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Like the rest of this machine, I was going to have to spend a lot of time on this Flash playfield, it was really dirty and un-maintained, and had a lot of plastic warping and fading, every sticker needed replacing and as I mentioned on the front page I had a few playfield inserts sticking up. It had wear spots in the paint in some sections and needed new stationary targets as well. The 3rd , or middle flipper on the right was kicking out all the time instead of sitting in line with the back of the eject hole tunnel. So it's out with the tools to strip it bare and clean it all up.
Take a look at the first photo - The rollover lanes are the wrong colour, the spinner is dented and scuffed and you should be able to see the playfield is a little dull or lifeless in it's colour. There is a closer shot of the spinner and the star rollover further down the page. I kept the original caps that you see here, I did try and order some but they arrived at my house and were VERY yellow, so I kept the ones you see here.
In this next shot, take a look at the lack of target stickers and see if you can notice the "kick" out of that mid field right flipper. You should just about be able to see the right side of the large BLUE playfield insert ( the FLASH insert ) sticking up about 3mm in this picture as well. Also take note of the lack of colour around the 10, 1 and 2 bonus inserts.
Now you can see the kick in that flipper and the BLUE insert poking up a little. You may also notice that the playfield plastics are warping and the blue / white stand up target is a bit battered too.
Here you can see the right slingshot plastic fully bent upwards as well as rubber crap on the bottom blue playfield post.
Time to tear this down
Obviously the first thing to do is to pretty much entirely strip the playfield of all the parts. I take LOTS of photo's and I also separately bag parts from each area of the playfield as well. You will find it easier to leave the bumper bodies in place as if you want to remove them you also have to cut wires under the playfield to remove the internal lamp holder that sits inside each bumper. I do however, remove the steel rings for each bumper and polish them up as well as cleaning the bumper skirts and bodies with Novus. In the shot below I have stripped the playfield, cleaned under the apron area and polished the top rail as well as started my entire playfield clean with Orange Solvent or Wax and Grease remover.
I will just tell you of some things that I do to the playfield and it's parts, in no particular order, you can just pick up what you want to and look at the photo's to judge if you think it works or not. The first thing I do after stripping it is to rub it all over with some Orange Solvent, it does no harm at all to the playfield and it removes a lot of surface dirt and any old bits of glue or other crap you may find stuck to your playfield ( you had better like the smell of oranges though as you will smell like one for a week! ), you will find that Orange Solvent is GREAT for removing the dirt that forms in a line on the edges of Mylar sheets, it "nearly" makes that Mylar line invisible!. After that, I hit it with the Novus 3 treatment, it is great for removing dirt from cracks, I then hit it with Novus 2 ( all over, two times ) and it generally comes up clean and fairly shiny after that, but then I get out a Car Wax Paste and polish it all over to bring out a good shine in the surface. All of the chrome rails are polished with an Auto Cream Polish called Autosol, it is specifically designed for Chrome polishing. I also use it to re-polish all of the mini posts, rails and pop bumpers as well as on the plunger/ plunger surround and coin entry section on the coin door, generally I use it on any chrome parts. I get all of the playfield plastic posts and I soak them in the kitchen sink for an hour or two in normal dishwashing detergent, I then scrub them individually with a toothbrush, it is amazing how dirty these things get. I use all new stainless screws where possible and where I cannot get new ones the same, I polish the heads of the existing ones using the Dremel Tool.On the playfield inserts I go around them using a Black Sharpie Texta Pen- it is quite good. I know some people that have used the Sharpie on some of the smaller black area's of the playfield, personally I would not recommend that. On Flash I removed the white (well they were yellow) star shaped Rollover inserts and soaked them in Orange Solvent and then scrubbed them with a toothbrush until they became white again. The Bumper bodies were done with Orange Solvent and then Novus 2. When re-globing under the playfield I also use a pipe cleaner with a good window cleaning fluid to clean under each playfield insert.
Below are a load of images of the playfield after all those things were done.
I think the game looks way better with blue lane guides
This shows you the target deals on as well as the shine on the playfield afte all the treatment as well as the bumper bodies.
I even installed new timber shooter rails in this game, you should see the plastic a little flatter and the blue/white target a bit cleaner as well.
And here is a look at the star rollovers after a soaking and a toothbrush scrub with Orange Solvent
This whole area looking better
And here's just a few more shots of different angles of the restored playfield. You will be able to spot some vast differences from my original playfield photo's. Take note of the colour that has come out of the playfield after using Novus polishes on it, especially note the Bonus area that is no longer yellow! Also note the now flat PF plastics from using my flattening methods and you also get a good look at the Blue Flash Insert that is now nice and flat after I removed, flattened and glued it back into place. Take careful note of the little things like the new acorn nuts and using new screws in your playfield and notice the difference they make for an outlay of about $3.00 !!
Hope you enjoyed my Flash pages - click the link above to see it all done.
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