In Progress Scared Stiff

[DRD]

Bought this from @chris b as a garage player at a fair price. Good dmd. Everything worked. He also threw in some replacement parts - correct red globe to replace incorrect purple one. Better siderails to replace dented ones. Black pop wafers to replaced damaged ones



I pulled the mylar as in places it was three layers thick !

Been happily playing it for a few months, without significant work being done.

Usual story, faded to hell and drilled ...




Traditional wear to the "terrifying" in front of the crate, iffy coloured crate decal ...



Damaged speaker panel - cracked on the outside, broken spigots and glued in bits on the inside. This now replaced with anew panel and upgraded @new forest pinball speakers and spacers. He has created fantastic spacers that allow use of the same sized speaker in each side ...



Now this, with much better midrange out of the backbox. I will install the woofer after i have rebuilt my cab....


The wpc95 plastic speaker panel is cheaper, flimsier and inferior to the earlier mdf ones. It must have been introduced as a cost saving measure

The coffin smacks the glass when fired open by the solenoid. The glass is scratched in 4 places because of this, indicating a fault for a very long time. Phil at heaven had seen this problem before and advised me that i needed to lower the mech slightly by putting shims between the bracket and the underside of the playfield, like with the addams family vault


Cab and head had seen some pretty rudimentary repairs and touch ups in the past ..





Variety of spare parts bought over recent months.

Correct crate decals. Boogie men slingshot upgrade from usa to install the feature that was removed due to cost cutting. Skull pile leds and torches, again removed from final production due to cost cutting. Replacement claw globe holder. Plastic posts, rubber kit etc etc


First job is to decal the cab and head while 'er indoors away and the weather is good. I bought a decal set and used cab+head from manny so that I could just swap parts game to game rather than do the full tear down



My makita orbital sander and 40 grit paper made light work of the decals. No heat gun used ...

 

[Nedreud]

Just out of idle curiosity, what game was the donor cabinet?

 

[DRD]

A scared stiff! I have a donor cab and head from manny

 

[Nedreud]

Doh! I'm being such a pleb. I mistook this image as the main cabinet and not the backbox:

And I'm like "Weird. What game is that?"

 

[Wiredworm]

That would make the workbench absolutely massive.

 

[Nedreud]

That would make the workbench absolutely massive.

I did say I was being a pleb. Even though it was around 1pm I clearly still hadn't had enough coffee at that point.

"Normal" service to be resumed shortly...

 

[Dunc]

Looking good! Be great to see it looking super fresh with the new cabinet! As you know, I'll take ur old one lol

Dunc

 

[DRD]

I knew this game would be a pig, so I just kept putting it off. It worked, I liked playing it. Some scabs are better left unpicked.....

The auto ball shooter was loose, missing bolts. Stripped it. The riveted cylinder bearings were loose, so tightened them by squeezing in a vice.

This didn't fire the ball consistently so I straightened the kicker arm. Sorted, it passed my 20 out of 20 test. Try it 20 times, if no errors, it is done



Ball trough filthy, but working. Stripped it, bit of a polish, took the opto boards out, cleaned with ipa.



Rebuilt both flippers with full kits, including nos playfield bushes, though left the eos in as they were ok. Incorrect red coils on both. Correct blue coils fitted. New boney bats fitted plus superbands.


Stil a bit disappointed with the flippers. I used the same kits on my fish tales a few months back, the flippers on that game are superb. I wonder whether the boney bats are heavier, hence less responsive?

Stripped the slingshot mechs, inserted my us sourced boogiemen kit. Per the picture above, they move towards the centre of the pf. The manual indicated two different types of slingshot coils ! The weaker ones were installed reflecting that production games had this feature stripped out. Uprated more powerful coils were inserted with new sleeves. The new arrangement is vastly superior to the production game in terms of appearance, but again, like the boney flippers, I wonder whether the extra weight slows them down. New repro sling covers installed too, these needed the dremel to widen the gap in the middle a little.

The end result looks vastly superior, the original factory static boogieman left looking rather sad ...



I wanted to section by section refurb it like I did with Fish Tales. But the game was too filthy so I did a traditional topside teardown.

 

[Dunc]

Looking forward to seeing this progress! Will be a very nice example when finished! Seemed to play nicely the other week as it was!

Dunc

 

[DRD]

Getting the coffin mech out is a pig of a job. The two ramps are intertwined, both have to be removed, it then has this strange metal bar on the LHS that you must remove before sliding the coffin out.



The PF was the usual filth fest ...




One of the worst jobs in pinball is the pop bumper strip. The poppers in this game "worked" but not at all properly. The top popper was getting stuck in the down position. The middle popper had a chunk missing out of the wafer as the vuk fires the ball directly at it.



On stripping them, the coil sleeves were all paper thin. Two of the metal yokes were broken ...



To get the wafer out you must desolder the underside of the PF, then remove the staples holding the lampholder's metal straps ...



Then pull the lampholder through the top of the pf. Then remove the two screws holding the white plastic frame to the pf to get the whole lot out ...



All cleaned, parts replaced as necessary, rings polished with Autosol and the Dremel.



The upper one was still binding in the down position. On inspection the coil bracket was bent. It was a non-factory replacement part. So something had gone wrong here before. It may be catching on the playfield hinge mechanism. Anyway, with an adjustable spanner I straightened it ....



There was still glue residue from the mylar I removed at the edges of the pf. Cleaning the pf required foam cleaner and also this sticky residue remover ...



This pic above also shows how well these diamond plate games clean up. They are vastly superior playfields to those used on earlier games like System 11 and Bally SS.

I installed the excellent skull eyes and flaming torch mods from www.pinballtoys.co.uk. These were stripped out of production games as a cost cutting measure, so there are just holes where the eyes and torches should be. But the associated wiring looms and connectors were still incorporated in the machines ...


These mods really brighten up the skull pile and are a no-brainer purchase. The led eyes are synced with the game's modes - The Six Tales of Terror ...


The top was fully stripped and the metal put into my tumbler. Been in for about 4 days now, and still getting shinier by the day. This is filled with the trademark @ronsplooter walnut with a squirt of solvol autosol mix. I put paper towels on top to keep the dust in


Normally I smooth the wood then fill. This time I have applied the filler to the rough sanded head, immediately after the decals have been sanded off. If this turns out a better way, I will do the same with the cab.


Some minor delamination, so I inserted PVA glue and clamped it overnight

 

[cooldan]

keep it up Dave, appreciating the details here, especially in your pictures.

 

[DRD]

Some good news, the subway was undamaged and not too filthy ..

Other below pf mechs needed rather more work ...


The dremel, solvol autosol, ipa and a fibreglass pencil did the job ...


Similarly, the upkicker ...


Then this scumfest ..




The crate was working very reliably but had clearly taken a real battering, the door revealed its secrets when I removed the decal. Looks like a previous welding job to repair it. Though this was actually well done and I had no idea this was present

 

[ChriX]

Nice work so far! Will be looking great when finished

 

[Dunc]

Looking great so far Dave! Keep up the good work!

Dunc

 

[DRD]

In summary ..... do not renovate Scared Stiff. It is a hateful game to work on. Three steps forward, two steps back. Buy one that is fixed up. If you need to replace ramps, or remove them to get to stuff, just burn the damned thing

Every other game I have worked on has immediately been faster, sharper, more responsive. The games reward you for renovating them. Scared Stiff just sucks the enthusiasm out of you.

Mine is all back together, all nice and shiny. New plastic set. New rubbers. New spotlight assembly for the coffin. Correct red flasher globes.



But now I have play tested it, I need to remove the ramps to undo or modify a number of the "improvements" I had undertaken.

The repro metal crate is at least a huge improvement on the broken black plastic one that mine had. Here it is adorned with new pinball heaven decals which look miles better than the damaged, discoloured components originally on my game ....



I replaced the Bat Ramp with a new one. As ever, I needed to countersink the two holes that accept the small philips screws at the entrance. But ...

1. The new ramp caused air balls. So I replaced the "correct" flipper coils I had installed (which did seem over powered) and put the weaker flipper coils that came with the game back in. I needed to adjust the EOS switches too, but all ok now.

2. The ramp has not been properly manufactured, so the leapers get caught on it. I now need to remove the ramp to cut the horizontal lip off the lower edge so it better matches the original ...



the expensive boogiemen slingshots (with uprated coils and new slingshot covers) ...


These look the part and return a prototype feature removed from production but have slowed the game down. They are lethargic, heavy. They just feel wrong, sound wrong and are clunky. Like installing early 80s Bally linear slingshots ....

I will get a second opinion from another pinhead, see what someone else thinks about it, but I may well remove the damned things as I like my games to be very responsive.

The correct (fully rebuilt and with NOS bushes) boney flippers also feel lethargic due to their extra weight?. My shadow sits next to my scared stiff and has much more responsive slings and flippers

My crate very occasionally did not close fast enough, exposing its locking pin. So I tightened the tired looking spring. Now it occasionally traps balls in the half open crate !!! Yet another mech to dismantle

I inserted Addams Family Vault spacers under the pf, between he pf and cofin mech to slghtly lower it. At least this actually worked! The coffin lid no longer strikes the playfield glass

There is something wrong with the extra ball shot now too, occasionally a ball gets snagged in here and does not make the shot. I think I need to adjust the stinless ball guides hidden beneath the two ramps and/ or the microswitch and/ or the ball gate.

 

[Bandit Boy]

Great thread, love to see restorations with plenty of pics.... They can be a great source of inspiration to wannabe restorers.