If you read my earlier shop log on the Stern Grand Prix you will know I had to abandon that because the playfield was so badly water damaged and all under playfield hardware so badly rusted I damaged the playfield during the playfield strip down beyond reasonable repair so...
I have started to build a Virtual Pinball Machine based on what, it turns out to have been, a very expensive donour cabinet.
I have taken some much appreciated and very patient guidance from @tyke (who, along with @Pick Holder, seem to be the Yodas of the VP world) and have purchased most of the hardware to complete the build.
I will post details of specification later in log but for my first post will just cover what I’ve done thus far, over the course of the last few weeks, now I am at the point were the empty cab is in a state where my wife has allowed it back in the house without rolling her eyes and reminding me how lucky I am that she’s happy to indulge my very expensive hobby.
So everything has been totally stripped out of the cabinet and backbox. All of the boards were in surprisingly good working condition given the state of the rest of the machine and I managed to recoup about 60% of the purchase price of the machine selling them and a few other parts on here and EBay.
I spent about half a day sanding down the cabinet and back box to bare wood and then another half day spraying them both with primer and satin black spray paint. This is not going to be a minter so I did no wood filling or repairing as I did with the Star Wars refurb, which was my first, and only, thus far.
I took all the major cabinet metalwork (9 pieces) to a local powder coater. He charged me £75 to sand blast all the originally black metalwork and powder coat them in red.
I am keeping the original Grand Prix theme purely because every time I look at it it will remind me not to be an idiot and to listen to my head and not my heart if I ever see a water damaged project pin and am tempted to buy it again so I bought some Stern Grand Prix cabinet decals from an Italian guy on EBay. I would have bought from Retro Refurbs but the EBay guy had them in stock so there was no lead time and they arrived in days.
So, decals and powder coated legs in hand I brought the sanded and painted cab in the house and spent 4 hours and half a bucketful of sweat applying the decals.
I‘ve done two pinball cabinet re-decals now and I have to say it’s the most stressful part. Having said that I have found both of them to be more successful than any of the applications of screen protectors I’ve done on my phones over the years!
Anyways. Cabinet re-recalled and set up in house.
Hope to do a little bit more work on it during week and then spend full weekend on it next weekend so next update will, hopefully be next Sunday.
In the meantime, some photos.
I have started to build a Virtual Pinball Machine based on what, it turns out to have been, a very expensive donour cabinet.
I have taken some much appreciated and very patient guidance from @tyke (who, along with @Pick Holder, seem to be the Yodas of the VP world) and have purchased most of the hardware to complete the build.
I will post details of specification later in log but for my first post will just cover what I’ve done thus far, over the course of the last few weeks, now I am at the point were the empty cab is in a state where my wife has allowed it back in the house without rolling her eyes and reminding me how lucky I am that she’s happy to indulge my very expensive hobby.
So everything has been totally stripped out of the cabinet and backbox. All of the boards were in surprisingly good working condition given the state of the rest of the machine and I managed to recoup about 60% of the purchase price of the machine selling them and a few other parts on here and EBay.
I spent about half a day sanding down the cabinet and back box to bare wood and then another half day spraying them both with primer and satin black spray paint. This is not going to be a minter so I did no wood filling or repairing as I did with the Star Wars refurb, which was my first, and only, thus far.
I took all the major cabinet metalwork (9 pieces) to a local powder coater. He charged me £75 to sand blast all the originally black metalwork and powder coat them in red.
I am keeping the original Grand Prix theme purely because every time I look at it it will remind me not to be an idiot and to listen to my head and not my heart if I ever see a water damaged project pin and am tempted to buy it again so I bought some Stern Grand Prix cabinet decals from an Italian guy on EBay. I would have bought from Retro Refurbs but the EBay guy had them in stock so there was no lead time and they arrived in days.
So, decals and powder coated legs in hand I brought the sanded and painted cab in the house and spent 4 hours and half a bucketful of sweat applying the decals.
I‘ve done two pinball cabinet re-decals now and I have to say it’s the most stressful part. Having said that I have found both of them to be more successful than any of the applications of screen protectors I’ve done on my phones over the years!
Anyways. Cabinet re-recalled and set up in house.
Hope to do a little bit more work on it during week and then spend full weekend on it next weekend so next update will, hopefully be next Sunday.
In the meantime, some photos.