Part 2: Touch Up
There were two main areas that needed to be touched up. The first was in the top right shooter lane path. This area has three rollovers and playfield art in the top of the shooter path. This area gets a lot of wear since every ball in play rolls over it. Plus, on this game you can hit balls back into the shooter lane. So this area gets a lot of action. The second area that needed touching up was on the lower playfield in front of the in-line drop targets.
The touch up went OK. As is always the case, it is very difficult to get a perfect color match. My green match in front of the drop targets was almost perfect. The red areas were a tad bit off, but acceptable, especially since they were located at the top in the shooter lane. The biggest problem with touching up a playfield, however, is not so much the color match as it is matching the gloss of the original playfield. Touch ups, if you don't clearcoat them, never have the same "shine" as the original. However, I prefer a dull touch up to bare wood.
The main section of wear on the machine was at the top in the shooter lane. This area was not protected by Mylar and is under the plastic at the loop around of the plunger shot. Every Flash Gordon that I have ever seen has had significant wear in this area. When you are playing, it is not noticeable because it is under a plastic and the angle makes it hard to see. We did our best at touching this up. The difficult part here was in some of the lettering. The shooter lane has three star rollover buttons. They score 1000 When Lit. The "When Lit" was written in very small letters and had been completely worn off. We made a valiant effort at recreating this, but it is not perfect.
SECTION 4: Backglass
The backglass on this game, unlike the cabinet, was almost perfect. There was no peeling, flaking, or problems with the paint. There was one small area, about the size of a pencil eraser near the strobe light where the paint had been chipped off. This was easy to touch up. Because the area was so small, I debated whether I would do it or not and finally decided to do it.
Then, to protect the glass from future damage, I sealed the back of it using Krylon Triple Thick. I taped off the score and credit windows and then applied two light coats in each direction.
SECTION 5: Miscellaneous
As with most of my games, I did the following:
- I installed new reproduction drop targets. The old targets were either worn or had the wrong design on them.
- I installed a new, three-pronged, heavy duty power cord.
- I dry tumbled all of the small metal parts to make them shiny.
- I polished all of the large metal areas with Never Dull.
- I polished the coin door with polishing compound and a drill.
- I put on a new Bally susan B. Anthony sticker on the coin door. It is amazing the difference a new sticker makes on the door.
- I repainted the legs gun metal gray.
- I put on new leg levelers. These really add a nice touch to a game. It's like wearing new shoes with a suit.
- I put in a new coin door lock.
- The playfield was cleaned and waxed.
- A new ball was put in to minimize playfield wear.
