The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I’m really glad we put a washtub in the basement when we built our house – even though the washer / dryer is on the ground floor. It gets used a lot in an average pinball restoration – and this is no average restoration. I’ve spent a lot of time hunkered over the basin scrubbing the gunk off of parts over the past week.

I spent last weekend replacing the lighting harness on the back of the playfield. This wouldn’t have taken very long, except that I’m replacing every single light socket due to corrosion. That’s a lot of soldering. It’s all back in place now and screwed down – and I think everything is in the right place.

I also had to clean all the big lighting circuit boards from the backside of the playfield. They went in to the laundry tub with dish soap and hot water – I don’t know what kind, some organic lemon brand my wife bought. Thank goodness it’s organic. Once dry, these boards were reinstalled and hooked back up again – with a full set of brand new #555 bulbs.

The lighting harness and light matrix boards are reinstalled

The next task was to clean. scrub, and polish all the mechanical things under the playfield. After spending about two hours with the lost mine kicker bracket removing corrosion, I decided to box all the parts up to bring over to Jesse’s. See, Jesse has a bead blaster. This will save me a lot of time.

While I’m waiting to go to Jesse’s, I started doing a little work on the topside. I replaced the pop bumpers with all new parts and I started re-graining ball guides. I was able to get a couple guides done tonight while I waited for my coils to soak. I had put all of the solenoid coils in the tub to soak for a couple of hours to remove the grit.

New pop bumpers and a freshly re-grained rear orbit guide

Tomorrow, I’m heading to Jesse’s to bead blast my grungy weldments. I’m anxious to see how they turn out.

Check out many more pictures over at SmugMug: (link)

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Remember when bubbles made us this happy?

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William chasing bubbles at Little Gym

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WARNING:� The following image is not for the easily offended.

Whitewater’s wiring harness in the dishwasher

I’ll admit – this isn’t a standard cleaning tactic.� The ‘normal’ way to clean a wiring harness is to soak it in Bleche-Wite and blast it with a pressure washer in the driveway; then leave it out to dry in the sun.

It’s March in Minnesota.� It would have rested in a melty slushpuddle and been snowed upon.

So, while Heather was out of the house on Saturday afternoon, I dragged it upstairs to the dishwasher and threw it in.� I made extra sure none of the parts would droop through and get bashed by the sprayer – and I turned off the high-heat dry cycle.

After about 10 minutes, I opened the door to take a peek – and saw 2″ of what looked like motor oil in the bottom.� It was amazing how much black gunk came off!� When the cycle was done, I hauled it back down the basement and blasted out all of the connectors, sockets, and switches with compressed air to displace any sediment or residue.

How did it turn out?� I’m 90% happy with the results.� It isn’t perfectly clean – hand scrubbing would still remove more tough gunk.� There’s also a little bit of soap blech on the sockets and switches.� I should have used liquid instead of powdered soap – but that’s all we had.� It wipes right off, so I’m not anticipating issues.�� On the bright side, it’s pretty darn clean – and it was a whole lot easier than the hand method!�� I’d do it again.

Now it’s time to start replacing the harness:

Now, where does all this crap go?

As I was trying to disentangle the harness, I realized it was actually three completely separate harnesses: one for the switches, one for the lamps, and one for the high power (solenoids & flashers).� This means I could re-run one at a time to keep everything straight.

The switch harness replaced with the wiring risers in place

The next painful step?� Replacing 50 corroded light sockets, one at a time.� No – the dishwasher wasn’t to blame, I suspect it was the container trip back from China.

Follow the pictoral progress over at my SmugMug account: (link)

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Our last full day in Italy was to be spent touring ancient Rome – the Forum, the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus, the Pantheon, and any other remaining sights.

The Arch of Constantine with the Colosseum in the background

We had an early start for our tour, so we ate a quick breakfast in the apartment before hiking over to our meeting place just outside the entrance to Palatine Hill. This was just past the Colosseum – only a few blocks away. There, we met up with Jennifer (our bubbly tour guide) and the rest of our tour.

Jennifer telling us about the Forum

Our tour started just outside of the Arch of Constantine with some background on Roman history – mostly centered around the forum area and the few emperors that made the most impact to the area. We then made our way past the arch commemorating the sacking of Judea (the Arch of Titus) and in to the heart of the Forum. Throughout all of this, William relaxed in his stroller and enjoyed the walk.

The Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina

As we were hearing about the Vestal Virgins, Heather let William out to play. He immediately plopped down in the dirt and started playing with rocks – rocks steeped in the history (and filth) of ancient Rome. I think Jennifer was a little disgusted by this – but William had a great time doing it. After making our way around the rest of the Forum, we went across the street to the Colosseum (or should I say – the Flavian Ampitheater)

William enjoying history in the Forum

The group made our way around the inside of the Colosseum and up to the upper level – all the while hearing from Jennifer about the history, the myths, and the truths about it. On the upper level – she gave us a few last bits of knowledge (along with some dining advice) and wrapped up the tour. It was really only supposed to be a 2.5 hour tour – but it didn’t actually wrap up for over three hours. This earned her a generous tip. We walked around for a few more minutes before heading off to lunch.

Constantine’s Arch as seen from the Colosseum

Tours aren’t cheap – but after two great tours, I was sold. I got a lot more out of the two areas (the Forum and the Vatican) that I had already visited than I would have otherwise.

The inside of the Colosseum

After the tour, we walked toward the Vittorio Emmanuel II monument and stopped at a little restaurant for a late lunch. What did we have? Yep, pizza again. It’s funny how you can’t get sick of the stuff!

By this point, it’s too late (about 4 PM) to enter Palatine Hill. The last entry is at 3:00 because it closes at 5. Apparently one hour just isn’t enough time. I’m now 0-2 on visiting Palatine Hill – I’m going to have to go to that FIRST next time.

As if we hadn’t walked enough on the trip, we decided to do Rick Steves ‘Rome night stroll’ walking tour after that. This is the tour we would have done the night before if we would have remembered Rick’s book. To get there, we had to make our way to the Campo de’ Fiori starting point. We did this by way of a stroll through the Circus Maximus and along the Tiber river.

Campo de’ Fiori at dusk

Since it was a night tour, it worked out perfectly that the sun went down just as we hit Campo de’ Fiore. Actually, we would have arrived sooner – but we spent a half-hour trying to find a McDonalds so we could use the bathroom. The walking tour took us from there to Piazza Navona, over to the Pantheon, past the obelisk at Piazza Colonna, to the Trevi Fountain, and finally to the Spanish Steps.

The Pantheon during our walking tour

I have a funny feeling that I was the victim of an attempted pickpocketing at the Trevi Fountain. Some guy kept trying to distract me with nonsense like “Isn’t it beautiful – isn’t Rome the most beautiful city in the world?!?” Every time I ignored him, he got a little more persistent. He may also have been trying to distract me so that his crew could pickpocket Heather or Mom. Either way, I ignored him and bugged out before anything could happen.

The Teskeys at the Trevi Fountain

After the Spanish Steps, we took the train home after a long day of walking and finished with a dinner at the little cafe’ below the apartment. Since we were leaving the next morning, we had to get packed before turning in for the night.

Next up – the long trip home.

See the rest of my pictures over at my SmugMug account here: link

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Now that I’m back from a weekend of skiing in Utah.. I got a chance to spend a little time over the past couple of days working on my Whitewater restoration.

The project for the past couple of nights has been a deep cleaning and sanding of the playfield.� I’ll admit – this isn’t something most people do because removing the wiring harness is pretty daunting.� Once everything was removed, I slid the harness on to a piece of old playfield glass – then on to a shelf.

This is the filthy backside of the playfield – notice the magic black dust

To clean the backside, I sanded it with 120 grit sandpaper on a random orbital sander.� Some have claimed that a random orbital sander takes forever – but it seemed to go pretty quick.� After about five minutes, things started improving quickly:

The playfield backside with the right side sanded

It probably only took about twenty minutes in total to sand it – and I think the results were worth it!

Nice ‘n clean!

Next up – polishing the topside and power washing the wiring harness.

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I purchased my Williams Whitewater pinball machine back in November, 2006 from Chad Keller at Pinball Expo. When I bought it, it was in decent unrestored but working shape. Since it arrived at my house, I’ve only done the bare minimum to get it working acceptably. Over the past year and a half, I’ve worked to acquire all the parts to rebuild it and restore it.

I finally got a chance to start on the restoration last weekend. This one is going to be the biggest project to date – because I’m doing a much more extreme restoration. Previous restorations have involved simply rebuilding the playfield. This time, the entire cabinet is getting redone with new decals and I’m going to do the backside of the playfield as well.

I’ll try to keep some progress photos online to follow along. Here’s the first picture – it’s the inside of the head after disconnecting the wiring harnesses to the playfield.

Look ma – no wires!

The second photo is of the lower playfield mounted in the rotisserie prior to removing parts:

Whitewater lower playfield

Thus far, I’ve removed the upper playfield, disconnected all the wiring from the backbox, and pulled out the lower playfield. The next step will be to start stripping the playfield to clean and replace parts.

My photos of the process are over at my SmugMug account: link

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