The Pinball Diaries

Shadow is all back together and works super-awesome (er, except for the upper half of the backbox G.I. lights, which I still need to fix). The sanctum lock works flawlessly. Yay!

Here are some photos of the repaired sanctum with the surrounding parts back in place. Not bad I think.

Here are the closest before and after shots:

I’d say the lettering is a little thick and the ‘U’ is too narrow and the ‘M’ too wide. But I’m not complaining.

Cut out two pieces of mylar from the sheet I ordered from Marco Specialties. One to fit over the little bit of playfield laminate I ripped up with masking tape, and one to fit over the entire sanctum area. I cut the sanctum piece pretty generously so that it overlapped the holes for the optos and lightbulbs, then used a hobby knife to trim out the holes.

The quality of the mylar from Marco Specialities is not as good as I had hoped it would be. If you look at it closely or from directly above, you can see tons of tiny gaps beetween the playfield and the mylar adhesive. Hard to see in the photo above, but if you look closely at the lettering you can see it. Rubbing it down helped a little, but it doesn’t look nearly as good as factory applied mylar.

After letting the paint dry overnight I removed the masking tape (carefully). Not bad, except for the really obvious line where the paint ends. The paint is a close match, not perfect.

I printed the artwork onto a decal sheet and it came out nice and crisp. Took some practice getting the decals on without them folding onto themselves and turning into mess. Buuuuuut, they came out pretty good and are nice and thin.

In the above photo you can see the decal border around the lettering. I realized after that I could have trimmed the decal much closer to the lettering, but I didn’t feel like going back and doing it again (and maybe messing up the paint in the process). It’s far enough in the back and covered by enough stuff that you can’t really see the decal border unless you look closely.

Found some 3M laser transparency sheets at Staples tucked way in the back with the old overhead projectors. The kind that there is no reason you would ever use anymore. The print quality on the transparency sucked but I just wanted to use it to test the sizing against the original artwork. Looked good.

Finally masked off the area and started painting it with the gray paint. I was playing around with the masking tape positioning, thinking it wasn’t sticky enough to be harmful, and then…oh nos!!1…I ripped up some of the playfield laminate.

You can see it there in the corner of the red arrow above “battlefield ready”.

Here is the piece that was ripped off, still stuck to the tape. Nooooo. Well, at least it’s in a spot that’s way in the back and hardly visible. I guess I’ll be putting some mylar over that.

Finished up the masking and started painting.

Put on two coats and let it dry overnight.

Took a look at the schematic for the GI circuit and it led me to J120 on the power-driver board. Burned!

Look at that thumb. I should totally be a hand model. Need to get a new connector.

I scanned in the trace I made of the “TO THE SANCTUM” area and used Lineform to make a vectorized version. Made a printout on plain paper to test the overall fit.

Not bad. Need to try and find some laser transparency sheets to really see if it lines up well.

I order a 2’ sheet of mylar from Marco Specialties. Covering the sanctum area should prevent further damage from the ball-lock mechanism.

I ordered some water-slide laser decal sheets which I’ll hopefully be able to use to repair the “TO THE SANCTUM” lettering. The decal should be thin enough that I can paint the area, apply the decal and then cover everything with mylar. Hopefully.

I also ordered some fresh red star posts and a complete replacement plastic set from Bay Area Amusements. Hopefully I’ll be able to return the plastic set if it looks like ass.

The rubber ring kit from Marco Specialties showed up. It was short one flipper rubber, but then, the manual only listed 2, even though the game has 3 flippers. I should email them and let them know.

Cleaned out the left sling-shot bumber and replaced the coil sleeve (#03-7066).

I noticed that the black plastic shielding that surrounds the battlefield is missing a screw, which explains why it’s totally lopsided. I tried to replace the screw but it’s too close to the edge of the machine.

I sanded down the JB Weld. I put way to much on so I had to sand quite a bit, and in the process, scuffed up the artwork a good deal. I should have masked off the area to prevent damage. Here’s what it looked like after:

It’s actually quite smooth, but looks pretty bad. I even managed to scratch up the top of the red arrow that points into the area.

Nuts.

Got the sanctum area clear enough to start repairing it. Here’s what it looked like to start:

First up, sand off the cruft from the previous owner’s repair attempt:

I figured I was gonna screw up the artwork, so I put down some tracing paper and traced the black border and the “TO THE SANCTUM” text.

Next I used JB Weld to fill in the divot. I kinda put way too much on:

JB Weld instructions say it fully cures in 15-24 hours so I decided to let it sit.