These are pics of what I received; someone had hand painted the entire cabinet brown.
After removing the glass, the playfield was covered in mould and had that horrible smell of mice and their decaying presents. The back box door was missing, so all back box components had suffered the elements.
I’ll keep posting, once I work out how insert images in-between text. Sorry I’m new to this. (Photo bucket??)

[Pauly540]

Apart from the handy-man brown paint, the playfield is in an extremely good condition. There appears to be factory mylar with a few small bubbles/cracks around few inserts. Will address Playfield and electrics later.
First step was to try and remove that horrible brown paint and hopefully the original art was underneath. Luckily, my local paint shop still stocked Citrus Paint stripper. This stuff is fantastic. Once I tested on the back of the main cabinet, I applied and left for 20 mins. With a piece of thin plastic, the brown paint just rolled off on each 4inch swipe.
Once down to the original paint, I now understand why someone painted over. Huge amount of damage (can’t see clearly in picture), large gouges and worn off/faded colours. (People might now be cursing me about keeping it original, but this cabinet was very, bad) Once I got down to the complete side art, I thought, there is no way I’m going to reproduce this amount of curves/detail, with masking tape (those fish scales detail, will cause pain).
As I now know there was only x375 of these made, a stencil kit was not an option.
Can I now point out, I did not know anything about the aussiepinball site and the many helpful resources/information about making stencil’s. I wish I had posted beforehand and maybe ‘Retropin’ could have supplied a stencil kit.
I went with the old fashioned method. Tracing paper 

[Mr Pinbologist]

Nothing wrong with the old 'tried and true' tracing paper method, i've been using that method (and white cardboard/posterboard) for the stencils for nearly 20 yrs now.. i'll be doing a cab respray thread shortly for a Gtb Genie i'm repainting for a fellow AP member  

Your playfield looks like it'll clean up nicely, looks like it'd be a interesting and fun player
looking forward to seeing how it turns out  

[oldskool1969]

  Way to go Pauly,
have a crack, I am. heaps of good people and good tips here to help.
Love seeing the old girls brought back to life, good on ya mate 

[Pauly540]

Thanks Oldskool & Pinbologist,
I hope members don't mind, but I have completed the cabinet painting process and I am staggering my post's, because my typing skills are not up to speed. I now love EM machines. How satisfying is it to study a schematic and finally 'find out' why this or that wasn't working. 
Back to my project:

A3 Tracing paper from Officeworks, comes in a x20 pack. The carbon paper, to transfer the tracing to stencil also came from Officeworks x10 pack.
The endless circles were driving me nuts with my wobbly free hand skills, so forced me to return to Officeworks for a circular ruler. Saved many hours of free hand drawing and also helped getting some curves on those dam fish scales.
As I had no chance masking all of those lines and curves, I found a local sign maker/printer that stocked standard size sheets of 0.08mm white plastic. Sorry, I’m being vauge, because I never asked what I was buying. The sheets of plastic are about 20% larger that a pinball side (about the size of a bus stop wall advertisement), so I purchased X4 sheets ($8 each). One for each colour of the side cabinet, one cut in half for each side of the top box and one for the front coin door with excess.
Once traced onto the plastic sheet with carbon paper, now for the many hours spent gently cutting out the curves/lines for a complete (each colour) stencil. I flipped the same stencil when painting, for the same colour on the other side of the cabinet. I think I spent around 10 hours cutting out each colour for the main cabinet stencil. Yes, I've got way to much time on my hands 

[Ford Fairlane]

love it! keep these posts coming!! 

[Pauly540]

Even though the cabinet was structurally sound, the lower coin door laminate had separated (if you know what I mean).  Tonnes of wood glue and clamps. How lucky am I this is the only wood separation.
Whilst the glue was drying, I moved onto the legs. The fronts weren't too bad. A quick coat of rust remover, WD40, buffer and Silvo, they came up nice for 30+ years. The back ones had no hope.
Luckily I discovered Neno on Aussiepinball. A brand new set 27" (27" or 28" legs, I know they were buggers to find). Why was I wasting my time removing rust?
Now got the cabinet down to bare wood, ready for primmer.

[Pauly540]

Finally got the cabinet base colour coat painted, with a compressor and air gun. I think I must have sprayed 5+ coats of primer. Every time I sanded the primer, I always found an imperfection. Yes, now I was becoming anal.
Base colour coat down now.
Spraying the first yellow colour. Boy was I worried.
After removing the brown paint I did notice there was over spray everywhere on the factory cabinet, between colour's and the yellow was bleeding through the orange . This was why I went for a ‘Loose’ template instead of a custom stencil (which I had no hope of finding).
This is yellow down.

[Pauly540]

Yellow down.

[Pauly540]

Orange down, The plastic sheet was a bit light, when spraying with an air gun hence the extra weights. If you get lift off the stencil, are you happy with the over spray?? Examaming the original paint  I think it is acceptable.

[Pauly540]

This is were I'm up to.
The PF has been waxed and boy does this game fly.
I Hope someone else has learnt something from my experiences.
I'll never sell this machine, as it was my first   
To be honest this machine is now working at around 95%.
Are their any Australian 'Hit The Deck' owners out there.

[Crashramp]

Looks awesome mate, thanks for sharing your experiences. It's defiantly a keeper after all the effort you've put it there! 

[oldpins]

Great post Pauly540, reminds me of my first EM restore many years ago. Looks to me you've got the bug and we will see more & more EM restores from you in the future.
Good to see another machine bought back to it's former glory. Well done !
 

[Operator68]

Great job Pauly540. It looks like a difficult cabinet to paint but your finished product looks fantastic. How is your coin door? Are you going to restore or replace the door? I am going to attempt my first resto this year on a Gottlieb King. I hope it comes up as good as yours.

[Mr Pinbologist]

So this is your first cab repaint?? great job