The real DUDE pinball !

[oldskool1969]

This is the end result of 5-1/2 months of hard work of me experimenting with different techniques etc.etc and I am STOKED at the achievement.
I love this original DUDE pinball. Dr Dude and his Excellent Ray.
As time goes on I will reveal all.
Yes this is a piss take on the dutch pinball reveal. Wonder how many hits I will get.
the restore pics and stories coming soon 

[Strangeways]

Interesting title. Looking forward to the reveal 

P.S. - Change the rubbers to white - they look better and play faster 

[oldskool1969]

I hear you Nino but she plays pretty quick already! plus the white is a little too stark on this title.
Oh well here it goes. The reveal of the real dude.

I bought this 2 years ago for a bargain (well I thought so ) and so called shopped out , The DUDE played OK for about 2 months without me doing anything to it.
THEN bang the board goes with a U25 RAM failure, locked and stuffed. The techs over here scratched their heads and I thought, stuff this, bought a Rotten Dog board. Well, let me tell you that all was not well with that little number either, thank goodness there is a nice bloke, who I call my mate called Ant who also is a tech for Joe at amusements4kids.com.au helped me out and fixed it, as the supplier, which will remain unnamed in the  US of A was not helpful at all. pfft.
As my mates and I started playing again I started adding LED's and it was not bad, but I said I can make it better. Thus the trial and error restore begins with some wins and some fails. The first main fail is parts and when you do find them, FxxK me drunk they are expensive i.e.; $125 for the BIG SHOT figure. 

Condition report is
1.Backglass - 9/10 Absolute ball tearer of a theme and includes comedic cartoon expelling rules and some nice holograms which you will see later. Minor discoluring near the Alpha Numeric displays.

2.Cabinet - 7/10 Not too bad but very dirty, dull and in need of touch ups and new or repainted metal work.

3.Playfield - Had mylar protection on main play field but with some deep gauges in right orbit, bumper REFLEX entry and inserts were delaminating.
Fantastic art and colours on this gem of the era and pretty stoked to own it.

4. Play - 8/10 Easy to understand and hard to master. Incremental Jackpots which roll over from player to player, game to game which finally leads to
    SSSSSSUUUUUPPPPEEEERRRRRR    DDDDUUUUUUDDDDEEEEE, one of the nicest toys  from the era which is the molecular mixmaster.

5. Sound - 10/10 this is the most memorable aspects of the machine. Very 80's surfy sort of cll outs like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!, catch some rays, your'e a Cool Dude               
    etc. You also won't forget the Gift of Gab sing along tunes. When I find a decent link to game play I will post it.

Enough garbage I will start with some pics for those who are interested. This is my first complete rip apart, do inserts, trial clear coat using KBS sprayed attempt. 

[oldskool1969]

speaker panels , lamp board and my most excellent touch of gold speaker. YES gold speaker 

[oldskool1969]

couple more before

[oldskool1969]

Some final before pics of mixmaster and play field.

[oldskool1969]

The fun now starts, mylar is removed gently with a heat gun and low. This method on this era worked really well and didn't loose much of the insert decals. Removing glue was easy with isopropyl and shell lite( i.e. I believe it is Napthar as the yanks call it) too make sure I had no glue left on play field I sprinkled flour on it and where it stuck I gave it an extra clean till all was good.
The touch ups were fun and used acrylic paints to tickle her up also building up wear tracks with plastibond and sanding flat. While doing this also give the shooter lane a good tickle too. I took some poetic license and added silver glitter to Dr Dudes stethoscope and also change some colours around on the right orbit as it was pretty bad and also under Gift of the Gab. Pretty happy.
Also removed the inserts as I wanted to try it out and after some gentle heat they pretty much popped right out. When the inserts were removed I used a sander to make them flat and again and give them a good scrub to get rid of years of baked in dirt from the old incandescent lamps. As I was going to clear coat the play field I used PVA glue( right or wrong ) to reseat them back in as I knew the clear would help secure in place. In hindsight I should have put new inserts in the Dude-o-meter as I wasn't expecting such a good result on first attempt, therefore there is some cracking that shows through. Oh well next lesson learnt.
Finally the ass end of the pin is tickled and much prettier than before. Satin black spray and some masking to get the result. Didn't want to spend too much time on this as you don't see it.

[oldskool1969]

Now the cabinet is finished I will show some of the art work which is fantastic.
To clean this cabinet I gave it a good scrub with just domestic spray and wipe and the proceeded with some touch ups with acrylic again to try and math the fluorescence of the game. The chrome legs came up well using scotchbrite green pads and CLR then finish with a good metal polish, I used AUTOSOL.
Since I like glitter I also put some around the plunger housing and locked in with clear gloss acrylic spray, finally fitting a new translucent blue shooter rod. You will also notice the internal lock down bar is now nice and rust free with new decals, painted gold and cleared. Another hiccup here was that I put install 2 balls sticker instead of install 3 balls sticker as for some reason it is a 2 ball multi ball, but you need 3 balls installed - keh????
The back box lamp board also need to be repainted using a nice white enamel and also tidy up of the rear wire looms using some cable clips ( I use to be a spark )
I had these floating around and also blew out shit loads of dust from displays which are in very good nick.

[oldskool1969]

Molecular Mixmaster is a cool toy and when it is firing it is AWESOME. I stripped and cleaned every bit of this and realised that it had flashers under the spinning disc You couldn't see this before as the translucent spin disc was BLACK. It is now reassembled with a nice clear over it and new LED lamps and flasher installed and it really stands out now for a cool light show when actuated. Wiring loom underneath is re hashed and motor is blown out with air and cleaned thoroughly.

The first clear was applied with KBS using a brush and although it looks OK it is far from it. I then said FxxK this I am spending the coin on a hobbyist spray set up which all up cost me under $200 from Supercheap ( bargain  ) and will re do this clear with spray and KBS clear coat which i think is pretty good.
Therefore I sanded all that clear back to a reasonably flat finish as the brushed clear was lumpier than buggery.

[oldskool1969]

http://papa.org/2012/12/03/dr-dude-gameplay/
also a great simulator on The Pinball Arcade available on all electronic formats.

[Strangeways]

Glad you invested in the spay gear. The results will be a lot more pleasing !

[Crashramp]

Very cool, and great work  thanks for sharing your pictures and progress. I've played this on the iPad but never a real table, it'd be great to see/play one in the flesh.

[oldskool1969]

Now the fun stuff, re spraying with KBS but this time diluted with a 1/3 mix of thinners so it can flow freely through the nozzle and atomise as intended.
KBS Diamond clear is a one pack solution that sets rock hard and still flexible enough for panel beaters to use for small touch ups. As with two pac clear you still need respirators and covered up pretty well (eyes, skin etc. ) as this stuff is moisture cured and will trash your body, be very careful, but still good for the novice to use as there is no real mixing quantities involved.
Really stoked with how this applied and only really got orange peel under where the plastics or apron go. This is an art I need to perfect if I want to keep this as a hobby and help out some mates. IF they trust me! 
Also showing the repopulation beginning. Tried this on the lock down bar also after spraying this floor blue and if I knew it would turn out this good I would have done the first colour coat MUCH better.
showing how fingered the ramp was before too, this game can real throw some mean, fast ball action. In saying that I was playing last night and broke 3 more plastics! and Nino wanted me to use white rubber  no wucking fay

[oldskool1969]

After asking and seeing other peoples machines I implemented the ramp guard do it yourself trick as virtually NOTHING in the way of spare parts is available for this machine? New plastics would also be a god send as this will finalise the restore.
I also need a NEW ramp as this one is a little bit scruffy and warped, even after flame polishing and straightening myself it is not quite right, oh well. If anyone knows of one floating around NEW or OLD please feel free to contact me please.
The other really cool thing of this machine is the holograms, from NERD to Dr DUDE and the TILT/Lightening bolt sunglasses. I am not aware of any other pinball with holographic art? please enlighten me if you know.

[oldskool1969]

Finally it is all back together and I have only 1 fault  switch wire missing in the mid play field.
Also had to do some small adjustments, as you do. This machine has jumper bumpers( just like EATPM ) and  was wondering why they were not strong.
I bought new 23-800 coils and sleeves, even this didn't work. I did the usual clean the spoon, new skirts, polish the rings and check switch gap-nothing. While thinking about it at night, about to fall asleep, it dawned on me, bloody colour changing lamps, these are slightly bigger than your 44/47 and yep it was these little buggers. Pulled off the caps and layed them flat, I could do this as I used flexible lamp leads when re-building the Pops. Eureka, pops like a bloody demon and adds so much more enjoyment to the game when all work very well.
I am now just going to show random art and a few bits including me and my glitter again on the BALLY sign in head box. I have also put in a LED flipper kit left over from an ELVIS I shopped out and also added a small button under the coin slot to simulate a coin drop, some games have some cool sound/ display effects on them and I intend to do this on ALL my machines- one day. Got this idea from Elkor-ailish ( Mark ) on the forum and I loved it.