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Finally! I've been working on this one for a while. A full restoration including new cabinet decals, new playfield, new plastics, new ramps, colour display, circuit board work, and all of the associated madness that goes with those things! Let's dive in.



Let's start with the cabinet. It was in pretty poor shape. Covered with mould as it had sat in a damp garage for many years. Cabinet artwork was very faded. Side rails, legs, and other metalwork was a little rusty, too.



Entire cabinet was stripped to bare wood and then sanded smooth. I experimented a bit with different methods of decal removal. Heat and scraping for one side, and sanding for the other. In the end I found that both methods worked equally well. Heat and scraping was very physically demanding, and left a lot of adhesive residue on the cabinet which needed cleaning, but you can strip huge chunks of artwork off at once if you're lucky. The sanding method took a long time to bite through the thick artwork, even with coarse grit paper, and was very messy. I used an orbital sander but a belt sander would have made quicker work of this. The advantage of sanding is that it leaves the cab with a smooth finish ready for painting, while the heat and scraping method requires a final sand to get to this point.



Holes and imperfections were filled with bog and sanded multiple times for a smooth finish. Corners and edges were rebuilt where necessary. A combination of solid bog as well as water-based bog helps rebuild large chunks of material as well as fill cracks and imperfections. Some of the cabinet joints were coming apart, so they were glued and clamped as well. The support rails on the back end of the cabinet were also destroyed, so I cut some new timber trim and nailed them in.



Once the cab was repaired and sanded, it got hit with a waterproof primer and undercoat, and a nice satin black paint. 



The backbox lamp insert also got sanded to get rid of the mould and was painted white.



Once the paint was cured, the cabinet was ready for new decals. I used the wet application method which worked really well. Place the decal flat on the cabinet before removing the backing. Place a weight on one end so it doesn't move. Begin to peel the decal from the opposite end to the weight. Don't stick it down yet; hold it in mid air and cut the backing paper away as much as possible. Spray soapy water liberally on the cabinet and decal, and then squeegee the decal onto the cab. 


Spent a lot of time lining up the decals just right so the start button sits dead centre of the red circle, and the lines on the front of the cabinet match the lines on the side. The decals are larger than necessary, so take a scalpel and run it along the edges to get a nice clean cut. Pro tip: use a torch to shine around the edges of the cabinet and through holes to see where to cut on the decal. I also cut around the space where the leg protectors will go, as this will prevent the new decals from warping. Holes for leg bolts, buttons and other fixings were carefully cut with a scalpel.



Ready for new hardware! Coin door was stripped, cleaned and repainted. It had some ugly holes in the button housing which were filled and sanded. Installed new legs, new leg brackets, new leg bolts, as well as steel cabinet leg protectors. New side rails. New lockdown bar. Buttons were reinstalled including new flipper buttons.



A few cosmetic things to finish up the cabinet work. This game had no coin box lid, so I ordered a new one including a handle. You need to bolt the handle onto the lid to secure it, but people often forget that the underside of the lid needs to be perfectly flat so it can slide onto the coin box. Any protrusion will catch on the coin box. To achieve this, you need to divot or "crater" the bolt holes so a countersunk head will recess into them. You can use a punch tool to do this. 



A new decal was printed for the coin door test buttons and applied with double-sided tape. Looks much cleaner now.



It's starting to look like a proper machine now! With a good foundation now we can move onto the circuit boards. Most of the boards needed some work. CPU board had some battery corrosion on it, so it was treated and new components were installed (mainly connector headers and one of the LM339s). 



Next was the power driver board. C5 and C11 were bulging more than normal so they were replaced. New connector headers installed for J114 and J101 so the CPU board gets a solid 5 volt signal. Also replaced the capacitors at C4 (for the 5v circuit) and C2 (for the 12v circuit) while I had the opportunity to do so.



Moved onto the boards under the playfield. The opto board was shot from capacitor leakage. Stripped half of the components off the board and rebuilt it. Installed a new capacitor onto the motor driver board, too.



The lower left flipper wasn't activating properly, which also turned out to be a board issue. Specifically, the opto for the lower left flipper had failed on the flipper opto board. New opto installed and it was working properly again. 



Now, onto the fun part—the playfield! The original playfield was pretty tired. Multiple touch-ups on it, and the timber was cracked on the bottom right corner. A good candidate for a playfield swap! But before we get to that, there's a lot of prep work to do. The entire playfield was stripped with all parts set aside for cleaning and servicing.



One part which was a little difficult were the metal posts. The mini posts had a habit of pulling up artwork when hammered out, as they had rusted and expanded a little over the years. Pro tip: tap the post out with a dowel, while holding a deep socket over the topside. The socket will "lock down" the playfield area around the post, preventing it from coming up when the post breaks free. Not a big problem if you're going to trash the playfield, but a necessary step if you are reusing the playfield. All of the metal screws, posts and other hardware were cleaned, tumbled, treated with rust remover, and then cleaned again.



Some of the playfield parts needed extra work before they could be reused on the new playfield. Best time to do that work is now, before you start mixing things up between new and old parts. The backboard at the top end of the playfield was chipped in multiple spots. It got a coat of paint. The timber support rails on the left and right edges of the playfield are coated with a vinyl wrap. This was starting to peel, so I stripped them off entirely and painted them black. 



What about all of those other parts? Ramps? Plastics? Well, there's no need to clean any of those since this game is getting a new ramp set (RTBB), and new plastics (RTBB). Nice! But that doesn't mean we can just throw the old stuff away. All of the ramp protectors were removed, as well as the flashers that were riveted to some of the playfield plastics. To remove them, simply drill out the lip of the rivet, and punch the rivet body out carefully. These were installed onto the new parts, ready for the new playfield.


One part that needed a lot of hardware removed was the subway ramp. This has three switch brackets mounted to it (two rivets each) as well as brackets that hold the ramp to the underside of the playfield (two rivets each, five brackets total). Normally I wouldn't worry about removing them as new ramps tend to come with the new brackets riveted to them. But not this one! It was missing the two rivets at the top end. So, I ordered a couple of new ones (RTBB). Then I had to drill out the existing rivets, remove the metal brace, and reinstall it along with the brackets. Drilling out rivets on a brand new ramp is certainly not an ideal situation but hey, you do what you gotta do!



Mini playfield was also given a full service. The best word I can use to describe the condition of the mini playfield is ROUGH! It had had a very hard life. Someone had tried to install their own protector over the playfield front edge, and it was badly smashed up. The five-target opto board was also a mess of solder and jumper wires, and the target housing was no longer straight. The lock eject coils were mushroomed to the point they could not be removed from the sleeves without sanding them down a little. Time to give this thing a little love!



The chewed out timber was solved by the new playfield, of course, but we want to make sure that the new playfield stays intact, don't we? So Cliffy Protectors were installed on the mini playfield front and edge. A great product! Instead of cleaning all of the mushroom buttons and hacking around with the dodgy soldering on the opto boards, I opted to replace the entire assembly with one that was manufactured locally (Coin Up Pinball). A very useful replacement for a commonly damaged part. 



Another part that's always stuffed on the mini playfield is the plastic Time Expander cover. You can also get this part as a reproduction in thicker, clearer plastic (RTBB). But if you replace the plastic, you also need to replace the decal, right? I actually decided to reproduce this decal myself, as it was a fairly simple one which can be removed from the original part without damaging it. I scanned it in, did a little touch-up work in Photoshop, and printed it as a vinyl decal with a protective coating. It came out great! At this point we may as well go the whole hog and replace the decals on the metal shroud around the Time Expander too. I grabbed copies of these decals from a champion on Pinside so I printed them at the same time as the Time Expander decal. I made them slightly bigger as well, so they would fit the metal shroud neatly, and create more of a "seamless" look in the corners and at the edges. So the whole Time Expander has been given a facelift and looks much better for it.



Now to finish more of the mechanical stuff. Mini playfield gearbox taken apart, cleaned and lubed. The motor was attached to a weird homemade bracket, but it worked, so no new parts needed. No stripped gears on this one, thankfully, although it looks like the main gear has been repaired before. Cam assembly was serviced and greased. This one was missing the roller cam which sits between the cam and the main bracket. This was causing it to have a bit of sloppy movement when first going up or down. Thankfully they are readily available (PSPA).



Once everything was clean and back together, it was time to test. I noticed that, in test mode, the mini playfield would often sink too low when rotating the cam in a "downwards" direction to the middle level. This did not seem to occur when the cam was rotating in an "upwards" direction. I spent a lot of time fiddling around to correct this but it turns out this is just a weird quirk of the mini playfield test. It does not occur during regular gameplay, where the mini playfield maintains correct position. Weird, huh? If the position of the mini playfield at its middle level is a problem, you can actually adjust its position by moving the optos at the bottom of the main bracket assembly. You can 3D-print an opto housing with different offsets, to fine tune where the opto triggers and therefore where the playfield will stop for the middle level. Cool!


I did note that the mini playfield sat ever-so-slightly too high when in its lowest position, though. This is something that needs to be adjusted as balls will get launched into the air if they hit the mini playfield edge. This probably had something to do with the homemade motor bracket, but it was easy to compensate for it by using thick washers on the underside of the bracket to lower it into the cabinet a little more. 



Now we can move onto the main playfield! The mini playfield was good practice, but there was a lot more adjustment needed before the main playfield could be repopulated. First, a good clean. Reproduction playfields are usually covered in dust from manufacture, so give them a thorough wipe down before working on them.



A detailed check of the mounting holes is also necessary. During this process I discovered a few things which are common issues on reproduction playfields. First, the holes for the tee-nuts were a tad too small. These all needed to be drilled out so the nuts would fit. Hammer them in with a dowel until they're flush with the playfield. There were a few problematic tee-nuts on the topside of the playfield. These are recessed because they will interfere with the ball. The hole is a little recessed from CPR, but it's nowhere near deep enough. So grab a forstner bit and drill it out a little further so the nuts sit below the level of the playfield. Cover with Mylar to seal them in.



Next issue: the holes for metal playfield posts were also a tad small. So these all had to be drilled out as well. When drilling these holes, I drill from the topside of the playfield to reduce the risk of wood chip blowout which is disastrous if it ever happens on the topside. I score the perimeter of the hole with a larger bit rotating in reverse. This removes the clearcoat around the rim of the hole so it doesn't crack when I drill out the hole. Then, go down to the correct bit size for the post and drive it through the hole. It's also important to score the clearcoat around all woodscrew posts that torque down onto the playfield. The screw action can chip up the clearcoat the same way a drill bit can.



Next are the mounting screws for the pop bumpers. These are probably the scariest task for most people because you'll need to deliberately deface the topside of the playfield and remove some artwork. The holes drilled into the playfield aren't appropriate because they aren't countersunk. So, use a countersunk drill bit to enlarge the holes, but stop as soon as it gets to the same diameter as the pop bumper screw head. Some people hammer the screws in, but I think that's a little savage. I like to use a nut on the underside of the playfield supported by some large washers to distribute the weight. Tighten the nut, and this will force the screw down into the playfield.



Now to address some of the playfield holes which were just horribly misaligned. The pilot holes on the underside of the playfield are often not quite in the correct positions, but some mechanisms will tolerate this better than others. For example, the Transmat switch mounting holes were horribly off-centre. The holes for the drain posts at each outlane were not in the centre of the playfield slot, either. The ESCAPE targets would not have slotted into the playfield hole if the bracket holes were drilled as suggested. The slingshot mechanisms would also not sit in the centre of the cut-outs if the pilot holes were trusted. And finally, one of the metal inlane guides was missing a mounting hole altogether! So, at the end of the day, you need to mount each mechanism onto the playfield and check for alignment before drilling any mounting holes.



One misalignment that was a little more frustrating was the ball launcher coil bracket. This mounts to the playfield using three screws—two metal screws and one woodscrew. The metal screws did not align with one another, and pushing the bracket further to make them "work" caused the bracket to collide with the playfield edge. So I settled on using one metal screw, with a longer woodscrew combined with a washer to give it some extra support.



Installation of the Cliffy protectors on the mini playfield was fine, but there were issues on the main playfield. The main playfield edge protector was too long. This was because the new playfield cut-out for the mini playfield was a millimetre or so narrower than the original. The solution was the grind off the "flanges" on the side of the protector so it could be repositioned. The main flange which covers the interface between the mini playfield and main playfield was left intact. This one does the majority of the protection work so never cut this flange off! Once the flanges were cut off, it could be bolted down with the playfield posts.



Alright! I think we're at the point where we can repopulate the main playfield, starting with the underside. Once you've checked all of the screw and post holes are in the correct spots, reassembly is a pretty quick process. I had already cleaned, serviced and re-sleeved all of the coil assemblies from the old playfield, so they could go straight on. Of course, new flipper parts were installed on all three flippers.  I installed connectors on each of the coil assemblies for easy servicing in the future. Plus, this allows you to reinstall all of the coil assemblies without the wiring harness getting in the way. I like to proceed in reverse order compared to disassembly. Reinstall the lamps, then switches, then coil assemblies. Hopefully, you'll find that the wiring harness (which has now been thoroughly cleaned!) retains its "memory" and sits back into its original positions quite readily.



Now we can move to the topside of the playfield. There weren't really any surprises here. I just followed my teardown photos and repopulated the posts, brackets and other parts as necessary, replacing any that were broken. All of the star posts were replaced. However most of the metal posts cleaned up really nicely and were reused. All of the metal posts had small plastic washers installed underneath them. This prevents damage to the new, potentially softer clearcoat. The new ramps came with decals unapplied, so some time was spent applying those correctly. There are a lot of decals on Doctor Who ramps! Small patches of Mylar were placed under the ramps flaps so they wouldn't mar the playfield surface.



Silicone rubber rings were installed as well as red silicone flipper rubbers. I must say, the new playfield looks fantastic. The colours are slightly different to the original, but the tones are consistent throughout and the resolution is good. LEDs were installed into the lamp sockets and they really make this game much brighter!



Of course, some custom instruction cards were put on the apron.



I think that just about covers everything! The game looks and plays beautifully now, and can finally go home so the owner can enjoy it. While I do love doing full restorations, they are a very time consuming job, and require many more hours of work than expected to get everything "just right." It's always worthwhile, though, as a machine which has undergone this kind of treatment will live on for many more years and let many other people experience the joy of the silver ball!