Quick update

Man I have been slacking on this, super busy as always so if I have the time I am working on the pin. I removed all of the Mylar and it was a huge success!

 

 

Would you look at that! A thing of beauty with no paint loss. The blue is just tape FYI.

 

Not going to show the playfield just yet as I have not thoroughly cleaned it, glue has been removed though. Have begun the cleaning process but will take some time to do it the way I want.

 

This is the first Pin I have worked on with a subway, at first I thought that it was made of black plastic.

This pic does not really show how bad it was, I had a great one where it looked totally black but accidentally deleted it.

 

Look at it shine now! Used Purple Power, my new go to ramp and metal mech cleaner.

 

 

Lastly, these are some pics I am putting up for my always helpful friend Willie, I need to remove the metal flap from the trapdoor still in the playfield and put it on this spare one. The trapdoor in the PF has a broken hinge. I know he bought some riveting supplies so I am hoping I can get him to help me out. I would rather not buy all of those tools yet until I see that I will need them a lot in the future, this is the first time I have ever encountered rivets.

 

Thanks for stopping by!



Initial Mylar removal

Just a quick update. My friend decided that we should go ahead and try to remove the mylar. I decided to remover the small separate mylar under the pops first to see how the paint would fair as a trial run. Here are some before pics:

This is some pretty bad bubbling 

Dirt has worked its way underneath and is so built up

I really like this picture for some reason, its like I am far away looking at a rippling pool

So how did it go? Let the pictures speak for themselves. FYI, I used the freeze spray method to remove this piece, for glue clean up I used Goo Gone spray gel and the flour method. 

I am very happy with the results, the only paint loss is a tiny bit on the purple balloon. and it cleaned up so nicely!

You can really see the difference in this pic where the mylar was and was not. People knock mylar but if none of the machines ever had it you would all own bare wood pinball machines at this point. 

Look how dirty that is. 

I hope that the main playfield mylar removal goes as smoothly. I know there is a chance we lose some ink on the inserts, but most of the inserts have the mylar bubbled over them already, so we may get lucky. 

Wanna see some 23 year old dirt?

Funhouse is 23 years old this year. Since I am dealing with all of this Loctite I think it is safe to assume that some of these plastics have never been removed since it left the factory (unless someone at some point removed them and decided to use more Loctite, if they did I want to have a word with them...) That means that some of this dirt is 23 years old! I spent a good hour and a half last night removing more stuff (in hindsight I wish I had not, my son got an ear infection so I got maybe two hours of sleep since he was up all night, if only he would let me know ahead of time). So here are some pics so you can see just how dirty a game can get.

 Hmmm wonder if that bulb is burnt out...

That is grimy!

Think that those flippers will clean up? Rubbers may have lost some bounce as well.

AAAAAAHHHHHH! That is frightening!

Rudy may need some Proactive

What is removed so far.

 

 

So I think I will need some much needed sleep tonight, so probably no progress for a couple of days. I am just now getting into the tricky part of figuring what needs to be removed in what order. Looks like Steps ramp is next, then right ramp, and then right wireform. Been looking online for tricks for removing the diverter on the right ramp. Heard it can be tricky.

Note: I am new to blogging, Pinwillie wanted to know if he could leave comments and I welcome that. Tips and tricks very appreciated. I think I changed the setting so anyone can do so. let me know if you have trouble. Only a few people are viewing this that I gave a link to, but I think anyone can view it if they try and look it up.

Thinking of getting a tumbler for all the little metal stuff, if anyone has used one I welcome your views on it.

 

 

 

Subterranean loctite blues

Slow going on the Funhouse lately due to my son being sick and free time being spent on getting valuable sleep. The main reason progress has been slow is because I met a little something called Loctite for the first time. Loctite if you never heard of it is a product created by the devil to make my life a living hell. Actually it is used in T-nuts and screws to keep the screws from backing out due to vibration and if you haven't figure it out yet it keeps it "locked tight." This is the first pin I have worked on with Loctite and I had been warned about Funhouse usually having it, but I was woefully unprepared for what a bitch it is.

Special thanks to Pinwillie for the advice on dealing with Loctite and broken posts. I am sure its not the last time I will be thanking him.

For those of you that have not had the pleasure the best way I dealt with it is this. Get out that soldering iron and using your biggest tip hold it to the bottom of the screw under the playfield for quite a while to heat it up, now quickly lower the playfield and "walk" the screw out. Tighten it a little, then loosen, then tighten, and loosen. do this until you break it free from the Loctite or half the time in my case you break the T-post you are trying to remove. I usually had to go back and reheat the post a couple of times before getting it out. The first time I broke a post my heart stopped, but then I remembered reading that this is common and I should settle down. So off to the hardware store for new tools. I picked up a set of punch pins (also called center punches). About 11$, you use these along with a hammer to tap out the broken post and T-nut from the top of the playfield. I did this gently and the T-nut popped out very nicely leaving no damage to the underside of playfield. This took care of the slingshots.

Next up were the plastics and guides the ball rolls down onto the flippers. Guess what? More @$#*&^% Loctite! I have a feeling this will be an ongoing battle. Plus someone at some point tried to unscrew these without dealing with the Loctite and they were all stripped very badly. I used a small set of vice grips and managed to unscrew them using the heat method as well.

Please note that I read you should take care not to burn yourself when removing the post or screws after heating them up. I found that it took so long to unscrew them that by the time I got it out they were no longer hot, but please be careful.

List of accomplishments for this blog post:
1. removed slingshot plastics and hardware.
2. Removed all ball guide hardware.
3. Removed flipper bats, these are the dirtiest I have ever seen, not going to even try and clean them, this machine will benefit from new ones.
4. Did a quick wipe of newly freed area, did a quick polish with Novus 2, very pleased with initial results.

So what have we learned? We learned how to deal with Loctite and that it makes something that should take about ten minutes to do take about an hour to do.

Pictured above, punch pins. Use the one that's just smaller than the hole you are using.

Don't be a sausage!

So the main reason I am starting this blog is because a good friend of mine has decided he would let me try and get his funhouse back into fighting shape. I think this will be a great way that he can see my progress as I go along. The deal is I do all the labor, he pays for parts, and I get to keep and play it a while once it is up and running. I am very excited to tackle this! This is a great deal for me as I really love cleaning stuff, and I want some more experience in "restoring" games. I put that in quotes because this will not be a high end restore, rather a restore in which I get a game nice and cleaned up and working properly. For example: I will not be sanding the cabinet down and applying all new decals. There are people out there that do really fantastic jobs restoring machines, and I don't think its fair to say that I am anywhere near there level. Here is a couple of quick pics of how I got it, I will post more later. Notice that all of the rubbers need replacing, that's for sure. There is mylar and at this time we have decided to leave it be. There is some bubbling but I am unsure if it will really affect the gameplay. That will be the deciding factor later on (that and what my friend ultimately wants to do, we all know the dangers of mylar removal.) Having said that it really has done its job. There is very little wear anywhere on the playfield.

The cabinet has seen better days. But I always say, you don't play the cabinet of a pinball machine. Plus if you have more than one lined up who really sees the sides of it anyway? The one thing I don't like is that the front of the backbox around the translate has a lot of chipping where it shows bare wood underneath. Kind of an eye sore. Might be something worth touching up, but that would be much later down the road.

Did a quick visual inspection of under the playfield and it is surprisingly clean. Initial thoughts are that all coil sleeves need replacing, flippers all can probably use a rebuild to some dergree, but looking good so far. Also this is my first game I have worked on with a subway, that thing is filthy!

You may also notice someone is missing, Rudy has left the building! I do have rudy safe and sound at home, he came removed and taken apart. I can tell he will need a lot of work but we will get to that later.

I am finally getting the pin moved from my garage to my gameroom where I do all my work so more updates soon.

Hey look, its another pinball blog!

Hey look! Its another pinball blog! My name is Practicalsteve and this is my pinball repair blog. I am new to owning and repairing pinball machines, so mistakes will be made! The primary purpose of this blog is to keep track of repairs I make to my machines. I know that I have found a great deal of help across these vast great internets, so I hope this can help someone else sometime. It all started when I bought my first machine, a Williams Hurricane back in 2011. Many people hate this machine, but it really is a fun one, no regrets for making it my first. I have also had over the years a Mata Hari, F-14 Tomcat, Taxi, and a Black Knight.