Restoration of a DataEast Star Trek 25th anniversary pinball

PQTaggart

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Restoration of a DataEast Star Trek 25th anniversary pinball

This is going to be my worklog on the restoration of my DataEast Star Trek 25th anniversary pin. I'll spare you the usual overview pictures but will show before and after pictures for the different work stages.
I bought it on ricardo on 7.10.2010 for 850.- CHF - my first pinball! Pick-up was one day later, 150km from home, 2x 1.5h drive. The state: gameplay 100%, pretty dirty, some wear around the drop holes, heavy wear around the VUK. Some plastics damaged (cracks) and Jeoman Janice was missing the upper part of her head. Klingon metal piece (lane divider) missing. Blue running lights not working (board missing in backbox). Rubbers old and worn. Transporter working fine. Cabinet speaker was disconnected. Launch button and its casing but partly destroyed but operative. DMD has non working pixels in half a row in the lower right corner and possibly some gas leakage (not sure though), cabinet in rel. good shape with some small scratches and dried chewing gum - yuck(!). Under each button (start/launch) a 1cm hole was drilled. Backglass in good condition, only some scratches from the transporter-motor in Spock's body (fixable).

08.10.10: Started cleaning the playfield and interior of cabinet. Re-attached wires of cabinet speaker (bass),adjusted some switches (sling-shots, bumpers) and the game was much more active afterwards.

09.10.10: By just looking at the lane under the playfield I wouldn't have guessed it was made of clear plastic. It was closer to a nickel coated something. Luckily I've found a hint about some dealers not cleaning it, when restoring this pin, which causes the dirt to be carried back to the surface by the ball. So I disassembled enough to get it out (some lamp sockets, moving target motor and plugs). After thorough cleaning with microfibre towel and alcohol and giving it three layers of Turtle wax, it almost looked like new and felt like a baby's but. ;)
before: and after:
BTW: I did not remove the micro-switches from the lane. If you're careful enough, it'll work just fine. Proud of my work, I reassembled everything carefully but made one capital mistake: The lane screws near the VUK had no plastic tubes to limit the amount they can be screwed in. As a decent craftsman I screwed them in to my usual wood-screw-tightness - without noticing that I was lifting the paint on the other side of the playfield. Darn! Such a beginner's mistake! Well, I am a beginner in regards of pinball maintenance but not in fiddling around with nuts and bolts. I was able to undo part of the damage with a hammer and a small metal bar - but not to my complete satisfaction. At least I was able to put everything together and the game still worked fine.

10.10.10: After watching all of PinDude's videos on touch-up and clear coating twice (highly recommendable!) , reading pinrepair's articles and Zitt's worklogs on restoring a Bally StarTrek and a Gottlieb Black Hole and getting some good advices and help from him, I decided to be bold, strip my playfield, touch it up and clear coat it.

16.10.10: Playfield partly disassembled, everything packed in plastic bags, wires labeled, a lot of pictures taken

17.10.10: Plafield's empty (except for some lamp sockets that are attached directly to the board). I decide to leave them in place and use some of these yellow ear plugs to protect them when clear-coating. Much more dirt - I'm happy I decided to do this.
 
20.10.10: Bought some paint (yellow, black, white, green, red, navy blue) to do the touch-ups and some two component putty to fix the wear of the wood around the drop holes.
 
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22.10.10: Filled the damaged wood with 2 component putty in the style of the Muppet show's chef (yumm dee yumm...)

after grinding most of it again with some ultra modern tools and with 260 and 600 grit sandpaper, it starts to look more promising (I'm a bit scared though that the heavly scratched surface around the holes won't be healed by spraying them with clear coat. But after smearing some spit on the area, the black is about the same everywhere).
 
23.10.10: After gently dry-sanding the whole board with 600 grit (incl. stickers like the bonus multipliers), and cleaning it thoroughly with melamine sponge and alcohol, I started painting - with a lot of respect I have to admit because I think that's the part where you can completely mess up the board as a techie like me. But as it's not like drawing persons or trees, it came out pretty well, I think. I first drew the lines with a ruler and pencil and then started with the yellow lines. Then came the black lines and areas and to distract the eye, I re-added some white and pink stars.
 
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24.10.10: After getting the holes more or less done, I had to dare and fix the right part of the head where the wear did too much damage. I first mixed the color (green-blue) and colored an area that was bigger than the head. (pics) After it dried, I hand painted the lines with a pencil by looking at an image from another pin (pics). Then I went on with the thick black lines, then the vertical finer lines in the hair and finally the dotted pattern. All was done by hand with a fine brush. (pics) It ain't perfect in color matching and painting but from 1m distance you won't see it was fixed-up by a beginner. Probably laser-cutting a mask and using black spray instead would have given a perfect result. But this was sufficent for me (had to be since I don't own a cutter).
 
26.10.10: Finished all touch-up with paint. From my perspective it's ready to be clearcoated. The thing that annoys me most is that the color match of the mint-green is not as perfect as the other colors. But I had to settle with this after several hours trying. It's very hard to get such a vibrant green in the same tone.
 


Any hints before I start clear coating (which won't happen the next 7 days) ?

(sorry for splitting the post into so many replies - but the board only allows 5 images per post)
 
Clear Coat

I found a car paint shop which put 3 layers of clear coat on the field. The result was fantastic. Even if you can see some imperfections of my paintint in close-up, from one meter distance, they're not noticable.

 
Finishing up

After every piece of metal and plastic was polished manually with a drill machine, Novus 2 and a polish pad, everything looks shiny and almost new. The value of the machine increased dramatically from my point of view. It plays nice and no problems occured until now.

 
Running lights

As the board for the running lights was missing, I created one myself and replaced the original lines whose wires shorted out with blue LEDs. I found a very nice and cheap (12 bucks) set of LEDs with insulated wires. With some effort it was possible to insert three alternating lines into the original tubes and now even the lights work and look perfect.

 
Looking great to me! Seems you've done a lot of work with this project over the past few years. Nice job.

After every piece of metal and plastic was polished manually with a drill machine,

What attachment did you use with your drill for polishing? I'm currently doing the same thing on my F-14 but have been doing it by hand with Mother's metal polish...slow and tedious.
 
Looking great to me! Seems you've done a lot of work with this project over the past few years. Nice job.

What attachment did you use with your drill for polishing? I'm currently doing the same thing on my F-14 but have been doing it by hand with Mother's metal polish...slow and tedious.

Thanks ! Yes, but it was really worth it and it's finished. The result is the best playing pin in my collection of 3. It really gives me so much fun (once I overcome the small resistance to wear down the machine :) )

I used a sponge buffet with car polish which looked like the one on the right of this picture: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00141631O.03._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
--> a lot of the polish sprayed around.. it was a bit a messy job but certainly worth it. Sometimes I fixed the drill with my legs and used both hands to hold the piece to polish. Sometimes the sponge/foam grabbed the piece and slingshot it away. You've got to be carefull.
 
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