Buck Rogers Restoration

[Slash]

Cheers.

I'm happy for them to breed the wife is less happy, although mainly due to space. Until we move house (hopefully within the next 1-2 years), I will probably be limited to a max of 3 pins.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Good one Slash! being a Buck Rogers owner myself i'm looking forward to seeing pics and the resto thread  

I've had mine for about 20 years, brought it back from the dead and fully restored it.. there's a resto thread on here somewhere for it.
Mine's a keeper always   I always loved the sounds on this game. The noise it makes everytime it scores in the hundreds almost sounds like its talking! i've had people over who have played mine and heard that sound and asked "what's it saying?"  

BTW.. i dont think you'll wanna stop at three machines!! 

[Slash]

I had done a search previously and seen your resto thread. You did an awesome job. I. Sure I will have some questions for you.

Was curious about the lacquer you put on the back glass. Is that something I should look at to prevent any further peeling etc.

I also loved the way you replicated the splattered/speckled effect on the cabinet restencil.

[Slash]

So I picked up the game yesterday after a nice 4 hour round trip down to the southwest.  Here's the first lot of photos.  It's going to keep me quite busy for quite some time I suspect.  But that's good because that's what I wanted too.










Pascal all in one board has been ordered to replace all of these


mmmm toasty


This looks like the quality type of soldering I would do 

[Slash]

[Slash]

Well I wanted a restore that would give me a good taste of all the different aspects you could encounter during a restoration and this game will certainly give me that.  That said I'm still deciding where to start.

Once the new board arrives I was wondering whether I should try and get it up and running first then go about tearing it down and restoring/rebuilding it, or whilst it's somewhat disassembled now just continue stripping it down and cleaning and repairing/replacing stuff leaving the boards and that side of things until last. 

I was thinking about starting on fixing the issues with the playfield first, raised/sunken inserts and paint touchups.

[goodolddays]

Playfield looks pretty good . Good luck with the resto

[Slash]

Playfield looks pretty good . Good luck with the resto

It's got Mylar over the bottom half of the playfield which has helped protect it. Just have to decide whether I attempt to remove that or not.

[pinnies4me]

Great looking game, and a very nice player too.

The biggest favour you can do the game (and yourself) would be to re-pin all of the board connectors. This will remove many, many gremlins and ensure that when the Pascal plugs in, most faults will be confined to playfield issues rather than connectors (which are notoriously full of issues and make tracking down issues much harder).

Labourious process, but I can't tell you how worthwhile - first job I do on any Gottlieb.

[Strangeways]

Great looking game, and a very nice player too.

The biggest favour you can do the game (and yourself) would be to re-pin all of the board connectors. This will remove many, many gremlins and ensure that when the Pascal plugs in, most faults will be confined to playfield issues rather than connectors (which are notoriously full of issues and make tracking down issues much harder).

Labourious process, but I can't tell you how worthwhile - first job I do on any Gottlieb.

+1

Also - having a look at the driver board - make sure you test every coil in your machine before installing the Pascal board 

[Crashramp]

By the look of the pics you've done well. plenty to work with there, I'm sure it'll come up beautifully.

[Slash]

So I managed to get the mylar off.  The only thing I used was white spirit - thank you for the advice Retropin.  Although I still need to clean up the remnants of glue left behind.

Early stages


Mylar now off


This area here was the one main part where I lost paint.  I don't know why other than maybe the glue here on the mylar was stronger or something.  This part was painful to remove compared to anywhere else.  There was very little paint lost anywhere else in comparison except for here.


Have a look at this.  See the big long white line in the black area.  That was where whoever the clown was that put the mylar on went around cutting the edge of it to shape with a Stanley knife or something similar.  There were a couple of other areas like it too.


One of the next jobs before touching up will be to start to address these things.  Where I removed the wire guide rails quite a few areas the wood has "popped" up.  I assume just sanding it flat then repainting is all I need to do?  There are also lots of ball swirl marks around the top of the playfield I need to address.  I read everyone talking about Magic Eraser as the best solution for these?


Any advice on how to get rid of the ball travel line in the shoot lane and at the top like this?

[Crashramp]

Good job getting the Mylar off Marcus, now the fun begins with the touch ups.

[howzat]

Hi Slash

Its great to see  a Buck R  project    I play it at Mitches and its a lot of fun

It would probaly challange most of us, with the p f touch up.    Have you considered using water slide decals on Inserts  text      ect     and would you  install new mylar

Buck dose have some cool old sounds and its a game from my past   

Im looking fwd to your progress                    Howzat

[Slash]

Thanks for your interest Howzat.

Maybe it's my niavety that thinks I can pull off all the playfield touch ups. Mixing the colours right has me concerned tho. But at the end of the day its not like the game is a MM or something, so if I totally screw it up its not the end of the world, I only paid $650 for the game.

I have never looked into water slide decals? Although its only one insert that needs fixing the rest is really just block colours and bits here and there.  can they be used on other areas of the playfield?

I don't plan on installing new Mylar, I was thinking I would like to clear it with something like acrylic clear or polyurethane (something I can attempt myself). But I am trying to get my head around the order of doing it. Do I sand it once, then put one coat of the clear on first before doing any touch ups, then clear again etc etc. so much to learn.