Back in the 90s I went to a coin-op auction and purchased a 1980 Flash Gordon Pinball machine for my kids to have in the rec room/home theater. The cabinet was beaten up with a very poor paint touch-up. The playfield was decent but the electronics were non-functional. I replaced the main CPU board and the machine was up and running. The kids played it for the next decade or so and then they went to college, graduated, and off to their adult life. By that time the playfield was very worn and the machine was no longer functioning. I soon discovered that pinball machines like Jukeboxes need constant maintenance to keep them playing. During that time a company that makes reproduction playfields announced that they were taking pre-orders for Flash Gordon playfields. I placed my order and 2 years later the new playfield, plastics, and a paint stencil arrived. Too busy to restore it at that time I placed the new parts in storage where it stayed for almost 10 years. Much to the dismay of my bride I hauled the pinball machine and associated parts to our new empty-nester home making a vow to myself to do a proper ground-up restoration. This past spring I managed to start working on it.
Step 1. Remove back box and play field from the cabinet.
I disassembled the unit into three components;
i) the back box which houses the CPU, sound card, relay drivers, displays, etc.
ii) the playfield
iii) the main cabinet.
The legs, back glass, playfield glass and circuit boards where removed and set aside.
Step 2. Prep the cabinet for sanding
I sanded the old paint off the cabinet and the back box so I could put on a solid undercoat and then use the stencils I purchased to repaint the 3 color design; Red base, Black secondary color and then a yellow third color.setup a temporary paint booth in my garage so I could spray the cabinet with my gravity feed sprayer and air compressor.
Step 3 Document and remove all the top level - playfield parts
In between coats of paint I started to document the playfield components with literally hundreds of photos so I would have a reference placing all the components on the new playfield. Once I was satisfied with the reference photos I removed the top side components from the playfield. Even with all the photos I took I later discovered that a few more would have helped.
Step 4. Remove all the underside playfield parts.
The next step was to document the back side of the playfield with more photos and remove those components. After reading several blogs and watching You Tube videos of pinball restoration I decided to keep the wiring harness and components together. One trick that I used was to slide a piece of cardboard in between the wiring harness and the playfield. This allowed my to keep the harness and components in tact in in the relatively correct positions for the new playfield.
Step 5. Paint, dry sand, paint, dry sand,
Taking a break from the playfield I returned to painting the cabinet. This was the first time I used vinyl stencils to paint a 3 layer design. I had difficulty getting the stencil for paint layer 2 and paint layer 3 to register and align. Unfortunately these stencil’s had been in storage, rolled up, for almost 10 years. I’m going to blame my difficulties on that and the pure lack of experience. Nonetheless I was able to complete the paint job and was happy with the results.
Step 6: Reinstall all the playfield components, Power it up, Pop a beer, play!
I installed the backside components and the wiring harness into the new playfield. Flipped it over and installed the topside components. I was glad to have all the pictures. It was like putting a puzzle together. Re assembled the playfield into the cabinet, and added the circuit boards. I painted the legs black and used yellow on the leg bolts to make them pop. All in all I was happy with the final results.
Now my grandkids will play the Flash Gordon pinball machine like their parents did before them. My son Eric has the current High Score at 913,450. I’ve been trying to beat it for the past 3 months.
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