Until now this website has been a blog about my classic arcade game collection. I’ve blogged quite a few stories of my arcade game restorations. One thing I haven’t talked about until now is my classic console collection. I actually started my video game collecting years ago before I owned a house big enough to hold arcade games. When my wife and I first got married, we lived in a small two bedroom apartment. During that time I got the collecting bug and started collecting old, classic consoles I played as a kid. I was active in collecting these consoles until I made the switch to working on arcade games. I had Atari systems, an Intellivision, and a few classic home computers. My real favorite from my childhood was the Colecovision. This system was released by Coleco to compete with the Atari 2600 and Intellivision in the early eighties. My best friend growing up had one, and we played it at his house all the time. It was known for specializing in excellent arcade game ports. I even bought a Mr. Do! cartridge hoping to get the console but never did. Collecting old consoles finally gave me a chance to have my own Colecovision!

Even the box for these is cool!

I built up a nice collection of cartridges for the Colecovision. I had most of the common games, all of the expansion modules, and several rare or hard to find games. I also had more than one console and several sets of controllers. Since it is winter right now, I can’t work on any of my arcade game restoration projects. It’s too cold in the garage! I’ve been working hard to reorganize my basement work area so this spring I can finish up a few of my projects. This is also where I keep all of my console collection. I’ve been spending some time going through my collection and playing some of the old games. It’s really been fun to spend time with each system remembering some of the great games they had available. I’ve really been playing the Colecovision quite a bit. However, the console and controllers were really showing their age. If I have all of this experience restoring arcade games, why couldn’t I do the same with these consoles? It would be much easier and I could make them look and work like new.

I have two Colecovision consoles. I took my “spare” console and tore it down into smaller pieces to clean each one. I removed all of the labeling, including the plastic plates on the front and top. I cleaned everything. I cleaned the console case with hot soapy water, and any small pieces in the ultrasonic cleaner I used to restore my pinball machine. I cleaned off all of the adhesive on the plates, and reapplied them using spray adhesive. I also reflowed the solder on the joystick connectors to prevent any cold solder joints, which are common on old electronics. The console cleaned up really well!

The board inside is pretty small.

I resoldered both of these.

I had to clean up the artwork and reapply it with spray adhesive

The controllers were much more difficult. I had nine controllers in my collection, so I set up a little production line to clean them all up. Several had disconnected controller wires. The design used crimp connectors to attach the wires to the controller board. Many of these connectors were loose or broken. I cut the broken connectors and soldered the wires directly to the controller board since I didn’t have any more of this style crimp connectors. I ultrasonic cleaned as many parts of the controllers as I could, and scrubbed the controller housings as best I could. A few of them even needed some magic eraser work to clean off all of the scuffs and markings. They came out great!

My controller restoration processing line

There is a lot to these little things

They turned out great!

I’m really happy with the final console. It looks great. I also plan to package a bundle and list it on my trades page. If anyone is interested in one, please let me know!

You can see more pictures of my Colecovision restoration on my Classic Console Collection Photo Page. My entire Colecovision cartridge listing, as well as my other classic console game listings, can be viewed on my page at VGCollect.com.

I completed a lot of restoration work on my Asteroids cocktail during my Christmas vacation. I had to order some parts because my cocktail needed quite a few items “rebuilt” to make sure they were working properly and ensure it would keep working for years to come. I also ordered some new buttons because the old ones looked terrible.
While I was waiting on the parts I ordered, I worked on some of the internals of the game. It was really clean, except the normal dust. That made this much easier! The first thing I noticed when I heard the game playing during testing was the sound was really weak. I’m more used to the sound of the Upright cabinet, which was really more dynamic. The bass on this one was horrible and tinny (is that a word?). The speaker installed in this cabinet was really tiny, and held on with nails through a vinyl frame. Not a great design. The hole pattern on the speaker cover was the same standard hole pattern used my most smaller speakers in arcade games, so I pulled out the old speaker and replaced it with a better one. I had a really nice, magnetically shielded speaker from an old television I used to own. This speaker sounds MUCH better and more in line with what the game should sound like. It was an amazing difference.

You can see the old speaker laying above. Big difference!

As with most Atari games, the volume control was a tiny potentiometer with no knob. I don’t know if Atari was cost cutting or if these were just easier to turn 30 years ago. Now it’s really hard to turn without a knob. Thankfully I bought a couple about a year ago when I was working on my Centipede, so I put my extra knob on this volume control. Looks great!

They should have shipped with these knobs

Perhaps the dirtiest part in this cabinet, besides the control buttons, was the AC power transformer assembly. These are in all classic Atari cabinets and they always seem to collect all the dirt. This one was in the best shape of any I’ve ever had. I usually have to disassemble them and repaint the main frame, but for this one I only had to clean it up. I ended up disassembling it to better clean it up. I love how these look when cleaned up!

Before…

After!

By the time I finished working on the inside of the cabinet, I received my rebuild parts. Since I knew the monitor was not working, I started there. I installed a new cap kit which also included new transistors. This was an easy kit to install. The monitor was not very complicated so the parts were easy to get to. Once I was done I replaced the bad fuses and fired it up. The fuses held and the picture came on! I was very excited that it was such and easy fix.

Nice new caps on the monitor

Picture looks great!

I knew the game board worked but I wanted to make sure I rebuilt the power board and even replaced some parts on the PCB. Bob Roberts sells cap kits for both boards. They were also easy to install and now everything works great. I can also feel confident that this will work for years to come!

AR board with new caps and transistors

Once I was done with all the board work I decided to do one more repair that is recommended for most Atari games from that era. I wired up secondary power lines directly to the PCB so the wiring harness edge connector wasn’t the only power connection point. Atari games have a history of overheating these connections as the connectors start to get dirty. By bypassing this connection the game will be much more reliable. I also replaced the entire edge connector on the wiring harness to ensure all of the contacts were like new. Lots of crimping but just like new!

I ran the lines from the back of the AR board to the PCB with connectors so the PCB can be removed in the future if necessary

Nice shiny connector!

Now that I have the game working perfectly, it’s time to start working on the look of the game. The game was in solid shape but dirty. The glass had several scratches in it and the paint under the glass was peeling. I will need to replace the glass and purchase a new underlay to get this looking new. That will be my next parts order. Arcadeshop.com has a nice reproducion underlay.
The metal legs and glass clips were dirty and rusted. I had a friend at work that has his own powder coating line, and he was able to powder coat them. They came out GREAT! I bought new leg levelers for the legs but the threads don’t seem to match properly. I need to try another set or tap the legs to match the threads on the new levelers.

The powder coating looks great!

Glass clip with new powder coating

The next step was to work on the control panels. The painted graphics on the control panel were great and no wear whatsoever. The buttons looked horrible so I swapped them out with new ones. I didn’t like the look or feel of the new buttons, so I decided to clean up the original ones. They turned out pretty good!

Original, dirty buttons

New buttons. Notice how high they sit above the panel

The originals look much better and “fit” the panel better

This thing is really coming together. All I need to do is get the new glass and underlay, and this will look brand new! I can’t wait!

On my last work day of the year, I came across a Craigslist ad for an Asteroids cocktail. I made arrangements to go see it after work. The game did not work, but was in great shape so I had to pick it up. I really like the game Asteroids but never had the chance to buy one until now. I purchased this from an Engineer that planned to fix it up himself but it ended up just being in the way. Classic arcade games are great but unless you have the space and the time to work on them, they can be tough to restore.

The really cool thing about this cabinet it that it fit right into the back of my RAV4 without even having to lower the back seats. The car was made to carry cocktail cabinets! This is only my third cocktail I’ve ever owned, and the first that I planned to keep.

Fits perfectly in the back of the car!

Once I got the game home I was able to mess around with it trying to figure out what was wrong. The first thing to do when getting a new game is to open it up and make sure everything is connected and there are no visible signs of problems. If there are some bad connections or other problems, you could end up causing more harm just testing it with power. Everything looked OK so I powered it up. Nothing. I then reseated all of the connectors on the wiring harness. This time I got full sound. It looks like the game works, but plays blind! That’s great news because that means I can focus all of my time on the monitor. This game uses a Vector monitor, which displays lines instead of pixel graphics. It’s the second vector game I’ve owned and I hope it’s easy enough to get working.

It’s pretty clean inside. Just some 30 year old dust.

After checking out the monitor I found a blown fuse. I tried another but it blew immediately. I researched online and the symptoms point to a bad transistor in the monitor. Since I generally install cap kits to any new game I get, I went ahead and ordered a cap kit with new transistors from Bob Roberts. I also ordered new buttons, an Asteroids PCB cap kit, and a power supply rebuild kit. These should help me bring this game back from the dead! More to come later after I start installing the new parts. There are also more pictures available on my Asteroids Cocktail photo page.

I’ve had a busy summer this year. I was able to wrap up three projects before the weather turned cold. I already reported on the Time Pilot restoration, and shopping my Earthshaker pinball. The last game I finished up this summer was my Centipede that I’ve had in the garage for a few years. I was never able to get this into the house to work on because it was soaked in mouse urine and smelled really bad. Last year I picked up a replacement cabinet but had not had the time to transplant the working parts from the first cabinet. I finally got this done and now have a nice working Centipede in my gameroom!

All kinds of cabinets around this project! The front one is a friend’s who just happened to store his in my garage for a few weeks. Cool photo opp!

When I last checked in on this game, I had just purchased the replacement cabinet and stripped all the parts out of the original cabinet. I also already rebuilt the control panel and had it ready to install on the new cabinet. I stopped at this point because the new cabinet had its sides covered in white laminate. I needed to take some time to decide if I was going to remove the laminate and buy reproduction side art for the cabinet. Well, the more I thought about doing this, the more I realized that I should just keep the laminate. The white laminate looked great, and I would not even see the sides anyway due to how tight my gameroom is. There just is no space between games to show off the artwork. With that decision out of the way the rest of the project would be easy!

The last step done to the “mouse urine” cabinet. I hate to destroy original cabinets!

Since I had the cabinet gutted and cleaned out, the first step was to put the original Centipede power block back in the bottom of the cabinet. I actually took this apart and repainted the metal framework from this assembly. I then cleaned all the remaining parts and reassembled it. I also put a new fuse holder block in it because the other one was pretty old. This assembly needed to go in first because there were several harness connectors that needed to be plugged into it. This would allow me to align the harness to it. Once the harness was aligned it was easy to lay out to all the other areas of the cabinet.

All cleaned out and ready for some parts.

As I mentioned before I had a special harness that was modified to play both Centipede and Millipede boards. They have different wiring connections so they weren’t interchangeable in the original harness. I added another PCB track above the normal Centipede location so I could install the Millipede above. It fit like a glove! After the PCB was installed, I finished the rest of the internal components and harness installation. Everything looked great when I was done.

Starting to look like an arcade game.

After the internals were all reassembled, I reinstalled the control panel. I rebuilt the trackball and put a new fire button in the panel, but I hadn’t fixed the LED lights in the start buttons. They weren’t working so I was hoping the LEDs were burned out. I picked up a set at Radio Shack and replaced them in the button. I had to drill out the rivets holding the button assemblies together. The LEDs were a little tricky to replace because the they were soldered to the button contacts. It was worth all the effort to rebuild because the buttons are really bright now!

Switch disassembled awaiting a new LED

Nice and bright!

The panel looks great in the new cabinet!

Once I finished reassembling the game it worked great! The Millipede board isn’t working right so I need to do some work to it to get it to run. The Centipede works GREAT and is a lot of fun to play. I had one spot left in the gameroom to squeeze this in. Now the gameroom is done for the year. I have several more projects coming up but with the weather change there won’t be any new games for a while.

All assembled ready to go.

Looks great along my other Atari cabinets.

I have it to the right of my Crystal Castles, but I think I will move it soon because the Crystal Castles looks hidden between the large Centipede and Pole Position cabinets.

Centipede has a great marquee!

Check out all the Centipede restoration pictures in my Centipede Photo Album

When I last updated this project, I had just started cleaning all of the parts that were removed from the playfield. I also just finished cleaning off the playfield itself. Now I just needed to reassemble everything and give it a try. There are a ton of pieces to this game, including a bunch of bulbs that needed replaced. I really didn’t think there is a safe way to test things as I put it back together, so I was hoping that everything would work perfectly after it was all reassembled.

I slowly worked off of my list of assemblies I removed one at a time. I worked backwards replacing the last ones removed first. Everything went pretty smoothly. I replaced several old broken posts with new ones, and put all new lock nuts on each post to make sure they stayed tight. I put new plastic in several places, including over the slingshots. The right slingshot was really bad and was repaired with a drywall screw. Luckily the hole from the screw was hidden inside the assembly and didn’t damage the actual play area. While I had everything removed it was a good change to change ALL of the lamps. That way I also replaced all of the “rubber” in the game from my rubber replacement kit from The Pinball Source. I had several left over pieces, but since I installed many new ones I expected that. The playfield really looked great when I was done assembling it!

Here’s the lower section all back together.

Looks great lit up!

Here’s the middle section.

The upper section is really cool. The building looks much better.

After the playfield was assembled and put back into the cabinet, I worked on finishing up the backbox. I labeled all of the connectors to make it easy to reconnect the playfield to the boards. I also replaced all of the bulbs in the backbox. I had to buy some “flasher” bulbs for several positions. These were really cool because they make the translight flash over the different “damage areas” depicted in the graphics.

There were a ton of bulbs in the backbox.

After everything was put together, I had several small problems to work through. First, there were some flasher lamps not flashing. I found two where the bulb sockets were not connecting well, even tough they were new sockets. I was able to twist them on better to make a better connection. Two other flashers did not work at all. I spent a couple hours testing the power to the flashers and tracing the wiring. Finally after examining the schematics I thought it would be worth replacing the transistor controlling the circuit for the flashers (Q22). Thankfully, that’s all it took! All the lamps and flasher were working great. When I started with the game none of the flashers had bulbs. Now with all of them working the light show was amazing! This by far was the most noticeable improvement.

I then turned my attention to the pop bumpers. My pop bumpers were NOT working. I replaced several parts to them and thought maybe I messed something up. Turned out to just be a fuse. The wrong fuse was installed in the game for that circuit. It didn’t look blown but was not passing any current. I replaced it with the right fuse and it held just fine. At this point everything was working. However, after about five games one of the flipper coils burned up. I think it was really bad before I reassembled it. I picked up a new coil and it worked great!

Here it is in the gameroom getting some extensive play testing!

It’s now been a few months living with this machine and everything is still going great. The game plays much better now, and is really fast! It’s amazing the difference that it makes shopping out a old worn out playfield. I’m really happy with this game, and can’t wait to get another pinball machine for the gameroom someday!

Check out all the Earthshaker pinball pictures in my Earthshaker Photo Album

As the weather was starting to cool off I wanted to finish up the final assembly of a couple games in the garage. I want to get the car in before the heavy frost so I don’t have to scrape windows every morning. The first game to finish up was Time Pilot. It was in decent shape, but very dirty and a little wobbly.

As I already posted, I rebuilt the control panel. That was really the only functional issue with the game. The “new” control panel really looks and functions great! The next step was to thoroughly clean the cabinet, inside and out. It was very dirty, so to get it to clean up as nice as possible, I used my favorite “Magic Erasers”. They do a great job on cleaning old cabinet. When using them you have to be careful to not scrub so much that you rub off the artwork. You also need to make sure you don’t get any significant water on any of the MDF wood. It will soak water like a sponge, swelling up and ruining the cabinet. I was as careful as possible. There were some really bad and dirty spots on the artwork. I was able to get most of the art cleaned up nicely. This artwork really was never made very well, and almost all Time Pilots have worn or faded artwork. I was lucky that mine really was as nice as it was. There were a couple small places where I did rub off the artwork but I really couldn’t help it. Even with the art rubbed off a bit, it looked better than before!

I had to be really careful cleaning this old artwork!

Cleaning the inside of old arcade cabinets can also be a challenge. You never know what you’re going to find in them. This one was VERY dirty inside. Found a few quarters as usual, which is always fun. There were also loose screws and other junk to sweep out. Some good quality time with a shop vac and it looked great. While I was cleaning the inside of the cabinet, I found where several of the support blocks used to hold the cabinet together were missing or laying loose inside. This explains why the cabinet was so wobbly! I made some new blocks, then glued and screwed the blocks together. This really made the cabinet solid.

While I had the monitor out I installed a “cap kit” to try to improve the picture quality. The colors were a lot better, but I still need to do some adjustment to the picture to tune it in even better. After capping the monitor I reinstalled it in the cabinet. I then cleaned up the cardboard bezel and plexiglass. There were several old stickers on the plex, but I was able to get them off without too much work. I ended up cutting a new bottom bezel out of posterboard. It was just a flat piece that masked off the outside edge of the monitor. Made it look much beter. Once I was able to get this all put back in the cabinet, I had a fully functional Time Pilot again!

Here it is with the monitor put back in. Getting there!

The marquee I had was in horrible shape! I could see almost the entire bulb underneath through all the flaked paint. I bought another from a local operator. He had 10 of them, and they were all flaked badly. The one I got had most of the color there, but flaked black. I figured it would be the easiest to touch-up with a black paint pen. I spent a couple hours touching it up from the backside. I actually mounted it in the cabinet backwards, and used the marquee light to highlight all the holes in the black paint. Turned out pretty well. Good enough until I buy a new reproduction.

You can see the black paint flaked off

Mounted backwards makes it really easy to touch up the paint with a paint pen

Looks much better, but the colored paint flaked away drives me nuts

The last step that I did was to cut a new back door for the cabinet. It didn’t come with one when I picked it up, so I cut my own out of some MDF I had around. I didn’t paint it yet, so I’ll need to do that later on! Overall I’m really happy with how the game turned out. It is MUCH better than when I picked it up. Time Pilot is such a great game that this will be a welcome addition to the arcade.

Here it is all tucked into the game room. Awesome!

For more pictures of the Time Pilot, check out my Time Pilot Gallery

Over the years I’ve used all kinds of methods to try to see the screen while adjusting monitors. Sometimes I get lucky and can reach around from the front to adjust while still seeing the screen. Other times I’ve had someone hold a mirror for me. Well after several years collecting I’ve had enough. I started researching what other collectors were using. I came across a great thread on the KLOV Forums that talked about different mirrors that people use. One guy, “FrizzleFried”, had a great idea for a clamp-on mirror made from a clamp-on lamp and a hand mirror he picked up at Walmart. I decided to see if I could find some good parts at my local Walmart and make my own.

I was able to find both parts I needed at Walmart pretty easily. I was pretty happy with the mirror because it was pretty big and the rectangular shape would really work well with showing a monitor. I wasn’t stuck with a round or heart-shaped mirror! Also, if you plan to do the same thing, make sure you get a clamp lamp with rubber pads in the clamp. This will prevent possible damage to your cabinets’ artwork.

Less than $10 worth of parts!

This lamp had really nice rubber grips

The first step was to take the light fixture off of the lamp, leaving the clamp and flex arm. It was tough to get a wrench into the light cone to take the cone off of the arm, but I eventually was able to remove it. I cut the wiring to make it easier to pull off.

As bad luck would have it, the threaded end of the flex arm had a larger diameter than the hole in the mirror handle. Worse, it was shorter than the thickness of the handle. I ended up having to drill the hole in the handle larger, and cut down the thickness of the mirror handle to allow me to mount it to the flex arm. After some time with a drill and hacksaw, I had a clamp-on mirror.

The only problem was, as you can see in the above picture, the flex arm was not strong enough for the weight of the larger sized mirror I purchased! I cut some coat hanger wire to fit into the flex arm, and that ended up being the additional strength I needed. It now works perfectly!

Coat hanger wire is as handy as duct tape!

I bent the ends of the wire to hold it securely in the flex arm

Fits great onto the side of an arcade cabinet

What a great view!

I’m glad I finally made one of these. I can’t believe I hadn’t done something like this sooner. It really makes a difference when working on monitors. If you would like to see more pics, and pictures of some other test equipment I’ve made, check out my Test Rigs Photo Gallery.

I wanted to share a tool I’ve been using for the last year or so. It’s called Sketchup and is available free from Google. It’s a really easy to use 3D modeling tool. Google has worked this tool into Google Earth, and thousands of people have been modeling buildings and other structures to help make a 3D modeled Earth.

A great use for this tool is to help layout your gameroom or arcade. There has been an effort for the last couple years to build an online repository of accurately modeled arcade cabinets for use in Sketchup. There are quite a few collectors that have contributed models to Sketchup. I’ve done a few common cabinets, and then made custom cabinets to match some of my converted games. The real Sketchup Arcade pro is Sean Newton, who has contributed over 400 accurately modeled arcade cabinets. His Google name is Gozer and all of his cabinets can be found in his Arcade collection.

Basically how Sketchup works for designing an arcade is very simple. First, you draw the layout of the walls in your gameroom. After that is set, all you do is import the games you need from the 3D Warehouse, which is Google’s library for sharing Sketchup Models. Once you have the cabinets you need in your gameroom, just move them around to try out all different kinds of arrangements. It’s pretty fun to see the layout without having to move the real, heavy cabinets.

KLOVer ‘orion3311′ has put together a great instructional video showing the basics to putting together an arcade layout in Sketchup. This is a great place to start. I’ve embedded the video below. Also, Google has several video tutorials showing how to use the software. There are all kinds of features to try out once you get familiar with the program.

Here are some shots of my planned new layout. I was able to figure out how to get the Time Pilot and the Centipede into the gameroom without taking up additional space. Sweet!

Here are a few really good links to find out more:

• Google Sketchup Download Page – Start here!
• KLOV Sketchup Modeling Thread – This is the best place for all kinds of information on modeling your arcade
• My Arcade Cabinet Model Collection – I’ve got a few decent ones in here, and a few of my oddball conversions
• Arcade cabinets by Gozer – Sean (Gozer) Newton has put together a ton of great cabinet models. There are over 400 as of this writing.

I’m not used to get a fully working game as a project. It’s nice to start with restoration tasks instead of repair tasks. Since the control panel was in the worst shape of anything on this game, it made a good starting point. Get the tough stuff out of the way so the rest of the project is easy! The panel was in terrible shape. The overlay was chipped away on the edges and the exposed metal was severely rusted. The joystick barely moved with all of the packed in dirt and grease. Even the buttons were really scratched and faded.

The first step was to remove the control panel from the cabinet, and remove all of the controls from the panel. This was a pretty normal task, except for trying to figure out how to take apart the Monroe joystick to remove it from the panel. After trying to figure out how to take it apart for a few minutes, I noticed that there was a cloth dust ring that filled the joystick hole in the panel. It was hiding the fact that the hole was large enough to pass the ball of the joystick through the hole. Usually a joystick shaft needs to be removed from the top of the panel so the switch assembly can be removed from the bottom of a control panel. This time I could just pull the whole joystick from the bottom of the panel. I still needed to figure out how to disassemble the joystick to properly clean it, but for now I can work on the panel itself.

I’ve never seen this kind of dust cover before. It’s a nice idea, but it looks like it held a ton of dirt and who knows what else! Probably all kinds of scary germs in it too! The other problem is that it held all kinds of moisture in it, causing the top of the joystick assembly to rust in a matching pattern. That’s got to go!

Once the controls were removed, I had to remove the control panel overlay. It looked like it was falling off on its own so maybe it would be easy to remove. Usually I use a heat gun and putty knife to scrape off overlays. I tried first on the front of the panel. The overlay was so thin and cheap that it melted with little heat. Made the removal of the front very difficult. I started on the top surface next, but that was even worse. I ended up testing a razor scraper and it worked really well. The adhesive was so old and deteriorated that it scraped right off. There was a ton of dried adhesive left on the panel to deal with next. After I removed the overlay I sanded the panel down until it was really clean and ready for a new overlay. I had to sand a ton of rust and adhesive away, but it was so dry it came right off.

The front removed, but wasn’t fun

What a mess!

Nice and shiny!

The next step was to clean the controls. The buttons were pretty nasty, so I pulled out three red buttons from some spare parts I had. They were in really nice shape and the red looked better with the overlay I bought. I cleaned these buttons in my small Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner to make them look really nice. The joystick was going to need some cleaning. It was caked with dirty grease and didn’t even move properly. It was a Monroe joystick, which is almost all metal. The ball was a bit worn out, and the shaft was severely rusted. I started rebuilding it by disassembling it. It took me about an hour to figure out how to take it apart, and to actually get the lock rings off of the shaft to actually take it apart. They were really small and had to be taken off in a certain order to allow access to them. The larger one had to be removed so I could compress the joystick spring to expose the smaller lock ring. Felt like defusing a bomb or opening a puzzle box.

Hard to tell here but it actually is really dirty

Lots of metal parts to clean

Once the joystick was disassembled, I cleaned all of the parts with brake cleaner. It took a while to soak them enough to break through all of the grease. The parts cleaned up really nice and had no wear. I chucked the joystick shaft into my cordless drill so I could clean it properly. I used a pad of scotchbrite to remove all of the rust from the shaft. Then I used a soft cloth with Novus 3 to buff out the worn ball. I followed with Novus 2 to shine it up. There was some minor pitting in the surface that dulled it, but it looked 100 times better than it did before I started. After cleaning everything, the reassembly of the joystick was really easy. After reassembling, I greased the assembly with white lithium grease. It’s much less dense and won’t gum up like the old grease.

Right after cleaning off the shaft. Looks great!

Starting to come together. I love the all metal assembly

The next step is to install the new Control Panel Overlay (CPO). I ended up buying an NOS “alternate” CPO from Quarterarcade.com instead of a reproduction of the original design. I saw a picture of one of these CPOs installed on another collector’s machine and I really liked how it looked. Had much more yellow in it which I felt was a better match to the other cabinet graphics. I applied this to the clean panel by first lining up the holes in the overlay with the holes in the panel. Then to finish I trimmed off the excess overlay. Turned out great. After applying the overlay, I reassembled the controls on the panel and ended up with a really nice, new looking control panel. Now to clean the cabinet…

Here is the new overlay. Nice!

All done. I really like the look of this panel and can’t wait to put it back on the cabinet!

It’s been a while since I posted progress on this restoration. I’ve actually finished up the restore by “shopping” the playfield. “Shopping” a pinball machine from what I understand is the process of cleaning, repairing, and waxing the playfield and its parts. Basically it is restoring the playfield. I hear the term quite a bit but never had a machine to do it myself and to see what it really takes. I figured this would be pretty easy! It was a challenge and far from an easy task for someone who has never done it before!

I started by pulling the playfield out of the machine. I had to remove it to bring the machine down into my basement, so I decided to work in it down there instead of the hot garage. Since I didn’t have a rotating repair fixture to mount the playfield in like some of the hardcore pinball collectors, I sat it on the end of my air hockey table so I had plenty of space to work. Not the best arrangement but it worked out OK for me this time.

Once I had the playfield out and laying where I could start working on it, I began removing everything on the top surface. I didn’t remove too many items from the bottom because I didn’t want to get into an even bigger mess than I was already committing to. I slowly removed parts one section at a time. I kept a log of all parts I removed. I took photos of EVERYTHING as I removed each part. I tried to logically group them together. Each group was stored together in a numbered Ziploc bags. There were hundreds of parts to this thing!

As I started removing parts it became even more evident that this playfield needed some serious work. I honestly couldn’t see any sign that it had ever been cleaned or maintained. The ball paths were caked with dirt and who knows what else. I found several rubber rings that were either broken or disintegrated. Here are a few pics of what I found:

Things got really interesting when I started taking apart the right slingshot. It had a broken plastic, and it looks like at some point it was repaired with drywall screws. YIKES! Thankfully nothing was damaged and it would be an easy fix.

One of the problems I had was that I kept breaking off the small playfield posts. Williams used a really good thread-locker! The posts were only the size of #6 screws, so they weren’t very strong to begin with. At one point I ended up making a quick purchase of new posts and T-nuts, only to change that order twice before it shipped to have enough parts to replace my damaged parts. I also picked up enough locknuts to replace all of the ones that are on top of the posts. The old ones were tarnished, and new nuts would make it really shine.

A common problem with older pinball playfields is the fact that the lighted inserts will loosen and raise up from the playfield. This happens due to the heat from the bulbs underneath breaks down the adhesive that holds the insert level with the playfield surface. I ended up heating the insert from below the playfield, then pounding the insert level from above with a block and mallet. Once the insert was leveled, a little superglue holds it in place again.

I was really hoping I could keep the mylar covering on the playfield. From what I understand, Williams used a custom cut mylar protective cover on all of their playfields for a few years to try to protect the playfield artwork. The mylar covers ended up becoming harder to maintain, so they switched to a tougher clear coat. Earthshaker is one of the games that uses a mylar cover. Mine looked in great shape until I started tearing parts off the playfield. What I found was that there were several places where it was peeling up or bubbling up from the surface. After researching removal techniques, everything I read pointed to using compressed air cans sprayed upside-down for a “freeze spray” to freeze the adhesive. This allows the mylar to peel right off without damaging the artwork underneath. Then all I would have to do is simply remove the adhesive and I’d be all set. “Simply” was definitely NOT what I found out. The mylar did remove very easily, but the adhesive was a nightmare. It took forever to get it off of the playfield. It was especially bad over the inserts where the heat of the bulbs underneath practically baked it in place.

Looked like giant boogers and just as sticky!

Playfield stripped of all of the top parts, prior to cleaning.

Before I worked on the playfield surface itself, I cleaned up every piece that would be reinstalled. I used several different methods depending on what I was cleaning. The clear ramps were cleaned with soap and water, then followed up with a cleaning using Novus 1&2. I then waxed each one with hard wax. I cleaned the wire forms using soap and water, then polished them with Millwax. I purchased Millwax on a recommendation, then after further research realized that I shouldn’t use it on the playfield itself. Works well on metal parts though. Finally, the rest of the small parts were cleaned in a small ultrasonic cleaner I picked up from Harbor Freight. I read that people used ultrasonic cleaners for pinball parts and thought it would be worth a try. I ran each bag of parts through the cleaner. Some I ran for several cycles. I tried plastics, metal parts, and even the hardware. I was amazed by the results. Not bad for a $25 tool. My only issue is that the cleaner I bought was so small. Some items were too big to fit into the tank. Check out the pictures below of the difference this made.

Basic Ultrasonic Cleaner from Harbor Freight

Here is a dirty plastic that is about to be run through the ultrasonic cleaner

Not a ton of capacity but good for most smaller pinball parts

The flippers were really bad. The rubber from the black rings really built up on the plastic. I had to use a combination of scrubbing and ultrasonic cleaning but they cleaned up really nice!

My next Earthshaker post will cover the playfield reconstruction. Check back soon!