Stern Ali Restore

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi all, Time for a quick update;

Coin door stripped and repainted;






Everything on the interior of the door was either painted or polished





The lockdown bar locking mech was cleaned up and painted in the same silver hammered metal as the coin door.







Next i decided to tidy up the transformer panel and rebuild the power supply board..




After i stripped all of the parts off the plywood panel, i sanded it down and gave it a couple of coats of satin clear to pretty it up a bit 




And here is the end result.. looks much nicer me thinks!! The power supply PCB got all of the usual upgrades.







Fitted back into the cab, along with the speaker panel which got the same treatment 

[Mr Pinbologist]

Side rails regrained and refitted with new twist nails.







Shooter assembly, all new parts! (Tony supplied the beehive housing, along with a lot of other parts when he sent the game to me)





Backbox insert panel being tidied up; being stripped in preparation for painting




First coats of paint applied...




And done!!




Refitted back into backbox

[ralph67]

Wow you're doing a fantastic job , this thing will be better than new . lots of hours, but it shows
The coin door really sparkles now , i bet it had drink stains all over ,which are hard to remove to begin with .
 You just need the credit decal and Stern coin door sticker to finish it off ,
nice looking game inside and out .
must be close to firing her up are you?

[Mr Pinbologist]

Wow you're doing a fantastic job , this thing will be better than new . lots of hours, but it shows
The coin door really sparkles now , i bet it had drink stains all over ,which are hard to remove to begin with .
 You just need the credit decal and Stern coin door sticker to finish it off ,
nice looking game inside and out .
must be close to firing her up are you?

Thanks Ralph 

The coin door was actually pretty clean inside, i just had to strip two layers of paint from the exterior of it! I dont usually bother with the coin door stickers but this game will get one as Tony sent one up with the parts for the game. 

I'm close to firing up the game to check boards etc, but i still have the playfield to restore. I'm working my way thru several restores at once here atm 

[tonyt]

Great work Mitch, you are really putting in a lot of effort into this and it is appreciated.

Tony

[pinball god]

Looking great mate keep the pix coming

[Strangeways]

Coming along nicely. The classic Sterns are great fun to restore. The repaint of the door is always a lot easier than regraining and plating parts.

[Mr Pinbologist]

G'day guys, been a while since i posted in this thread so i thought i'd better do another quick update;

Been pretty busy with this game plus a few others, as well a doing other 'proper work' that keeps the wolf from the door  (and slows me down on the resto work) 

Anyway, on to some pics..

New Game Setting cards that i remade from scans of the originals..






Repainted legs..





PLAYFIELD WORK:

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail (for now at least) but i'l post a few pics..


Some BEFORE pics;












I started with the white beneath the plastics, tidying these up by sanding, masking and repainting.








A pic of the repair progress of the wear below the top center kickout hole; after several hours of painting, under a magnifying glass and a fine brush for the text!!
there was still a bit of fine tuning to be done when this pic was taken. 




Some insert work..










Lower playfield, flipper area had some wear n tear in the blue and white, pic taken after most of the blue had been airbrushed and the 'collect bonus' text touched up.






Entering the home stretch now, with most of the major touch up work done   

I airbrushed the purple colour today and ended up spraying more of the p/f than i had originally intended to get the colour to blend in with the original colour (it was a difficult colour to match exactly). and MAN what a pain in the arse it was masking up all of those stars!!











Not much left to do now!! just need to redo some of the black (top arch area) and some tidy up/fine tuning and it'll be ready for the next step!!

[tonyt]

Wow, that is coming up sensationally. Really appreciate your efforts Mitch.

[pinball god]

Waited until I had a look on the tablet before commenting as a phone doesn't do it justice. I'm sure it looks even better in the flesh than what I'm seeing now. Well done Mitch a top effort

[greenechidna]

Hi Mitch

Usual high standard.....this looks so good in the flesh

[Strangeways]

Very nice work Mitch 

[Mr Pinbologist]

OKAAAYYYY... So somehow by fart-arseing around with folders on Photo Bucket i have managed to screw up my pics in the previous posts  
NOT HAPPY  

Anyway some new pics, showing where i'm up to, Touch-ups completed and playfield remylared.








I made NEW wood side rails for the playfield, as the original vinyl (or contact??) rails were in a bit of a sorry state. So rather than try to refurbish the originals i decided it'd be a LOT quicker just to re-make them. I purchased a 3 meter length of 12mm x 30mm Tassie Oak from Bunnings and had it trimmed down to the correct dimensions (1 1/8 inch high). Rather than wasting time and money trying to source some new covering for them i decided to just paint them.

A couple of coats of primer followed by a few coats of black had them looking the part! Because i didn't put heaps of primer/filler on them the wood grain is still visible so they actually look pretty close to the originals  




And fitted to the playfield!




More parts being fitted;






One of the ball trough guides needed repair, one of the mounting legs was broken off so i fashioned a new angle bracket and attached it to the guide.




The stainless guide from the top extra ball lane had a mounting leg missing, so i raided a replacement leg from an old Stern guide i found in my stash of parts, and fitted it using small screws and nuts.






A few more pics showing where i'm up to so far.. Shouldn't be too much longer now!!

[oldskool1969]

Very nice dude, the one I know of in WA is a little rough and yours looks the shot. 

[Mr Pinbologist]

Very nice dude, the one I know of in WA is a little rough and yours looks the shot. 

This one isn't mine unfortunately! belongs to 'tonyt' here on AP.

Thanks for the kind words though