Pinball

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Pinbot Restoration – Spare plastics

Posted by Andrew Burch on July 13, 2014
Posted in: Pinbot - Williams (1986). Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 6 comments

I couldn’t resist digging through the parts box today and doing some cleaning on the extra plastics. Most of these I wont need (thankfully as many have small sections missing), but I wanted to get them cleaned up anyway in case I do need them. Otherwise I can move them on to good homes once the project is complete where they can be useful.

Most (….well all) of these have been sitting around for god knows how long, so are covered in dust and dirt. Eucalyptus oil, Novus 2 and Novus 1 work wonders. There is some fading in one or two of the pieces sadly, but not much I can do about that.

Start:

Spare pinbot plastics dirty
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Pinbot Restoration – Introduction

Posted by Andrew Burch on July 13, 2014
Posted in: Pinbot - Williams (1986). Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

I was very excited today to bring a Pinbot machine home – finally – one to call my own.

I’ve been on the look out for one for a number of months now and it was supposed to be the second machine in my “fleet” (…I however went on to buy a lovely Space Orbit and Fireball Classic project when nothing was turning up).

What makes the purchase even better in my eyes however is it’s a project machine. Not content to just buy and play, I’m eager to restore a machine I want to keep for a long time and have the satisfaction of doing the work myself.

Pinbot project machine
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Hardbody Playfield restoration – Lower playfield start

Posted by Andrew Burch on June 29, 2014
Posted in: Hardbody Playfield - Bally (1987). Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

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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Hardbody Playfield restoration – Strip down & clean

Posted by Andrew Burch on June 29, 2014
Posted in: Hardbody Playfield - Bally (1987). Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

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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Bally “Hardbody” Playfield restoration – First Contact

Posted by Andrew Burch on June 18, 2014
Posted in: Hardbody Playfield - Bally (1987). Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

So it’s no secret I love pinball. Not just the playing of these wonderful beasts, but (..and arguably more so) the learning about their inner workings and how to give them back their former glory. Like an overexcited apprentice, I want to understand everything right now and be able to do anything the veterans can. Thankfully I able to keep a level head (mostly :)) and respect the fact I’m still new in this area and enjoy the journey.

On my current pinball project (Fireball Classic), I had to do some minor playfield touch ups. Thankfully it was quite straight forward. But I was terrified given any mistakes could be hard to back peddle from. I also know what I did do could be done better – given experience. I wanted to get some more experience with playfield touch up and restoration and decided this could make an interesting side project to work on. If I could find some damaged playfields which could be written off in the worst scenario, then this would make a great learning exercise and benefit future playfield restoration work (like my Nugent for example).

Recently I acquired a playfield from “Hardbody”, a Solid State game from Bally in 1987. A bodybuilding theme – I found it amusing there was a pinball theme based on bodybuilding. Even at the height of my gym training a few years back (where I was training 5 – 6 days week) I think I would have been embarrassed to play this 😉 But anyway, it ticked all the boxes.
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