TSPP Restoration Pt. 5 – The Mini Playfield and Cabinet
The restoration is nearly done.. in the course of two hardcore nights, I rebuilt the entire mini-playfield and cleaned up the cabinet.
The mini-playfield was one really dense bit of engineering – there is so much crammed on to it! I started teardown at about 9:30 and finished at about 1:30 AM. It was somehow one of the dirtiest parts of the entire game – which says a lot. Everything got torn town to the bare playfield and cleaned – with a new couch, ramps, rubbers, bulbs, and garage door decal used.
As usual, it wasn’t without hiccups. Whatever the garage door decal is made out of should be used to stick the tiles back on to the space shuttle. It took me the better part of an hour to freeze, sand, and Goo-Gone that baby off. The coil stop on the couch weldment was broken off as well. This caused the plunger to overextend and jam in the open position. Since a new couch weldment is about $39 – I decided to make a coil stop with a big washer, a screw, and a rubber post top. Works like a charm!
The rebuilt mini-playfield on TSPP
Next up was the cabinet. Truth to be told, I’ve never done a lot of cabinet cleaning before – but this one couldn’t be ignored. I think somebody stored coal inside this machine during the winter months and gouged the insides of the cabinet shoveling it out.
Ten rags and half a bottle of Windex later, the inside was squeaky clean. I had to patch the scrapes with Rock Hard (a quick dry plaster), then repaint with Painter’s Touch Semi-gloss black. It turned out great!
New siderails and repainted insides
The side rails had to be replaced with the new style Stern siderails to cover up wear around the flipper buttons. These look great on the machine – and nobody would know unless they were a real student of Stern pinball machines.
My final task was to rebuild the flipper buttons. I put in brand new buttons and brand new switches inside. Between the time that Stern made this machine and now, they switched the switches to a different design. These are supposed to be more robust – but it required drilling new mounting holes.
All that’s left is to put the playfield back in and wire it up.. but I’ll save that tale for next time.
As usual, all the pictures are here: Link
