The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I’m now one week into my Simpson’s Pinball Party restoration project – and though I’ve worked a little every day, I don’t have much visible to show for it.� I do have a really great pile of dirty used parts.� Still, I’ve made great progress.� The topside is completely cleaned, polished, waxed, and ready for reassembly.� Most of my work so far has been done on the bottom.� I’ve rebuilt every flipper mech, I’ve re-sleeved every coil, I’ve replaced the drop targets, and now I’m working on replacing all bulbs and cleaning all playfield inserts.

Damn, there are a lot of playfield inserts on this game!

I’ve also started cleaning parts – Goo Gone, Bleche-White, and sandpaper are my friends.� I removed a bunch of dissolved rubber from the flipper bats, and I’ve started re-graining ball guides.� That involves a lot of hand sanding.� It’s not fun – but it looks great.

Tomorrow, my woodgrained vinyl should arrive so that I can repair the siderails.� Once I do that, I can start reassembling the topside.� That is far more fun than working on the bottom.

Until then… I think I have some inserts to clean…

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I’ve got a new addition to the pinball stable..

The Simpsons Pinball Party

I picked up this machine a couple of weeks ago from PinPimp Jr. (that’s Jesse Bohnsack). I was originally looking at a cleaned up and restored machine that he had – but he ended up picking this one up in the meantime. Since I like a good project – I bought the fixer-upper.

This is my first modern Stern (I’ve got an old Stern Flight 2000 as well). It’s a wickedly complex game – with dozens of subgames, wizard modes on top of wizard modes, and lots of playfield toys. It is freshly off-route – and it’s caked with grime. Underneath all the soot, (I swear it was on route in a coal mine) – it’s in great shape and it’ll restore perfectly. It’s a fun change of pace to be able to order ANY part that I need new from the manufacturer – and they are reasonably priced.

I placed a jumbo order with Dave Mercer at For Amusement Only two weeks ago – and Dave hooked me up with a killer deal. I’ve now got all the parts in house and I’m ready to start restoration. It’ll need a complete playfield teardown and cleaning, new ramps, new plastics, new decals, and all five flippers need to be rebuilt. The cabinet is nice, but will need new siderails to cover wear around the flipper buttons. It’ll also need some patching and paint touchup on the inside.

I’ll be periodically posting my progress over the next few weeks as the rebuilding commences. I finally got to start on it late last week. It’s my first time using a playfield rotisserie (from Jason (mnpinball)) – and I can see that it’s going to be night and day better to work on.

The playfield mounted on the rotisserie

After a couple of nights of late night wrenching, I’ve got the topside stripped and most of the black grit wiped away. I also started work on rebuilding the flippers – I’ve never seen such worn mechanisms in my life. Once I’m done with that, I’ll start polishing the playfield surface.

You can see the complete photo gallery here: Link

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William got the chance to make his first camping trip a couple of weeks ago. Heather and I did an overnight trip to Sakatah State Park near Waterville, MN. It was pretty rushed trip since we had a family graduation earlier that day in Blue Earth, MN and we didn’t get to Sakatah until 8:00 that night. Ultimately, it probably worked out for the best – it rained heavily that day and it had mostly cleared up by the time we hit camp.

My mother and father came out for the campfire at about 10.. and totally lost track of time. It was after midnight before they headed for home.

Enjoying the campfire

William thought staying in the tent was great stuff – it was like a giant playpen with mommy and daddy inside. I woke up the next morning to the soft pitter-patter of his little paws exploring the tent – and the rainshower happening outside.

We had to make breakfast and pack in the rain – which is always a bit of a bummer. It was just hard enough to make you not want to spend the day out in it – but not hard enough to stop you from doing anything. We had our egg muffins, then packed our wet stuff and drove home.

Camping is GREAT!

Our next trip: Whitewater State Park in July. I’ll be trying to get the Vacation Jackpot. Sorry.. stupid pinball joke.

All pictures from the trip are on my SmugMug site at: Link

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