cleaning

All posts tagged cleaning

Now that the two playfield halves were stripped of parts, I wanted to take a note of the initial issues I was facing with the restoration. I expect more issues will come to light as I progress, but wanted to document the starting point to help gauge how the restoration progresses. This update will look at the lower playfield area.

The mylar was lifting in a number of places on the lower playfield, most notably around the inserts. There is also a darkening / fading of the artwork not covered by the mylar.

Hardbody playfield raise mylar
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Having given the playfield a look over and making a few notes on things that will require attention, I decided to start working on it. The first thing I wanted to do was get the playfield stripped down. The small upper section of playfield was already stripped (both top and bottom sides). The lower section (large area) had lots of parts to remove.

Hardbody lower playfield topside
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I fixed up two of the large inserts on the lower play field last night.

When I picked up the machine there was already some damage to some of the inserts. One of the worst hit was the right side “when flashing” inserts. It looks like a decent chunk of the plastic has been ripped up with the mylar that was removed from that area in the past. Some of the other inserts have suffered the same fate, but this was the worst hit.

Fireball classic inserts
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Fireball has 8 small roll over targets in the middle of the play field. They surround the large spinning fireball and can toggle the ball save kicker on and off (along with award points).

They probably haven’t been pulled out of the machine since it was constructed 29 years ago, so figured I might as well spend half an hour giving them a clean and polish.

Fireball classic mini roll overs
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With the lower play field given an initial clean and service, it is time to go over the middle area. The main feature of the middle play field area is a central “spinner” (or spinning disk) which rotates constantly during gameplay. It’s covered with a rubber pad used to grip the ball and fling it off (….like a fireball). I won’t be servicing this for now, but will return to it at a later date. The spinner works fine, but really could do with a service.

I will be removing the rest of the mylar up to the pop bumpers, along with servicing the rest of the play field components in that area.

The mylar in the middle section was not as bad as in the lower. But just as with the lower section, someone has attempted to remove parts of it, while leaving the goo and not really doing the best job.

Both sides contain one plastic each, along with some switches, mini mushroom bumpers and a saucer to trap a ball in. The right side also contains a gate which can allow the ball to either return to the shooter lane, or back into play.

(note I had removed the small mushroom bumper on the right side before the starting photo was taken).

Fireball mid play field left
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