Burnt pinball machine repairs

KenLayton

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A guy just brought a pinball to me a few days ago to be repaired. A Gottlieb Cleopatra (electronic) that has not only been in a fire, but was stored ten years in a shed after the fire. I will post a few pictures of what I'm dealing with to fix it.

The guy has a replacement backglass on the way as this one is shot.

Notice the charred cabinet of the headbox and the rust on the metal U channel pieces.
 

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More pictures. Rusted and heavily sooted backbox vents and cabinet paint.
 

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Even more pictures of the damage. A big chunk of wood is gone underneath the coin door lower trim.

The legs are very heavily rusted and so are the leg levelers.
 

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Inside pictures. The interior is surprisingly in ok shape. There's some green corrosion on the brass grounding plate and on the coin door switch matrix diodes. The power supply board is completely covered in soot and corrosion on it's mounting brackets. I don't have any "after" pictures yet of the power supply board as I'm still working on it. The power supply board is cleaning up quite nicely and I have connectors and capacitors coming for it from Great Plain Electronics.

The playfield on it is still in great shape plus it has ordinary glass for the playfield. This machine went through a fire and the ordinary playfield glass saved the playfield! Even as bad as it looks inside on the circuit boards and the power supply, it still boots up! The owner bought a new Ni-Wumpf cpu board for it since the original had a lot of battery acid damage.

I'm going to have to replace every connector pin in the machine due to corrosion, but the owner wants this machine to live again. This will be an enjoyable repair & rebuild for me!
 

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The ball shooter assembly is all rusted and needs to be replaced. Also, somebody put the wrong colors of drop targets on it at one time. So it looks like I will be ordering a full set up drop targets for it once the machine is operational.
 
My KISS project wasn't burnt, but had smoke damage from a fire. The paint was kinda yellowed and the inside of the backbox look liked that - the metal was discolored. I got it cheap, but it was more of a project where you need a backglass and playfield to restore one to new. Mine had no bg, but the pf is slightly discolored from smoke and paint is coming off. My biggest issue with the smoke damage thing is the parts under the pf - all brackets, etc.. are discolored and will need a soak in rust remover or a tumble when I do a pf swap someday.
 
Has this got some sort of sentimental value to him? I looks like he's going to spend several times the value of the machine on trying to repair it.

I've seen them sell for a few hundred working and there's an EM in town that looks new that hasn't sold for $700.

It seems like it would be cheaper to buy a better condition machine to use as a project than to try to rebuild that one.

-JM
 
This guy really enjoys Cleopatra. He says he paid $75 for this machine plus he spent a couple of hundred on a new Ni-Wumpf board. Says he's budgeted $500 for electrical repairs to it. He told me that he will do the cabinet work.
 
Thats gonna be quite a project. It looks like the bottom of the cab is ready to fall off. Please post "after" pics when done.
 
glad to see this game gets some love and isn't just parted out..
I've seen some bad games myself that still booted up (also in a fire, games that were dropped on their side in a truck, flooded games covered with mud), it's almost incredible how dureable these machines were made !
 
I was surprised at how decent the playfield condition is on this particular machine. Granted it has some of the wrong color drop targets and the ball shooter is all rusty.
 

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Wow Ken! That is quite the project. It's nice to see someone wanting to breath some life back into that machine. Please keep us posted on your progress.

Phil
 
Well today we tore off the entire wood front. Found the wood was pretty bad. Thursday we will be cutting a whole new piece of wood for the front. There will be several places that will be needed to get the router out. I took off the coin door and front lockdown linkages as well as the ball shooter assembly.

Tomorrow I will be pulling everything out of the backbox so we can start sanding it and prepping it for primer. Will try to get more pictures too.

I'm having fun doing this! The machine's owner is very pleased and he's happy to see it being brought back to life.
 
Today I pulled out everything in the backbox to get it ready for wood repairs, sanding, and painting. Here's pictures of the charred areas.
 

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I've got the same game and thought it was in rough shape until I saw these pics. Makes me appreciate what I've got now. If that one could be saved then mine should be a piece of cake.

-JM
 
Wow its to bad, but hardly worth restoring, at least in my eyes. Being a firefighter I can tell you metal does not fair well. Look at the legs, the switches will likely be very bad as well
 
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