Time to clean and polish the playfield! I tried to remove as many parts as possible for proper cleaning. I had no plans to retouch any artwork on this game as I feel it would corrupt the history of the machine. My goal was just to do as good a cleaning as I could including all the corroded metal pieces. To that end I used gentle cleaners and polishes. Nothing abrasive on the wood at all and only the finest rouge for the metal. Off we go!
Playfield stripped and cleaned with a citrus based cleaner,
Orange Power.
Once cleaned I then polished the wood with furniture polish.
No hard sticky waxes here!
Next, I started polishing the metals using a Dremel with different felt
wheels and buffing rouge
Yes I even polished the cone shaped springs :) The cars "exhausts" really came
out nicely
Close-up of the diverter which was particularly nasty at the start
The outer ball guide re-installed after polishing. Big thanks
to my friend Ron Chan for helping polish everything! Just look at the reflection
of the track! This is a long piece of metal and took hours to polish
Before...
After! Nothing like a good before and after to show progress :)
Totalizer before disassembly and cleaning. Note the gouge
middle right :(
And after polishing! I used a rubber wheel to get the gouge
smoothed out and wow how nice!
One last shot of the polish job. Lets see about getting the
playfield back together and in the cab!