Gottlieb "Now" Restoration

jeff412

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Thought y'all might want to see my restoration in progress. Maybe not, but here it is anyway. Picked up this working 1971 Gottlieb Now at a garage sale for $150.00. This is my first EM, so I've had to learn a few things the hard way. There were only 1,125 of these made, so getting game specific parts is impossible.


These are the first photos that were emailed to me.
 

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When I got there it looked like someone had painted it with a paint brush. ugh! I wish I had a photo of that. I then sanded it down to the orginal artwork in order to get dimensions. First major mistake I made was leaving the parts in the machine while sanding. Evidently this got dust all over the switches and now the machine hardly works at all.
 

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I repainted and replaced the coin door and legs with new repro stuff from Pinball resource. This one is going in my game room, so I want it to look mint. Wish I had used Floetrol in the paint. I rolled it and ended up with a slight orange peel texture. I had some on the shelf just didn't put it in. Still looks pretty good though. I then cut out the flower pattern on my CNC machine and traced the pattern on the cabinet. My wife will be painting the flowers. Wish I could have found a stencil, but no go. Cleaned the switches and got most of it working. Somehow burnt out the Hold Relay Coil in the process. Right now waiting on a coil for the relay.
 

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Huge learning curve painting through a 3/4" thick stencil. I did several practice runs on scrap wood, but it's not the same as putting it on a painted surface. I had to overcome the strong desire to cover everything with each coat. That made the paint to thick and it would run under the board. It would even seem to get overspray under the board. I don't know how but it did. I finally learned to just make a couple passes and do multiple coats. The first 4 flowers got screwed up. Fortunately this side will be against the wall. Hopefully my skills will be perfected by the time I get to the front and other side.
 

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Got the little flowers finished and moving on to the big ones. I cut this flower out of 1/2 plywood. Hopefully that will make the painting go a little smoother. I thought about using 1/4", but it was too flexible. I was worried it would allow too much paint under it. Here's some shots of the CNC machine at work.
 

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This is where I stopped last night. It's starting to look pretty good. It takes about 45 mins per flower to get them painted. I'm getting better, but not perfect yet.
 

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I also cut out the stencil for the front of the head.
 

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Finished up this side tonight. It turned out pretty good. I learned enough that the next side should be much better. I'll save the front for last. I should have it figured out by then.
 

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Looking good! The games of this era did have overspray from the factory so I wouldn't worry about that. They also had some black splatter paint on the cabinet if you are going for that authentic look!
 
Looking good! The games of this era did have overspray from the factory so I wouldn't worry about that. They also had some black splatter paint on the cabinet if you are going for that authentic look!

I don't guess you have a photo of the black splatter? Is it kinda like pacman but black? Was it on the flowers or just the white?
 
I was able to work on the game some this weekend. I finally got the hold relay coil from Pinball Resource. I knew this was the reason my hold relay wasn't working. The paper on the old one was burnt off and laying in the bottom of the cabinet. I replaced it and fired up the game. No go. It still wasn't closing. I made a post here and consulted the schematics. I found in the schematics that the slam switch(cheat sw) in the bottom of the cabinet was supposed to be normally closed and it is in the hold circuit. Mine was open. I readjusted the switch and voila....well almost. The hold relay would now close when activated by the S relay, but it wouldn't stay closed. I went back to the schematics and found that the hold relay holds itself closed. I cleaned the normally open switch and tried again. It still didn't work. I then held a piece of paper behind the switch with a bright light shining on it. This let me see the tiniest gap in the switch when it was closed. I then readjusted that switch and at last the game was up and going. Now my player 1 lights weren't working. I consulted the schematics and they point to switch P1F on the player unit. I didn't know where that was so I just cleaned all of the player 1 switches and that did the trick. Finally the game was up and going. I still have several things to replace on the playfield, but I wanted to finish the painting first. I was able to get started on the left side today. I screwed up right off the bat. Can you see what I did wrong?

Jeff
 

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Because of my screw up, I had to completely repaint the side white and start over. After painting all day, I finally ran out of paint with only one flower left to paint on this side.


Jeff
 

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I love reading the restoration threads. That's why I started this one. I'll follow through to the end. Thanks again.

Jeff
 
Jeff,

To give you the idea of what the black splatter/webbing looked like here is another game from 1971...

To me it just looks dirty. My wife has suggested a yellow and red splatter over the entire cabinet, without the stringy look.

They didn't have any good cabinet pictures of your game on this site...

http://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=735&picno=20141&zoom=1

There aren't any pictures of my game anywhere that I can find except on the cover of the flyer.

Jeff
 
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