Day 01 - The Breakdown

The playfield before the breakdown

The first step to cleaning this thing is taking as much off the playfield as I can / I feel comfortable doing. You could clean around everything on the board, and for the most part that will be what I do in the future, but with how old and dirty this is I want to give the whole board a good scrub. Removing everything will make that way easier and let me get into the nooks and crannies. If I were doing a full restoration I would be taking everything off the playfield board so that it's just a slab of wood. That requires a lot of soldering and re-wiring to put it back together. Not something I'm horribly comfortable at the moment. So the game plan is to only remove what I can with a screw driver. Perhaps in the future I'll be more adventurous and do it all.

Removing the posts

After taking off the artwork I started working on all the little red things (technical term). These are semi transparent to let light through so I want to clean them up pretty well. About half of them used regular screws which was awesome. The other half is what the artwork and other things are connected to which required this odd top that was a big pain to remove. I understand the need for it but man does it suck.

Also with the red poles I started to remove all the rubber on the field. Old rubber loses it's spring as well as cracks/flakes which dirties the place up. I have no idea how old this rubber is, but rubber is dirt cheap so I'm going to replace it all.

It's at this point I have my first well... while I'm at it I might as well do _______ too.

Metal

I'm looking at this somewhat bare playfield and start thinking you know I could take off the metal that's along the edges, as well as the wire ball guides through out the field. Polish it up nice and what not. Welp I already took off this much, might as well. So that's then the pile under the machine appeared. I got some metal polish on it's way. I'll tackle that after the playfield.

Coin slots are off

Initially I was just going to focus on the playfield and only give the cabinet a general quick wash. Well after taking the metal off of the playfield and deciding to polish it I'm looking at the coin door and thinking hmmm... So then the coin door came off.

Everything is off

At this point the only thing left on the playfield is the switches, the lights, the pop bumpers, and the flippers. Lights are lights and come out easy. The switches would requiring soldering so I'm leaving them on. They're small enough to clean around so no worries. Same goes for the flippers and bumpers.

Onto the cleaning!