Whirlwind Restoration

[howzat]

great to meet the legend

When your finished your resto all the hard work    Sanding and cleaning  will of been worth it

Ian

[Slash]

Thought it was time for an update.  I finally got my decals on a couple of weeks ago.

I decided to paint the whole cab blue before putting them on.  I know I could have just done primer and then sanded and just painted it blue near the edges where the decal would be trimmed, but I thought an extra coat of paint and then further sanding would help to fill in any further spots I might have missed (despite hours and hours of sanding and filling).


Yes I also painted the inside of the cabinet entirely.  I know it's not to everyones liking but the bottom was quite stained and ugly even after attempted cleaning, so I decided to paint the whole ting.


Im very happy with the Retro Refurbs decals.  Although they were damaged in shipping as you can see in a couple of pics, they were creased from the postage cylinder being crushed.  But some heat from  hair drying as I applied them (I applied them using the wet method), and the wrinkles disappeared as you can see from the pics of the same area.


I still have to cut out the bolt holes etc but I am tidying up the cabinet hardware in the meantime so they will get done when it's time to start putting things back in.  You can notice a bulge in one pics of the backbox, but that's simply from where there is a bolt hole behind it waiting to be cut (its not an air bubble).


I ended up using a satin finish with the paint and I am quite happy with it.  I also don't believe I got any air bubbles.  All the hours of prep work paid off!!


I also paid for my new CPR playfield earlier in the week 

[Mr Pinbologist]

That cab has come up SWEET... great job 


I made my own serial decals when i restored F-14 and Fish Tales from scans of the originals.


Also have to say, the cabs do look much nicer painted inside. The main reason i don't do it (apart from originality) is the extra work and expense involved (its hard enough getting $$ outta some people as it is) !!

[Slash]

^ I had enough paint so figured I would give it a go.  But it certainly used up a lot of paint!


Had to tidy up the coin door too as it was looking pretty terrible.  It also had an ugly plate riveted over one of the coin slots.  So I ripped that off then used some JB Weld that I had to fill in the hole.  Then sanded it back.


I used a Bryan Kelly youtube vid I saw of how to do the speckling effect, which I think came out ok.  I painted it in Matt/Flat Black and then did the speckling with gloss black.

[Crashramp]

Great work on the door, it's coming up really nice. It's probably the part of the machine I look forward to doing the least when I restore a game but always worth the effort.

[Slash]

Finally getting off my butt to start the playfield swap for this game, I've been sidetracked for long enough.  I bought a rotisserie a few months ago.


I now need to order new t-nuts but have no idea what size.  Can anyone tell me what size t-nut was used for System 11 games?  I have no idea what to buy and can't see the item listed in the manual either.


There are 6-32, 8-32 or 10-32 available from what I can see.

I had a feeling they were 8-32 from my research but would really like to confirm it.

[el_timbo86]

Buy both 6/32 and 8/32. Rarely will you use 10/32 on any playfields. MOST of the time the only place 6/32 t-nuts are used are on the return lanes but some games use them elsewhere for game specific assemblies. Hope this helps

Tim
HRP

[el_timbo86]

Also, being system 11 some hardware is actually loctited to the t-nuts. If you want to save your fasteners you will need to free the loctite up by using a pretty decent soldering iron with a flat tip. Apply the heat/tip to the t-nut and once hot enough you will be able to unscrew the fasteners without breaking the end of the thread off inside the t-nut.

[Slash]

Cheers for the advice, I’ll get some of both.


Gotta admit I’m apprehensive about this swap as the playfield is not dimpled so just another area for a first time playfield swap noob to screw up. 

[Slash]

So I ordered some t-nuts (2 different sizes) as per my posts above but the base of them is smaller than the current ones on the playfield.  I believe the holes are the correct size but the bases are just smaller.  I'm guessing this doesn't really matter??


These are the new ones I bought I don't have a pic handy to compare to the current ones but the radius of the base would be a couple of mm's more than these ones.

[Slash]

Got a problem with the lockdown bar and coin door.  Im sure I've had a blonde moment or something but can't bloody work out what it is.  I went to put the glass on then lockdown bar but can't close the coin door as one of the coin chutes hit the armature for the lockdown bar.  When there is no lockdown bar in the slots, the armature sits at a 45 degree angle and you can close the door.  But once you put the lockdown bar in it sits straight down and hits the coin chute preventing it from closing.


Any suggestions?

[oldskool1969]

But once you put the lockdown bar in it sits straight down and hits the coin chute preventing it from closing.

This isn't right, sounds like the lock down bar is not fully latching when engaged.
I had this when I did my Dr Dude and it definitely wasn't finding the "  home " location.
Took some tweaking of the whole locking mechanism by undoing the fixing screws to cabinet and either raising or lowering if you can and adjusting the top brass screws.
Not fun, but then it just seemed to work.

[Strangeways]

The two brass screws are for the adjustment of the LDB and LDB receiver. Loosen them slightly until the LDB is in its correct position.

[Slash]

Long time since any action on this but I am finally moving again - since the cabinet is done I just have to do the playfield swap - my first ever


Got a CPR playfield that came without dimples - awesome!! Apparently there was a stuff up with their CNC machine or something and most if not all the WW's weren't dimpled.  Oh well I have my old playfield to work off as a template and so I traced it area by area, then have been looking at that combined with the actual mech's and plastics and posts to see exactly where is best to drill the holes.


BUT I just ran into a problem, one of the posts decided to snap off, leaving the bottom of the screw in the hole - Motherf*$@er!!!  The post doesn't go all the way through so there is no way to grab it from the underside.  The area where it occurred is a spot where the ball can't get to and it's also hidden by plastics.  However, I need to put a new post in there as the plastics above it need to be supported and screwed to it.  Any suggestions on now to get it out? Ive already munted the area a bit trying to grip it and yank it out.

[Crashramp]

You could try a small screw extractor but it’ll be a delicate operation to drill a small pilot hole in the top of the snapped off post first. I’d first drill a hole the same size as the thread you need to remove through a bit of flat steel (Maybe 2mm thick) and place that on the playfield  over the thread so that when you’re drilling you can’t slip and drill the wood. Slow and careful does it.