Terminator 2: Judgment Day Restoration
Note: Doug Chappell, the previous owner of this game, performed the full restoration. Much of the following text and photos was previously publicly posted on the maaca website.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 11:23pm
Back box Before:
Upper playfield before:
Lower playfield before:
Left cab before:
Disassembly, upper playfield before:
More disassembly, mid playfield before:
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 11:33pm
The Rats nest:
Now for anyone that has yet to experience polishing your metal pin parts in a tumbler (and actually undertakes a project like this), I HIGHLY RECOMMEND BUYIN' ONE!!! I couldn't believe my eyes when I took the first batch out. I will try to show the difference here, but it may not show up too well in the pics. Just take my word for it, ok? Pre tumbler (take note of the sling kicker brackets), and I'll post a pic of a polished one tomorrow.....
Saturday, November 19, 2005, 1:12am
Well, these pics are what I've been tumbling over the past 3 days now. You may not notice a huge difference in the pre / post pics but trust me, it's like night and day. I'm still in the process of tumbling the rest of the under PF parts, but all I've got left to do now is the submicroswitch brackets, the drop target assembly and all the hex screws. (whatever I haven't listed and isn't in the pics is currently in the tumbler). While all the tumbling is going on I've been busy cleaning the wire harness / coils / connectors / PCB's / targets / switches, and I just finished cleaning all the PF inserts with Q-tips and Novus 1. I'm hoping to have the harness completely cleaned by the time I'm finished tumbling the under PF parts, but I keep finding spots I missed. Once I'm happy with the harness I'll move on to the lower cab.
Saturday, November 19, 2005, 1:13am
This pic shows you just how good the sling coil brackets came out (I hope).
The tumbler pretty much just gets rid of all the crap/oxidization off the parts, and with a few squirts of Novus in the media it polishes the metal at the same time. It's actually pretty cool cuz all the parts come out of the tumbler with a fine film coating from the Novus, just wipe them down / pick out the media and you're done. If you're gonna shop a pin, might as well do it like this so it stays clean longer (not to mention cleaning it from here on in will be a little easier).
My tumbler has now been running almost 24hrs a day for the past week, and I've been switching the parts out each day. I'm now
down to the last batch of hardware (screws) -FOR THE BOTTOM SIDE!!!! I never thought it would take a week to tumble all the
underside bits, but boy do they look good.
The last few days I've spent on the VUK and drop target assemblies (tumbling / cleaning) as well as removing all the microswitch
brackets from the whole PF and tumbling them. I had to clean / polish the flipper bases by hand as these were just a little to large
for the tumbler and they didn't come out as nice as I would hope if I was able to use the tumbler, but they still aren't bad. The ball
trough had to be done by hand as it was too long for the tumbler as well, but the rest of the trough bits went in the tumbler. I've
also finally finished cleaning all the black dust off the wire harness, light PCB's, switches, sockets etc etc. (this is THE WORST part of
any resto!!!!)
So now I've begun the reassembly process, and I'm about to go visit the mailbox in hopes to find some pop-bumper bracket screws
so I can really dig in later tonight.
Here are a few more pics..... dirty lamp PCB before...
Same lamp PCB after...
And the lot all cleaned up...
Playfield clearcoated and ready to go (getting the playfield restored and clearcoated cost approximately $700)
Reassembly begins....
I had to clean / polish the flipper bases by hand as these were just a little to large for the tumbler and they didn't come out as nice as I would hope if I was able to use the tumbler, but they still aren't bad. The ball trough had to be done by hand as it was too long for the tumbler as well, but the rest of the trough bits went in the tumbler.
I've yet to replace any of the bulbs. The ones in the pics are the originals after they were cleaned. I just got a whole wack of bulbs in the mail last night, so that is on the to-do list.
I was going to wash the harness in the dishwasher but I was concerned with water wicking up into the wire seeing as it's stranded. What I might do then is throw the harness on the PF and attach all the coils to their respective brackets, then desolder all the coils and wash the damn thing in the DW. Screw all the man-hours I spent cleaning it by hand, I want it CLEAN! I ended up cleaning / polishing the flipper plates with a coarse gauze that's pre-treated with the polish compound (Nev-r-dull, comes in a small blue can.).
Welp, I'm I'm at a standstill for a bit until a bunch of parts I ordered from all over the US arrive. (Damn US Thanksgiving delaying my shipments..... JK!) Once these arrive I'll attach the PF harness and coils to their respective brackets, desolder all the wires from the coils and finally wash the harness properly...... in the dishwasher! In the meantime I'm getting ready to work on the cabinet, not that there needs to be much done to it. I need to touch up a sliver that came off during shipping (when I say sliver I do mean very very small sliver), strip PCB's and harness out, sand and paint the inside (like the factory w/ overspray), tumble all the metal bits blah blah blah..... I'll post more progress pics when I'm not feelin' so lazy.
Alright. After a few weeks sittin' around waiting for some parts, I've finally been able to resume working on this project. My goal when I started this was to have it completed by Christmas, unfortunately that just isn't going to happen. I could button the game up tomorrow and it'll play just fine, but why go through all this trouble "under the hood" not to do the same on the top side right? With that, here's what I did today on my day off...... Who says loading the dishwasher can't be fun? (to be honest, this was a huge pain in the a** and won't do this again unless I can't get the harness clean enough by hand.) -Forgot to add..... (just in case you notice) When I finally took the PCB's out of the head I had a bunch of little surprises waiting for me on the back of the driver PCB! Needless to say whoever did the repairs was a HACK! A shoemaker could have done a better job, and I'm guessing they were using a blow torch as a soldering iron! I spent at least 2-3 hours fixing the "fixes" properly, which would have taken me all of 15 mins. if I had to do them right the first time.
Monday, December 19, 2005, 10:42pm
Finally got a few little bits in the mail that I needed to get this done. The harness will go on next once it's finished drying and that'll pretty much take care of the bottom side. (I'm hoping to bust out my new air stapler first and get the pop bumper light socket leads lookin' factory!)
So what's next you ask? Before I move on to the top side of the PF I will be gutting this for a full makeover..... (anyone notice anything? -besides the obvious-)
Monday, December 19, 2005, 11:57pm
The sub unfortunately isn't a pinball pro sub, but some type of Sony 8" jobbie. Needless to say it's coming out as it's totally screwed up the original speaker mount, so that is one thing wrong. Unfortunately there are no quarters in this game as it's a re-import from Germany, I think it's just some sort of old sticker. The condom looking item is actually a white ring from the PF with a piece of broken plastic laying in the middle, but from the pic I can definitely see where you'd think this. As for where I picked this up, it's the original cab. The other item (That burned GI connector to the transformer) doesn't jump out of the photo like the sub, but it definitely needs to be repaired. That whole connector needs to be replaced, and I'm guessing whatever killed this is also responsible for the driver PCB mess (well, it was a mess before I cleaned it up).
Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 11:56pm
Now that the dust has settled on yet another Christmas I finally had a chance to snap a few pics for another update. The bottom of the PF is finally complete, and I'm fairly happy with the results. There's always room for improvement, but this being my first time I'm content. The following pics are of the pop bumper light leads getting stapled (wanted to show off the factory look!), the harness going back on and the completed job. The only thing left to do on the bottom side deals with stuff on the top side (targets, cannon assy. etc) so I have yet to fasten these to the PF, just in case enquiring minds wanted to know. I should start to tackle the lower cab this friday, but who knows how far I'll get...
Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 11:58pm
The first stage of the harness re-install.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005, 12:00am
I'm pretty proud of myself as I didn't require any of the disassembly pics during the reassembly process.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005, 10:24am
I had every intention of buying new bumper light sockets, but they really didn't need to be replaced. (surprisingly enough) From the looks of things the pop bumper bulbs were removed a long time before I got the machine, so the original sockets are in great shape. If for some reason they need to be replaced in the future, it's not that bad of a job. This PF is open enough and having all the right tools helps.
Sunday, January 8, 2006, 10:26pm
I didn't lose any of the WMS PCB labels that I noticed after they came out of the wash. (I may have lost one of the ROM labels, but no biggie as I need to update the software anyway). I made sure that none of the WMS PCB labels were delaminating before washing though. If you're planning on washing any of your PCB's you may be surprised when they come out, especially if they've had ANY type of repair where the tech used a 'no clean' solder. I know I was.
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 12:21am
Finally got motivated again and have begun working on the cabinet.
I removed all the hardware from the lower cab (and I mean everything) and threw it all in the tumbler. While that's going on I
vacuumed and sanded the insides to prep it for a repaint. I've also started to regrain all the ball guides from the PF and while I was
at it decided to attack a few unsightly marks on the side rails. I was planning to replace the rails with new ones, but no need to
now! I regrained both side rails from top to bottom and I must say I'm very happy with the results. (man is it hard to take good
pics of the guides and rails!)
Here's a pic of one of the ball guides as I'm sanding. You can see the before and after all on one piece....
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 12:29am
Here's a couple of before and after shots of the area on one of the rails. Nasty marks almost cost me a set of new rails...... Nothing
a little 320 grit sandpaper can't fix.
I've also posted the before and after pics of the lower cab so far. I've sanded the bottom and the sides but I still need to mask off
and paint.
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 12:40am
I've got to mask off the side rails and all the holes so none of the overspray gets on the outside of the cab. That wouldn't look too factory........... I need to mask the rails so I get paint all the way up to the glass molding.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 4:42pm
The progress on the lower cab is going slower than expected, only because it involves a lot of sanding and I can't exactly bust out the power sander @ night while the family is sleeping. (well.... I could but it wouldn't be pretty ). Anyway, here are a couple more pics of some cab repair. The first one is a chunk of wood that was missing from the rear corner, the second is during the repair process and the last one is the completed repair (posted them in the wrong order - DOH!). It may not show too well in the pics but it came out awesome. I don't think the paint match could have been any closer. While I was repairing this spot I filled in & painted a couple of other spots that needed some TLC as well which came out just as nice. From there I finished repainting the inside of the cab, but I don't have any pics as I have yet to finish sanding out the overspray from the bottom but I will post those later on. I also managed to touch up an area the size of a toonie by the right flipper button and it too came out perfect, but I don't have any before shots of this just after shots. The other two pics are of the bottom of the cab. I went ahead and re-glued all the seams and sanded the bottom clean. Figured I was already down there so why not! Oh and I just remembered I also resprayed the back of the cab as well. Only painted the lower portion and the sides, and blended the rest in so you can't tell I masked off the middle top portion. (I'll post pics of this with the button repair) Enjoy! (can you tell I've switched to XP?)
Sunday, February 12, 2006, 11:52pm
The lower cab is finally finished, and ready to have the PF installed. (well, everything except the coin door and the gun handle. But these pieces are waiting to be sent off for powder coating and replating).
Wednesday, March 8, 2006, 11:54pm
Here's where the T2 sits so far. The PF is now back in the cab!
Before I threw it in I installed strips of felt tape down each side of the PF to help protect the freshly painted inside walls from PF
scrapes. I was a little skeptical as to how well this would work but I have been very surprised @ how good of a job it does. As for
PF population I've got all the lane guides back on and the lane wire forms in, and the pop assemblies. I've also got the under trough
assembly all done and am slowly starting to work my way up the PF. I'm at the point where I need to install all the topside PF bulbs
before they get covered up with various assemblies.
I personally feel the best part about this portion of the resto are all the stainless lane guides. Notice any ball tracks on them?
Friday, December 22, 2006, 12:43am
For those that thought this resto had died and gone to Monkeybug's "pinball graveyard", here are the latest pics of where she's at. It's absolutely amazing how the smallest of parts can hold up a restoration. (well, that and a new baby). As for the new parts that were holding up the resto.... A NOS set of T2 plastics would probably be #1 on the list. Beyond that, the odd screw / mylar / wireform bumpers / and other little silly parts. For those that have dug into a pin to this extent know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, the lower cab / PF is all but complete. (I actually installed the wireform on the apron and some misc. clear plastics after these pics, in case anyone notices *cough*PHIL*cough) All I need to button up the lower cab 100% is the gun handle and coin door which I'm in the process of getting replated / powder coated. On with the pics!!!!
(no cracks about the dusty outer loop please! Once construction is complete she'll get the rub down. But while you're looking in
there, don't the ball guides look nice? And the reflections.... )
So there isn't much left now. One or two small touchups on the back box, and I'll finally have her back in one piece.
Friday, December 22, 2006, 1:13pm
This was the very first time I have ever used the dishwasher for cleaning pin parts, and it will be the last time (except for washing ramps) The only thing you have to worry about when washing any PCB are the items that are not water tight like switches and relays and this is dishwasher or not. (all the PCB's were washed in a large industrial "dishwasher" when they were first manufactured anyway so it won't hurt them) Before I washed my PCB's I removed all of those items, but after seeing the results of the wash I won't be doing it again. The problem is you have no idea who has done any repairs on them prior to you, and what kind of solder they used. Turns out the driver PCB was repaired at some point with no clean solder, and if you've ever used this stuff.... once washed it turns white. As for the time line... I had Chris Hutchins touchup and CC the PF which took about 4-5 months.
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